"GRAPES OF WRATH" UNSTOPPABLE VINTAGE

          Henry Fonda's career-defining role as Tom Joad, star of literary legend John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, as interpreted by cinematic legend John Ford.
          The 1940 two-time Oscar-winning masterpiece from the director most associated with Westerns is fantastically shot in black and white showing the most beautiful kind of ugly.
          At the start of the story Tom Joad returns to his folks' house after a four-year stint in the pen for homicide. However, in that time everything has changed. Weather conditions and bank regulations forcing the Dustbowl Migration, the Joad family has pulled up old roots in Oklahoma to start life over in California with the promise of picking that sweet bringer of wine, the grape.
          Featuring Jane Darwell in her Oscar-winning performance as the sturdy, decent, and enduring matriarch, Ma Joad. (Years later she plays the Bird Woman in Mary Poppins.) Also co-starring John Carradine as the preacher who says, "Maybe there ain't no sin and there ain't no justice, it's just what people does."
          The language alone is enough to merit viewing. When Fonda gets a ride hitch-hiking, he says he'd a walked 'er but his dogs were pooped-out. Later, regarding the homicide, he says he knocked the other guy's head "plum to squash." And of Ma, Tom admits, "I nearly seen her beat a peddler to death with a live chicken."
          An impactful theme of the film: You can't trust authority when it swings a stick. (But a live chicken works fine.) This refers specifically to the abuses done to migrant workers. As is noted in the film, if someone can "get a fight goin', they can call in the cops, say things ain't orderly."
          Another important aspect of the film is the way it shows how government can be used by the people, and with genuine decency. Government housing from the Department of Agriculture, for example.
          One thing about the Joads, they're tough. They have nothing, but still help others when they can. And when their overpacked truck gets a flat, the kids just laugh. The Joads get a lot out of life with what little they've got, and they're a better kind of people than the ones who try to take advantage of them.
          The Grapes of Wrath is largely about the rich creating and abusing the poor, but it's also about people being human and decent.
          As pertinent now as it was when released, if not more so, The Grapes of Wrath is one of the few movies that belongs to everyone, and should be seen by all.
          Freely available online.


THE GRAPES OF WRATH
Starring Henry Fonda,
Jane Darwell,
John Carradine,
Charley Grapewin,
Russell Simpson,
Dorris Bowdon
Directed by John Ford
Written by Nunnally Johnson
Based on the novel by John Steinbeck
Runtime 129 minutes


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and 
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE