The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Doris Bowdon, Jane Darwell and Henry Fonda

'The Grapes of Wrath' is a dramatic film made in 1940, directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine and Russell Simpson. It was based on John Steinbeck's 1939 novel of the same name, the title of which comes from the hymn, "Battle Hymn of the Republic", by Julia Ward Howe.

Although unconventional the movie is without doubt a classic. It is one of the few movies of the time that dealt with the national disaster that was the Great Depression, a subject that Hollywood in general tried to avoid, and it contains memorable performances from Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell in particular. It was nominated for a total of seven Academy Awards, winning two, for Best Director (John Ford) and Best Supporting Actress (Jane Darwell). On the American Film Institute's list of top 100 Movies it is ranked at number 23.

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The plot of the movie revolves around one representative sharecropping family, the Joads, evicted from their homestead by a combination of natural forces - harsh droughts - and cruel human intervention - callous city bankers. Their adventures and appalling treatment along Route 66 and on their arrival are recounted.

The movie is harsh and ruthless in the way it bleakly depicts the cruel treatment of the family on their long journey and we are left in no doubt that the Joads are not an isloated case but typical of the thousands of families uprooted and forced to move west to California.

The great strength of the movie lies in the gradually increasing determination and courage of each family member, particularly the son, Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) and the mother (Jane Darnell) as they refuse to be cowed.

The movie does make one significant departure from the Steinbeck novel. In the book the Joads' situation gradually gets worse until they are reduced to starvation wages. In the film the family finds the government camp much later on than in the book. It was a small but important change and enabled what had been a tragic film to end on an upbeat note, marked by Ma Joad's final speech: 'We're the people...We'll go on forever.'

Ford made the inspired choice of cameraman in Greg Toland who was to achieve fame the following year for his work on 'Citizen Kane'. He used deep-focus photography and low-key lighting to emphasise shadows and darkness, techniques that would inspire film noir. He used the style of the famous photographs of the government-employed Farm Security Administration to capture a documentary feel to the tragic story. This can be best seen in a sequence where the Joads drive into a squatters camp. The actors are without the usual artifices of makeup or diffusion and come across as hard, dirty Dust Bowlers.

The movie was a great success critically and also commercially, becoming one of Fox's biggest earners of 1940.

It is John Ford's great achievement that he can make such ugly and traumatic subject matter, still fresh in the minds of the moviegoing public, so entertaining. He dealt sensitively with the plight of the migrant families whilst not diluting the brutality of their treatment by their fellow countrymen.and did not stint on showing the brutality and callousness of some of their fellow Americans. His movie is a masterpiece, proof that the moving image can be a document of social change as well as a beautiful and engrossing work of art.