The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath_360P

The movie itself is generally recognized as about as good (or great) as you can get, especially considering that it was shot in 33 days. But it often gets nailed for two scenes, one absent from the film, the other changed drastically. No Rosasharn is not seen in the film nursing the dying old man from her swollen breast. If the scene had been shot in 1939 (or even suggested), the movie would never have been released. The second problem often pointed out is that the ending is too upbeat, what with Ma Joad's carrying on about how men live their lives in jerks while women flow along like Anna Livia Plurabelle, and "we're the people that live." That last scene was written by Zanuck and was almost essential to a successful film in the late 1930s. Of course tragedies had been filmed for years, but ordinarily the tragic hero or heroine had earned his or her fate. Both audiences and authorities would have waxed wroth seeing an honest close-knit family crushed by an American economy that was totally inimical to their welfare. We need to look at art in the context of its time. From the Marxist perspective that Steinbeck used in writing the novel, Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) is the protagonist but the two most important characters are Ma Joad (Jane Darwell) and Casey the Preacher (John Carradine). Ma represents what Marx called "false consciousness," the tendency to attribute our misery to our own flaws, to bad luck, or God's will. Ma Joad's solution is retrograde -- to hold the "fambly" together. Casey, on the other hand, discovers "class consciousness." It's not our fault. The flaw is systemic, and the solution lies in correcting the inequities in the system. Our allegiance has to transcend groups like the family and embrace all the exploited workers. The film endorses not Marx's revolution but a milder form of socialism -- the government-run labor camp with its democratic "sanitary units", and the emerging union movement with its collective bargaining. Steinbeck's polemic is more acid. The novel has a reference to the extremely wealthy William Randolph Hearst (better known as Charles Foster Kane) who is described as have "a mean face and a mouth like a a**hole." There aren't many references to communism either in the novel or the film, just a few remarks about "Who is these Reds, anyways?" Still pretty bold stuff for the 1930s with the public in one of its periodic Bolshevik scares! No need for anxiety, though. By the late 1930s the Great Depression was easing up, and World War II was about to bring it to an end. Bakersfield now looks as if Tom Joad had made a successful escape and decided to open a chain of organic food stores. This is a marvelous film. To single out just one shot, note when the Joads drive through the first starving Hooverville. The camera is mounted on the front of the old truck and travels slowly, without any cuts or dialog, through groups of wary, singularly ratty looking people, men and women, young and old, some resembling photos of criminals from old Police Gazettes, who "don't look none too prosperous." If nothing else, the film is a valuable corrective to the current view that people are poor because they're lazy. How did one third of a nation become so terribly lazy in the years following the 1929 stock market crash?

Do I have your attention? Okay: Go out and watch this movie immediately because to not do so is, well, it's un-American. John Ford, with this nifty little film, made the greatest argument for populist/socialist politics in cinematic history. This movie understands the Depression and the Dust Bowl and the poor and the hungry and the starving and all those people that the sign at Ellis Island (or is it at the Statue of Liberty?) says that we'll take on and help. It understands those people better than anyone or anything else I know. Steinbeck's novel helps this movie get to where it needs to be, but, let's be honest, the Grapes of Wrath is all John Ford. The sweeping vistas, the excellent editing and pacing, and the acting are of the highest caliber, as befits a John Ford film. I'm amazed every time I see this movie just how moving it is without straying into trite sentimentality. Tom Joad's speech at the end always makes me cry--his chilly delivery of the word homicide at the beginning continues to give me a prickly spine. Fonda was a great actor, and he is certainly at the top of his game here. Without him, interestingly, the film would have probably floundered. No one else could have possibly played Tom Joad; no one would have that charm and charisma and, most importantly, that voice. The rest of the cast is amazing, don't misunderstand, but Henry Fonda is Henry Fonda--an actor unto himself. There is no one like him and never will there be; he is the single most watchable actor of all time. And this isn't even my favorite John Ford movie! Nevertheless, it's a great film with a great message. Call me a pinko (it's been done before), but what's superb about this movie is its humanism. Yeah, the ideology promotes a type of socialism (ahem, I mean, let's not forget that that is basically what the New Deal was and if you think that system was a bad idea, then fine), but, really, the movie is about caring for people who don't have the resources to care for themselves. Grapes of Wrath is not a scathing indictment of anyone; it's a simple portrait of a family's struggles to overcome the Depression. It's uplifting and shows a real feeling for the downtrodden, and that's more than you can say about most American films that intend to deal with the poor and hungry.

