John Ford's classic Grapes of Wrath (1940) screens in Madison's Tales from Planet Earth film fest

November 3, 8:53 PMMadison Classic Movies ExaminerSusan Z. Swan

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 Original movie poster, The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

John Ford’s movie dramatization of John Steinbeck’s 1939 Pulitzer-prize winning novel The Grapes of Wrath captures the human cost of environmental disaster. It is a fitting addition to UW-Madison’s 2009 showcase of environmental films, Tales from Planet Earth. The Grapes of Wrath is showing on Saturday, Nov 7 at 8.30 pm in the lecture hall of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 227 State St. (adjacent to the Overture Center for the Arts).

The Grapes of Wrath landmark film of social critique
Directed by John Ford and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck for 20th Century Fox, the Grapes of Wrath (1940) was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including best actor (Henry Fonda), best film editing, best picture, best sound recording, and best screenplay. Oscars went to Jane Darwell for best supporting actress and John Ford for best director. It also received best film and best director nods from the New York Film Critics Circle. Much of the credit for the stunning look of the film goes to the collaboration between John Ford and cinematographer, Gregg Toland, in their second collaboration of 1940 (the first was the visually arresting The Long Voyage Home). In 1989, The Grapes of Wrath was one of original 25 films named to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. It is in the top 25 of the American Film Institute’s top 100 American films and #7 on the AFI list of most inspiring movies.

With the economic slide of 2008 –2009, the Grapes of Wrath also looks remarkably contemporary, capturing the spirit of the front page news – and the lives of those being tossed off their land, out of their homes, and out of work today. It would be hard to find better timing for a showing of this classic film. It is as relevant today–and as biting a critique of the social order–as Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story (2009). Film fans looking for other Ford movies that are models of social critique might want to look at The Informer (1935), Stagecoach (1939,) and How Green Was My Valley (1941). A.O. Scott's 18 November 2008 video critique of The Grapes of Wrath for the New York Times also helps with putting the movie in a context.

Oklahoma Land Rush beginning of dreams

Emotionally, the Grapes of Wrath begins with the Oklahoma land rushes of 1889 to 1895 which drew thousands to claim land for towns and farming. Captured in such films as Tumbleweeds (Baggot & Hart, 1925), Three Bad Men ( Ford, 1926), and Cimarron (Ruggles, 1930), the land rushes brought ordinary folks to Oklahoma pursuing a dream of having something to call their own. Unfortunately, the combination of poor farming techniques, drought, and dust storms brought the region to the brink of disaster.

 Frame, Henry Fonda & Jane Darwell in Grapes of Wrath (1940)

The Dust Bowl forced the Okies into another Westward migration
With the Dust Bowl came those who profit off of those who have the least—the bankers and big business. Farmers and sharecroppers watched as their home were knocked to the ground by tractors, leaving them to make an “Exodus” to another Promised Land, California. Enter Tom Joad (Henry Fonda), just released from prison for manslaughter and hitchhiking home only to find it deserted. His family has gathered at his Uncle’s farm, ready to leave at dawn to California in search of work—work that turns out to be as short in supply in California as it was in Oklahoma.

Their desperate migration is a journey of pain, death, fear and hardship, with Ma Joad (Jane Darwell), trying to hold the family together. The migrant camps were not oases of respite along the way, but pits of hopelessness and danger. Tom and Casy (John Carradine), the ex-preacher traveling with them, become involved with strikers/activists in the camps: when one of their meetings is discovered and they are attacked, Casy is beaten to death by a guard whom Tom ends up killing trying to protect Casy.

Tom’s departure to protect his family, as he is now a hunted man, and to join the union activists to take a stand for social justice gives moviegoers the first of two famous monologues from the film. In comforting his mother, he says he won’t really be gone, he’ll be everywhere:

I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be ever'-where—wherever you can look. Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise, and livin' in the houses they build—I’ll be there, too.

As the family moves on without Tom, Ma gathers herself and the family together (in an ending that reminds one of the ending of Kirosawa’s Seven Samauri (1956) and its 1960 remake The Magnificent Seven). She comforts Pa that they don’t need to be afraid anymore, that she has realized that

Rich fellas come up an’ they die an’ their kids ain’t no good, an’ they die out. But we keep a-comin’. We’re the people that live. They can’t wipe us out. They can’t lick us. And we’ll go on forever, Pa…’cause…we’re the people.

The film being screened is 128 minutes long in 35 mm black and white. It is also available on DVD, either as part of a 6-disc 20th Century Fox "Ford at Fox Collection" released in 2007 or separately in a 2004 20th Century Fox Studio Classics series release.

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UW-Madison’s Tales from Planet Earth Environmental Film Festival
Co-sponsored by the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison and Working Films, an international nonprofit organization “linking non-fiction film with cutting-edge activism,” Tales from Planet Earth will show almost 50 films during the November 6 to 8 festival. The festival aims to celebrate “the power of film as a force of environmental change.” Films are clustered into 4 themes: Landscapes of Labor, Precious Resources, Strange Weather, and In the Company of Animals. Admission is free for all events on a first-come, first-served bases and no tickets are required. A complete schedule is available at TalesFromPlanetEarth.com.

 For more info: Interested in updates on the classic movie scene in Madison? Subscribe to my Examiner.com feed or follow me on Twitter @Cygnifier. If you are interested in World Film, please join me at the national edition of Examiner as the World Film Examiner.