Rated: Unrated
Starring: Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, et al.
Director: John Ford
Review
John Ford's beautiful, heartfelt drama about a close-knit
family of Welsh coal miners is one of the greatest films of Hollywood's
golden age--a gentle masterpiece that beat Citizen Kane in the Best
Picture race for the 1941 Academy Awards. The picture also won Oscars for
Best Director (Ford), Best Supporting Actor (Donald Crisp), Best Art
Direction, and Best Cinematography; all of those awards were richly
deserved, even if they came at the expense of Kane and Orson Welles. Based
on the novel by Richard Llewellyn, the film focuses its eventful story on
10-year-old Huw (Roddy McDowall), youngest of seven children to Mr. and
Mrs. Morgan (Donald Crisp, Sarah Allgood), a hardy couple who've seen the
best and worst of times in their South Wales mining town. They're facing
one of the worst times as Mr. Morgan refuses to join a miners union whose
members have begun a long-term strike. Family tensions grow and Huw must
learn many of life's harsher lessons under the tutelage of the local
preacher (Walter Pigeon), who has fallen in love with Huw's sister
(Maureen O'Hara). As various crises are confronted and devastating losses
endured, How Green Was My Valley unfolds as a rich, moving portrait of
family strength and integrity. It's also a nod to a simpler, more innocent
time--and to the preciousness of memory and the inevitable passage from
youth to adulthood. An all-time classic, not to be missed. --Jeff Shannon
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This movie is impeccably crafted, written, performed, and
directed. It's impossible not to be drawn in emotionally. Both HOW GREEN
and Ford's pervious film, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, are realistic depictions of
the effects of severe economic and social conditions upon a family. But
while GRAPES centers more on the social conditions, VALLEY focuses
primarily on the family itself. Indeed, it mourns the loss of family
unity. The legendary Irish-American Ford was known for his gruff, crusty
exterior, but pictures like this one show his sentimentality and his
belief in the basic values of human life.
HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY is about a large, close-knit
family, the Morgans, in a small Welsh mining town. The family is headed by
a firm father and a gentle, wise mother, and comprises six sons and one
daughter. The five grown sons are, like their father, coal miners, and it
is their hope that the sixth son, sensitive and intelligent Huw (Roddy
McDowall), will become a scholar. It is through Huw's eyes that the story
is told. He looks back as an older man and reflects on his family, his
valley, and its people.
He grows up in a time of change, watching in confusion as
a secure way of life is altered for the worse by mine owners who overwork
the mines and alienate the miners, leading his brothers to call for
unionism, a concept which his father abhors. This is the central decision
from which the other threads of this compelling story evolve, and the film
is ultimately a beautifully moving drama, one of the best films about
family ever made.
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