Following the opening credits, after Henry Fonda's Tom Joad hitches a ride with a reluctant, narrow-minded truck driver, the vehicle heads off, with gears sounding like a faintly muted air raid siren... And for Tom, back in his hometown Oklahoma after a seven-year prison sentence, this could have been the first sign of an extremely hard road ahead, where almost no one will be on his (or his family's) side... And so, upon trudging the rudimentary path, our rigid hero quickly stumbles upon one of the more colorful characters, a fallen yet thoroughly enlightened preacher named Casy, played by John Carradine, who offers Tom, nearly a decade shy of local knowledge, sporadic words of wisdom... But the really important lowdown occurs when a paranoid, rambling hermit... holed up in the Joad's abandoned shanty... tells (through flashbacks) how big business has driven the workers off their land: and we soon learn the only beacon light resides in California. Visually, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, based on one of John Steinbeck's most famous novels, is a cinematic masterpiece with beautiful sets, in-house skylines and handsome B&W Gregg Toland cinematography, complimenting John Ford's scant direction... But the pivotal road trip, as the entire Joad family clings to the dilapidated truck like loose pins on a grungy cushion, is such a perpetual downer you'll be searching for a silver lining, or even one that's dark gray. The most potentially intriguing scenes occur when, in a California work camp run like a prison, Tom's curiosity is peaked and, after venturing off, he learns about a small band of strikers, has a violent run-in with the authorities, and is forced to hide out. Eventually, Tom and his family must escape... which is as suspenseful as things get... And soon enough the Joads find utopia! Once the "Okie" clan acquires solace in a village run by the Department of Agriculture (i.e. The Government), where each member pulls his own weight (although there's not much work to be done other than chores within the camp), the political agenda is blatantly unveiled, only this movie, made in 1940, was one of the first of its kind and credit must be given for that alone... But alas, with Henry Fonda's stark realism and Carradine's offbeat charm aside, the performances seem right out of a stage play (especially the overrated Oscar winning role) while the unceasing, melodramatic tragedy is so deliberately overboard, it's difficult to find any real story there at all.

The Grapes of Wrath is the story of the Joad family, who are run off of their land in Oklahoma because of drought and poverty. I think that one of the most striking elements of this movie is the black and white cinematography. Obviously, there wasn't a lot of variation on this particular subject in 1940, but especially today, the lack of color enhances the feelings of poverty and desperation and emptiness due to the family's loss of their home. In this way, because it would not be nearly as noticeable in 1940 as it is today, this time-enhanced effect of the black and white film stock has allowed for the film's impact to actually grow with time. Henry Fonda plays the part of Tom Joad, a young member of the family who is released from prison at the beginning of the film, only to find that his family has been driven from their home and is staying at his uncle's house until they can figure out what to do about their sudden homelessness. It is by pure coincidence that Tom was released early on good behavior, otherwise he may very well never have seen his family again. He finds them in a state of near desperation, as they begin more and more to realize the predicament that they are in. Their trek across half of the country, on their way to California to assume jobs that they've heard about, provides for a substantial portion of the plot and is extremely well-structured. The family encounters every hardship imaginable on this journey, from family members dying to their struggle to feed themselves to their rickety old truck constantly breaking down. They run into disillusioned people who claim that they've been to California and there are really no jobs there, at least not nearly as many as there are people going to look for them. They are periodically and derogatorily referred to as `Okies,' a term which places them in a broad category of poor folks driven from there homes in middle America who are traveling to the coast to get jobs that aren't there. There is so much doubt and hardship presented that it is never really certain whether they really will find jobs. The audience is never able to assume a happy ending, because there is so much contrary foreshadowing throughout the film. The struggles do not abate once the family reaches California and takes up shaky residence in residential areas that would be more accurately referred to as shanty towns, and the rest of the film is dominated by the family's efforts to survive in a new and unfamiliar place, while working for wages that are barely sufficient to prevent starvation. Ma Joad spends the majority of the film stressing the importance of keeping the family together, seeing it as the only thing that they really had left, but this is eventually set aside in favor of each member of the family not only surviving but also flourishing, which provides for one of the many powerful messages that the film delivers. The Grapes of Wrath is not exactly an edge of your seat film, but it is a shockingly realistic portrayal of the suffering that so many people and families experienced during the Great Depression. The performances are flawless, and the experience is not only powerful and moving but also educational. It's no secret that most people do not watch movies to learn, but there comes a point, at least once in a great while, when a person should watch a film that requires a little mental thought processing, and in such cases, The Grapes of Wrath is an excellent choice.

