Required Viewing: The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath

20th Century Fox

Original Release Date: March 15th, 1940

Dir: John Ford

Str: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine

Running Time: 2 hours and 8 minutes

"I wouldn't pray just for a old man that's dead, 'cause he's all right. If I was to pray, I'd pray for folks that's alive and don't know which way to turn."

It's amazing how little time it seems has passed since the release of John Ford's film version of The Grapes of Wrath, or John Steinbeck's original novel the year prior. It's amazing how little the story seems to have aged, amazing how the struggles of the Joad clan don't seem distant in our modern age, amazing how the caravan of jalopies heading west to look for work seems like something you could be seeing in full color on one of the 24 hour news networks, and not in 20th Century Fox's glorious black & white, but in all actuality we shouldn't be so amazed at all. The Grapes of Wrath just might be the greatest American novel, John Ford just might be the greatest American director, and Henry Fonda just might be the greatest American movie star. No, maybe I shouldn't be amazed that 7o years on The Grapes of Wrath still feels like a fresh piece of passionate, personal, political, poetic filmmaking, but I am anyway.

The undertaking of putting The Grapes of Wrath on the big screen fell not only on the shoulders of John Ford, but also on those of 20th Century Fox headman Daryl F. Zanuck, and screenwriter Nunnally Johnson. Most people considered the novel too controversial, and too provocative to put on the screen in the puerile times of pre-war America, but after a trip to see the work camps described in the novel, and discovering that the conditions may have actually been even worse than those described, Zanuck decided to take a chance. However, once you got past the hurdle of getting the film funded, how on Earth would you get it past 1940s censors? The novel's famous ending would certainly have to go, as well as anything that showed policeman or a government official in a negative light. The fact that Johnson, Zanuck, and Ford managed to make these concessions, and others, while keeping the spirit of the novel in tact, is nothing short of a miracle.

The film is centered around an Oklahoma farming family, The Joads, guided for all intents and purposes by the matriarch of the family, Ma Joad (Jane Darwell). They are forced off the land they have share cropped for over 50 years by the banks, the Great Depression, and the wind, which after several bad years had turned the midwest in to a place, a Dustbowl they called it, where nothing could grow. Just before the Joads clear out, they are joined by Ma's son Tom (Henry Fonda) who just got out of jail after serving time for a homicide charge, and Casey (John Carradine) a drunken former preacher who has lost his faith.

The group is optimistic though, for they plan on heading west to California, as thousands of families did in the 1930s, certain they would be able to find work in the fields of The Golden State. After their arduous cross country trek, which is moved through rather quickly in the film, The Joads find that there are no good jobs left in California, and just as little food and shelter. So, they, along with the thousands of other farmers who have come in search of a living, gather themselves in to camps, where you try to keep you and your families alive through the meager wages you make, if your lucky enough to get work, or maybe through the kindness of your neighbor.

The major plot lines of the novel and the film versions of The Grapes of Wrath are very similar, though there are minor discrepancies, but the major difference is in the film's tone. Steinbeck's novel is a very bleak, as it should be, account of the economic conditions of the day. Ford's film, on the other hand, is a bit more uplifting, a kind of ode to the spirit and resiliency of working people. This is what keeps the film from aging. While it's true that the Dustbowl and the Depression were problems of the 1930s, there will always be hard times, and there will always be a need for assurance that we can pull through. Hope is something that Ford's film provides, that Steinbeck's novel does not, or at least not as absolutely.

The "hero" of The Grapes of Wrath is Tom Joad, played by Henry Fonda, who over the course of the film is turned into a sort of working class icon, a guy who can't catch a break, but refuses to roll over for anyone. Fonda is perfect for this role. The consummate under actor, Fonda never lunges for a big moment, instead letting the material and his sense of innate integrity, something he brought to many of his roles, do the heavy lifting. Jane Darwell won an Academy Award for her role as Ma Joad, but it's Fonda's performance that has become legend. Fonda was beaten out for the Oscar for 1940 by his lifelong friend James Stewart, and even Stewart expressed regret for winning the award, when it was Fonda who deserved the accolade.

It should also be noted that the film's stunning black & white cinematography was done by Gregg Toland, who one year later would turn cinema on it's ear forever with his work on Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, a film now considered by many to be the greatest film of all time. At the time of their release on the other hand, it was The Grapes of Wrath to which the "Greatest of All Time" title was bestowed. The weight of a film as challenging as The Grapes of Wrath would have crushed lesser Hollywood filmmakers, of that time and of today, but with men like Ford, Fonda, Zanuck, and Toland working together, not only is The Grapes of Wrath one of the great movies ever made, but required viewing for anyone who really loves film.