Grapes of Wrath, The (1940)
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20th Century-Fox
Director: John Ford
Honors:
John Steinbeck’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize novel “The Grapes of Wrath” would
be no easy task in adapting to the screen with the story’s darker outlook,
which included politics, depressing look at American suffering, and injustice.
In a Hollywood synonymous for producing happy endings, this source material
would not be a good starting point for your usual glossy Hollywood production.
Director John Ford and 20th Century-Fox together would produce a
feature film which captured the plight of many Americans during the Great
Depression while presenting a different outlook from the bright and shiny world
Hollywood usually flashed on the screen on a daily basis.
The Grapes of Wrath is a
Depression era drama about a family from Oklahoma that loses their farm and
sets out for California with rumored promises of work and prosperity and the
troubles they encounter, including crooked capitalistic ideals and heartbreak.
Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) returns to his Oklahoma home after years in prison to
find his family’s home deserted as he learns they were foreclosed on. With hope
of plentiful well-paying jobs the large Joad family set west to California.
Things are not as rosy as they seemed as the family encounter a migrant work
camp where the laborers are paid half of what they were promised and taken
advantage of at the company store. Tom inadvertently kills a threatening guard
making him a marked man on parole and the family moves on a new camp ran
democratically by the people that live within its walls. Their stay here
teaches the Joad’s the importance of community over the establishment that
tries to bring it down. Due to the injustice he has witnessed Tom decides to
move on a fight for social reform, leaving Ma Joad (Jane Darwell) as the
matriarch to become the strength of the family, having herself grown to not
fear the change, believing that the family will persevere.
The feature is a story of social injustice and how man can take
advantage of others without the heart that it will heavily affect others. Henry
Fonda’s Tom is the everyman that is thrusted into a world transformed from what
he left behind. On display is the greed of capitalism as men use desperate
migrant laborers to fatten their own pocket books at the hands of those in
need.
At this time in Hollywood most of its studio heads and filmmakers were
heavily conservative, including director John Ford, which makes this film so
surprising with its socialistic undertones. During a period of when many
American were suffering to find work The
Grapes of Wrath provided a cinematic voice to those that suffered mightily
from economic hardships of the period.
In adapting the sorrowful novel by John Steinbeck to the screen the actions
of the movie stick rather closely to the original source material, at least for
the most part. The first half of the movie depicts the Joads as they leave
Oklahoma is a faithful recreation of the novels material, but the second half
of the tale would be reshuffled to make a picture that had a brighter ending
then the novel originally intended. In the novel the Joads visit the friendly
camp first, build hope for California before encountering the crooked camp that
takes advantage of its laborers. The novel ends on very hard times with
despair, while the film reverses the order in which they see these two camps,
leaving us with a sense of “we will fight on” with a down, but determined Tom
and an equally determined Ma after visiting the more civilized camp second.
These more positive ending left audiences with inspiration during this time of
economic hardship, not to mention the threat of war waging in Europe, as
Hollywood once again attempted to make a sad story into a happier one.
By the time John Ford took on the film he was already a well-traveled
and celebrated director of many features film, most notably his westerns which
were recently coming back into vogue with the help of his recent masterpiece Stagecoach. In The Grapes of Wrath Ford makes the picture gritty and real not with
the often artistic looking shallow focus, but with a deep focus that made
nearly everything in frame clear. This gave the images a raw look, filmed in
the simplest manner, absorbing both the characters in the foreground and the
depressing images of the wastelands in the background. It is an artist measure that gets across the
poverty that surrounds this family and the people they encounter.
His images of the suffering and impoverished likens to the famous
photographs by Dorothea Lange who documented the impoverished in the”
Hoovervilles” and shanty towns that spread throughout Depression era America.
Ford’s images are a moving representation of what she did in still photography
at times during the picture.
Despite his conservative outlook on life Ford’s filmmaking still
allowed him to portray a world very much filled with ugliness. The cinematic
endeavor would garner Ford his second Academy Award for best director, further
cementing him as one of the greatest directors of the period and all time.
To star in Ford’s picture would be Henry Fonda who had recently become
one of the director’s favorite actors. Fonda was becoming more and more
recognizable as a leading actor, and with the dramatic role as Tom Joad would cement
himself as one of Hollywood’s best serious dramatic actors. His tall, slender
build made him physically an easy cast of an impoverished migrant worker, but
it was his quiet, determined demeanor that made his performance memorable.
