| Collector's Corner July 2008
The Grapes of Wrath
- Starring: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John
Carradine, Charlie Grapewin, Doris Bowdon, Russell Simpson, Paul Guilfoyle, Shirley Mills
- Directed by: John Ford
- Theatrical release: 1940
- DVD release: 2007
- Video: 1.37:1 (original aspect ratio)
- Sound: Dolby Digital mono
- Released by: 20th Century Fox
 John
Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath is a sad,
powerful story of the Dust Bowl of 1930-1936, during the worst of the Great Depression,
when people in the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles, eastern Colorado, northeastern New
Mexico, and southwest Kansas lost their small farms to greedy bankers and had nowhere to
go. Some of those displaced migrated to California and tried to hire on at farms, but were
despised by the locals and attacked by the big farmers. To protect themselves, they formed
a Union, which inflamed feelings even more.
That’s the backstory of this film version of
Steinbeck’s tale of the Joad family, directed by John Ford. Tom Joad (Henry Fonda)
has just left the Oklahoma penitentiary, where he spent four years for manslaughter. He
heads home, but the place is abandoned. He meets his former preacher, Casy (John
Carradine), and together they head off to Tom’s uncle’s farm. There, Tom is
reunited with his family: his Ma and Pa (Jane Darwell and Russell Simpson), who have been
thrown off their farm by the bank (sounds like today). They see a flyer promising jobs
aplenty in California, and with no home to go to, they decide to give it a try.
When they arrive in California, they discover that things
aren’t quite as good as they had heard. The migrant labor camps are rat holes in
which desperate children beg for food and law enforcement harasses them at every step. One
day, the farm’s owner shows up with a police officer and asks for workers. When a man
named Floyd (Paul Guilfoyle) begins agitating for a written agreement on wages, the police
officer decides to silence him by charging him with a crime recently committed in a nearby
town. As Floyd tries to escape, the police shoot at him and accidentally kill a woman. Tom
and Casy tackle and subdue the cop, but by leaving Oklahoma Tom has violated his parole,
so Casy takes the rap for beating up the cop.
 The
Joads move on to the next camp, where they’re hired as scabs to break up a strike,
and where Tom finally learns about unions. He also finds Casy again, who’s working as
the head union organizer. When the cops kill Casy, Tom, outraged at his friend’s
death, kills a cop. To keep Tom safe, the family moves on again.
They find temporary peace at a camp operated by the
government, where the residents make their own rules and live harmoniously. Then, one
night, Tom sees some police checking the license plates on the Joads’ truck. Knowing
his days are numbered, he packs his bags to leave. Ma Joad, the glue who’s held the
family together, catches her son and asks if he isn’t going to tell her goodbye. Tom
says he might follow in Casy’s footsteps, and that he sees bad days ahead, but better
ones coming. "Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be
there," he says. "Wherever there’s a cop beating up a guy, I’ll be
there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way
kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready. And when the people
are eating the stuff they raise, and living in the houses they build, I’ll be there,
too."
The film ends with a conversation between Pa and Ma Joad
that helped Jane Darwell win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. It’s an uplifting
moment that depicts the strength born of the independence that Kris Kristofferson would
write about 30 years later: "Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to
lose."
The book and the film are socialist manifestos about the
good of the common people, the evil of big business, the corruption of law enforcement,
and the federal government’s power to improve people’s lives. At the end of the
Depression, and with Germany rising again as a marauding force, 1940 was a scary time in
the United States. Newspaper and radio reporters had spent the 1930s blaming the
Depression on big business and its coziness with law enforcement and lawmakers, but unions
were still considered "red." President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom many called a
socialist for his sweeping New Deal programs and the reforms he forced on the banking
system, was slowly getting the country back on firm footing. It was too late for families,
like the Joads, who had already lost everything -- by the time FDR took office in 1933,
more than 25% of the US workforce was out of work. But in persisting in rooting out the
influence of big banks and rich men looking for quid pro quos from elected officials,
Roosevelt was able to restore some wealth to the American people. All of this was fresh in
viewers’ and readers’ minds, which made The Grapes of Wrath timely and
forced people to reexamine the decade just ended.
Steinbeck’s novel, however, ends on an entirely
different note that is still capable of creating shockwaves, and probably couldn’t be
filmed even today. Usually, I recommend reading books before seeing films, but The
Grapes of Wrath is different. Thanks to the brilliant cast and crew, this is one of
the few cases where the film surpasses the novel.
Director Ford worked with Gregg Toland, one of the best
cinematographers to ever pull a focus. Toland had to work at night, by candlelight or
expressionistic lighting. The textures he captured, and the seductive beauty of the
film’s quieter moments, joust for power with the more violent scenes. No wonder
wunderkind director Orson Welles demanded that Toland be the cinematographer for his first
film, Citizen Kane (1941).
Ford, who bled red, white, and blue, was not the first
person you’d think of to push a socialist agenda. Yet he handles this incredible
testament to the resilience of family and community as carefully as he would the following
year in How Green Was My Valley. His straightforward directing style and ability to
portray the best in what we all hope to be are key to the continuing power of The
Grapes of Wrath.
Henry Fonda loved America as much as Ford did, but he was a
liberal democrat. His Tom Joad is a perfect reflection of the left’s concept of the
little man overcome by events with no organization to back him up. But instead of
overplaying the melodrama, Fonda handles it as a slow burn -- his Tom Joan is a man who
doesn’t understand his own feelings or the world around him.
The Grapes of Wrath is available in a number of
formats. The cheapest is the version pictured at right; it’s the same disc as in the
more expensive package pictured below it. But for collectors like me, who can’t get
enough John Ford, there are two boxed sets:
The Essential John Ford Collection ($45) contains The
Frontier Marshall, Drums Along the Mohawk, My Darling Clementine, How
Green Was My Valley, and The Grapes of Wrath. The last three are some of
Ford’s best films, though most directors would be more than content to list the first
two on their résumés. Also included is Becoming John Ford, a pretty good
documentary about the man himself.
But the true Ford fan will have to have the massive Ford
at Fox box. This is the holy grail for Ford lovers -- every existing film Ford made
for 20th Century Fox. The great films he made for Warner Bros. and his own production
company, Argosy, aren’t here, but Ford at Fox exudes respect and the power of
the man’s art. I got the box for Christmas and didn’t open it for weeks -- I
knew that, once the wrapper came off, I might be lost for a week or more. It costs $275. I
guess I could live without it. Barely.
The Grapes of Wrath was nominated for seven Oscars. In
fact, in 1940 two Ford films were nominated for Best Picture. They split the vote,
and he lost to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca. Henry Fonda lost to one of
his best friends, Jimmy Stewart, in The
Philadelphia Story. Unbelievably, Gregg Toland wasn’t nominated for his
groundbreaking work on The Grapes of Wrath, but at least Ford won for Best
Director. The Grapes of Wrath is in the National Registry, and in 2007 the American
Film Institute listed it as the 23rd greatest American film of all time.
John Ford won more Oscars than any director before or
since, including Hitchcock, Kubrick, Welles, Coppola, Spielberg, Wyler, Capra, Wilder, and
Lean. His fellow members of the Academy knew what a gifted man he was -- only once, for Stagecoach,
did they nominate him for an Oscar he did not go on to win. The Grapes of Wrath will
give you a good idea of why they respected him so much.
. . . Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com |
