The Grapes of Wrath (1940) - film review

After serving a four-year stretch in prison for manslaughter, Tom Joad hitchhikes his way back to his home in Oklahoma.  To his surprise, the Joad farm is deserted – the family has decamped to Uncle John’s place nearby.  Tom learns that the Joads are just one of hundreds of families who have been evicted by landowners who, after repeated crop failures caused by dust storms, intend to use more efficient means of farming the land.   Hearing there is fruit-picking work in California, the Joad family set out on a 1000 mile journey to get there, in an old jalopy weighed down with all their possessions.  The journey is arduous and takes its toll: Grandpa and Grandma Joad die on the way.  When they reach California, the Joads’ optimism quickly evaporates.  Work is scarce but workers are plentiful, and the unscrupulous farm owners know how to use this to their advantage..

John Ford’s masterful adaptation of John Steinbeck’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Grapes of Wrath is one of the greatest films in American cinema, and an important historical record of what migrant workers suffered during the darkest days of the depression in the 1930s.  Whilst Ford is perhaps best known for the many great westerns he directed, The Grapes of Wrath is unquestionably his masterpiece, and a lovingly composed paean to that greatest institution of all, the family.   The film established Henry Fonda as one of Hollywood’s leading actors, and as the surly but likable Tom Joad he gives what is widely considered one of his very best screen performances.

The Grapes of Wrath was topical when it was made but it was also a daring film for Hollywood at the time.  The perceived leftwing bias of the novel worried producer Darryl F. Zanuck. He hired private investigators to check out Steinbeck’s account of the ill-treatment of migrant workers, to be sure he could fend off accusations of Communist sentiment.

One of the criticisms the film drew was that its subject was too grim for an audience who were still living through the depression.  In spite of this, the film was a commercial success and met with generally favourable reviews.  It received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Henry Fonda), and won two, for Best Director (John Ford) and Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Jane Darwell, playing the matriarchal Ma Joad).

What is perhaps most memorable about this film is the immediate visual impact of its setting.  The striking panoramic shots of the vast Mid-western landscapes convey a sense of scale and location which is quite rare in cinema for this era, and these repeatedly stress the puniness of the migrant workers who are pitted against the immense forces of nature and capitalism.

John Ford is almost unrivalled when it comes to using images and visual technique to tell the story and engage the viewer’s emotions.  And it is often the simplest shots that have the greatest emotional power and tell us most about the characters in the film – for example, the quiet little scene where Ma Joad is sifting through her few keepsakes on the eve of the family’s departure for what they think is the promised land.  Ford’s approach to film storytelling is very nearly that of a silent filmmaker, which could explain why his films have such a wide appeal and continue to deliver such an enormous impact.

In contrast to the almost unremitting bleakness of Steinbeck’s novel, this film adaptation has plenty of lighter moments and closes with a far more optimistic ending, with some inspiring speeches that suggest a brighter future is just over the horizon.   It’s precisely the kind of message a contemporary audience would have wanted to hear: no matter how tough things are, things will get better – just don’t lose sight of where you are going.

The film does have some gloomier passages, however.  The matter-of-fact deaths of Tom’s grandparents, the casual killing of Casey, the brutal way in which the Joads are abused by their employers.  The manner in which these sequences are underplayed somehow heightens their poignancy greatly, and makes the ordeal of the migrant workers almost unbearable to watch.  With its stark visual lyricism and simple, neo-documentary depiction of a human tragedy,  The Grapes of Wrath is unquestionably one of the finest social dramas ever made.

© James Travers 2008

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