I first saw this in the early 90s. Revisited it recently with my kids. Surprisingly my kids enjoyed this movie tremendously. It is a simple but very powerful movie with top notch characters n mesmerizing performances. The three characters, Tom, Casy n Ma left an astounding effect on me when I was a kid. Till today I like these three characters a lot. The director succeeded in showing the plight of the poor farmers n migrant workers. Human survival is dependent upon the banding together of humans to find strength in group unity and action.

This classic adaptation of "The Grapes of Wrath" features a fine cast as well as a skillful production headed by director John Ford. Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell are well-remembered for their roles, which are among the defining roles in their careers. The only limitations that it has come from the original novel, with its heartfelt but sometimes contrived story. Besides Fonda and Darwell, the supporting cast features plenty of good supporting players, including Charley Grapewin and John Carradine. All of them make their characters come alive believably. They also fit together well and complement one another's performances, which accentuates the themes involved in the struggles of the Joad family. For all that the Steinbeck novel is so revered, and for all that his story is an often compelling depiction of its characters, with whom many in the era could identify, it would have been better if it had not been so heavy-handed. Even given that the times were bad, more balance in the characters outside of the family, and in the Joads' experiences, would have made it an even better story. Certainly, this is barely even noticeable when compared with the stories in many present-day movies and novels, which often dispense with any attempts at plausibility. And that does not stop this adaptation from being a worthwhile and often moving film. Ford clearly appreciated the potential in the material, and he and the cast work together to make each character count, and to give meaning to each scene.

"The Grapes of Wrath" was a huge novel so it only made sense to turn it into a feature motion picture. The result is one of the greatest films ever produced. Oscar-nominee Henry Fonda, his mother Jane Darwell (Oscar-winning) and their family have had it in the Dust Bowl. Thus they decide to leave the midwest of our nation's Great Depression and go to California. The film is an intensely dramatic affair that is first-rate in all cinematic departments. John Ford won his second Best Director Oscar with this movie and the landscape of the late-1920s and early-1930s has never been captured more fully. Excellent film-making. 5 stars out of 5.

Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) has recently been released from prison and returns to his family home to discover that his family have been kicked off their land as it has been bought out by greedy developers. Joad and his family head to California to start a new life, but this journey proves to have more hazards and pitfalls than they could ever have anticipated. The Grapes Of Wrath is a film adaptation based on the John Steinbeck novel. I'll start by saying that I haven't read the book, but I can safely say that the 'cinematic' version of the book fell well below my expectations.... For starters the film takes an immensely long time to get going (one could actually argue as to whether it ever gets going). The problem is that the first half is awfully slow and dull with very little happening to drive the narrative forward. To me, The Grapes Of The Wrath came across as a character-driven film but when the film is filled with uninteresting and poorly developed characters it became very hard for me to remain interested or give a damn about anything that happens to them on their journey to California. The second half of the film is slightly better (in the sense that it has a bit more urgency about it). Although the better pacing made the second half more tolerable than the first half I still felt that the whole film had a superficial feel to it - we get to see glimpses of the suffering and pain that has been bestowed upon the family, but it's never really examined in much depth and this resulted in a film that just never seemed to take advantage of all of its potential. The cast are all OK and whilst Fonda wasn't particularly brilliant here I appreciated that he tried to give the film some emotional weight (which again probably would have worked better if both the narrative and character dynamics had been stronger and more interesting). So yes I didn't like this film but will say that this was more down to the slow-paced first half, poor characterisation and the missed potential in fleshing the story out and making it more interesting.

I hesitated before writing this, because I really didn't much like this movie, and I assumed at first that it was because I find its politics so appalling. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that even cinematically, I found it compelling only on a purely visual level (Ford's movies are always at least visually compelling). I think Ford spent so much effort trying to make his characters into symbols that he failed to make them people. At no point did I care whether the Joads made it to California; the deaths of the old folks made no impression on me. The villainy of the local cops and those who ran the work camps was much mitigated by its obvious artifice. The only emotion any of these people inspired in me was a deep desire to punch that self-righteous jerk Tom Joad right in the mouth--which I don't think was what Ford was going for. I have to admit that I did like John Carradine, but I always like John Carradine. And when the Joads drove into that federal government work camp, and it was like arriving in heaven with an obvious FDR lookalike (sans wheelchair, of course) as God, I completely lost it. That was about the unintentionally funniest thing I've ever seen in a classic film. Am I just too cynical?