Fonda would leave a lasting imprint on the film, the John Steinbeck story, and
Hollywood as he would be nominated for best actor for his vivid performance.
The feature’s second of two Academy Awards would come from the
performance of Jane Darwell who portrayed Ma, Tom’s loving mother and the
worried matriarch of the Joad family. Apart from Fonda’s Tom the character of
Ma in the picture goes through the most change and sorrow. She serves mostly as
a bystander to the overall plot, but remains as an emotional core, becoming the
character that audience relates to the most as she watches all the tragedy and
strife that strikes her family on their trek to find a better life. She is the
unconditional loving mother that anyone would want in hard times and it is she
that delivers the memorable last words to the picture as she proclaims they
will carry on , because they are “the people” before the movie fades out.
Darwell’s stout build and plain country demeanor makes her the ideal “Ma” in
just about any film, but ere she is able to stretch her dramatic wings and
provide an award winning performance.
Also serving in a memorable role is John Carradine as the former
preacher that had “lost the spirit” and rides with the Joad’s to California
before dying at the hands of oppressive guards at the crooked migrant camp.
Carradine might be best remembered for his his slender build and menacingly
curious eyes, but here he plays a very sympathetic character of Jim Casey, a
wandering man that had lost his faith. His performance matches his character so
very well as a man who is searching to refill a hole in his heart that was once
occupied by preaching. The movie never explains exactly what had caused him to
lose his faith and leave the church, but can be implied that it was because of
the horrible economic downturn that made him question the meaning of life.
Carradine’s performance is seen primarily in the first half of the picture as
he is the first character we meet in the film along with Tom, and though his
role slides to the side as the picture goes on his performance is extraordinary
in adding to the strife of those suffering in the story.
As mention before, the story shares ideals of socialism in that people
should care for other people and live in a manner that allows all to live
comfortably by sharing. Not to say the picture is an advertisement for
socialism, rather a manifestation of how people could live in harmony if they
cared for one another. Overall the tale is about strife and the power of people
attempting to overcome, but the idea that capitalism is overbearingly greedy
cannot be overlooked as a major theme in the plot.
This idea of sharing socialistic ideals, or perhaps ideas of communism,
was an unusual move by any director or any studio, let alone 20th
Century-Fox and John Ford. Hollywood was founded and was still ran by people
that worked hard from near nothing in their pockets to founding a wildly
successful industry. Movie moguls and its filmmakers were self-made men that
shared conservative ideals in an America that usually quietly shunned the
teachings of communism as seen rising in the east. With the rise of fascism,
and the breakout of war in Europe America began to soften its views on
communism as the nation sympathized with the Soviet Union attempting to fend
off the Nazi armies of Germany. This film manifests just how American were
beginning to make that emotional connection with fighting against the powerful
by the will of the people which, as seen here, was happening within their own
backyards during the Great Depression.
As war waged abroad American movies usually played minimally if at all in
overseas markets, many time being outright banned. In this case The Soviet
Union, America’s allies during World War II followed by being immediate enemies
following, would allow showings of the film in their country in 1948 as the
film portrayed the troubles of people under capitalism. However the film was
shortly thereafter pulled from Soviet screens as it was realized that in
America even the poorest of people could still afforded a car.
The Grapes of Wrath was very
well received by both audiences and critics. Its production value and acting
were highly praised as the picture became one of the most critically acclaimed
films of 1940. The feature would be up of seven Academy Awards, including best
picture, taking home the two for John Ford and Jane Darwell. Other award
circles would shower the film with high regards as well, including honors for
best picture from both The National Board of Review and the New York Film Circle.
History would mark how significant this feature was to the history of American
cinema as The American Film Institute would name it to their list of top 100
films in American cinema history both in 1998 (at #21) and 2007 (at #23) as
well as naming to list of top 100 most inspirational pictures of all time (at
#7), decades after it was released. The film also is preserved in the National
Film Registry being named to its first class of most significant films in
American cinema in 1989.
Despite the film version differed from the John Steinbeck novel at it altered, cleaned up, reshuffling the
plot points to create a happier, more inspirational ending, both the book and
this picture stand as significant pieces of American history. The Grapes of Wrath has come to be a
time capsule of America in the Dust Bowl during it most difficult economic
hardship of the 20th century. John Ford’s picture is still one of
the highest praised pictures ever made and stands as wonderful cinematic art.
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