This is an extremely sentimental and worthwhile film that fans of Hollywood's Golden Age should see at least once. While I don't think it's director John Ford's best film (I preferred HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, THE QUIET MAN and FORT APACHE),it is superb and well-crafted. Some of the acting (in particular Jane Darwell as "Ma") was terrific and very realistic, while occasionally it was a bit over the top (John Carradine as "the Preacher"). And the story itself was excellent and well-constructed--making an emotional and heart-felt appeal for justice and a more Socialist nation in response to the poverty of the Great Depression. You can't help but be sucked into the pitiful yet somehow hopeful lives of the Joad family. While some of the facts were definitely exaggerated in order to make this point (making it a one-dimensional fight between good and evil),the overall message of upheaval and loss was important and potent.

I am a history teacher and so naturally I gravitate to films like THE GRAPES OF WRATH. It is an amazingly powerful film that is extremely touching and lovingly made--though historically, some of the film is pretty much fiction. While most web sites I checked praised the book, one presents a thoughtful and documented analysis of the actual Okie experience and compares it to the book and movie--coming up with many ways in which THE GRAPES OF WRATH isn't a totally accurate portrait of the times. Some examples cited were the general success the "Okies" had when they arrived in California, that the exodus to California from most of America PRE-DATED the Dust Bowl years and the Dust Bowl itself had very little actual impact on Oklahoma (though it DID affect Kansas and some other states considerably). This isn't to say that the film is completely fiction or it was a bad book or that Steinbeck was a Communist, but that Steinbeck wasn't always careful in his research and seemed to stretch facts to make his social and political statement. See for yourself--it makes interesting reading at: http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/jun02/steinbeck.htm

Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) hitchhikes back to his family's farm in Oklahoma after getting released from prison. He finds his family gone after the landowner kicked out all the small farmers moving in the bulldozers and tractors. He and ex-preacher Jim Casy (John Carradine) go to his uncle John's place. The Joad family decides to travel to California. It's a long arduous journey.

This John Ford epic is an American classic. It has some funny moments, tough social injustices and loads of heart-breaking stories. Ford delivers some beautiful destitution. It is more the human story that is so powerful. Henry Fonda does a great everyman which allows the audience to feel for the family right away.

John Ford's film of John Steinbeck's novel has deservedly a classic film mirroring the views of both men and the times the book was written and filmed. Ford won his second Oscar for Best Director and Jane Darwell was the Best Supporting Actress of 1940.

For most of America the Depression started with the stock market crash of 1929. But for the farmers it really began at the end of World War I. Those were good years for agriculture, the war in Europe was a boom for agriculture. But when farm prices dropped after the Armistice, a whole lot of family farms went belly up. Lots of people left the farms for the big city and industry jobs. The Depression years unhappily coincided with some of the worst drought ever seen in America.

This is what many families like the Joads were facing in 1939 when the book was written. The banks had foreclosed on land that had withered to dust in any event. Folks like the Joads picked up and moved elsewhere, like California on a rumor of prosperity and jobs.

America was still changing from an agricultural to an industrial society back then. That causes a lot of trouble for people unskilled in any industrial job training. As a country we're going through something similar today in many areas. We're moving from an industrial to an information based economy. Industry jobs are being lost to other nations and older and poorer workers are suffering for it. It's progress I guess, but it takes its toll.

Some factory worker who has lost his job for any number of reasons can identify to some degree with the Joads, especially if they've lost a home they owned. For the Joads it was worse because they made their living off the land for many generations, identifying with it in a way that industrial workers could not.

Henry Fonda got his first Oscar nomination for Tom Joad. To get the part which he knew he was so right for, he signed a studio contract with 20th Century Fox. That caused him many problems later on, but those are stories for another film review.

Tom Joad is a midwest country kid, a whole lot like Fonda himself. Part of the story of The Grapes of Wrath is Tom himself trying to figure out why these economic forces are crushing him and his family and the way of life he's known. In the end when he leaves the Joad family and hits the open road, he's not got all the answers, but he's asking the questions. Tom hasn't figured it out, but a lot of people with many letters after their names haven't either. He only knows that he's got to get in the fight for economic justice.

Jane Darwell was in films from the earliest silent films to Mary Poppins in 1965. This became her career part and the mother role of all time. She's what holds the Joad family together in good times and bad. That's what moms do and get little recognition for it. Except in this case by the Motion Picture Academy.

John Carradine has his career part in this also. Another John Ford favorite, Carradine plays Casy the defrocked preacher who as he tells it disgraced himself with a female parishioner. After that preaching the gospel didn't seem quite right. When Fonda meets Carradine after Fonda's been released from prison, Carradine is asking a lot of questions about what is man's place in the metaphysical scheme of things. He's developing what we would now call situational ethics. Carradine's questions are on a higher plane, but he certainly inspires Fonda to ask for some answers himself.

The Grapes of Wrath illustrates that at least government can give first aid in a crisis. After being in privately run agricultural camps where they're treated like less than dirt, the Joads happen upon a camp run by the Department of Agriculture where at least they're treated like humans. As it turns out, the Secretary of Agriculture was one Henry A. Wallace who was running for Vice President that year with Franklin D. Roosevelt. I'll bet any number of people saw The Grapes of Wrath and saw a message of support for FDR and the New Deal.

Given some of the problems of the American economy today, The Grapes of Wrath though it appears dated isn't really all that much a relic of our past. It's both a timeless book and a timeless classic film.