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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
THE GRAPES OF WRATH
The 1940 film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel opens on an empty intersection, out of which
emerges a scrawny figure. He is Tom Joad (Fonda), a convict out on parole,
attempting to get his life back together in 1930s Oklahoma, a process complicated by the Dust
Bowl drought, as well as the Joad family's being driven out from their land as a result a foreclosure.
So begins the clan's journey as migrant workers to a better life in California, where they endure the
abject conditions and suffering that were part of the Okie transient camp experience at the peak
of the Great Depression.
John Ford directs the film crisply, using wide shots to economically encapsulate the mood and tone of
Steinbeck's epic writing style. Human figures walk across the screen against a vast backdrop of
clouds in the sky - a signature shot of Ford's. Steinbeck's prose lends itself, in some instances,
quite well to Ford's form of storytelling. There is a tension present in the novel between the
individual's needs and his or her obligation to society that emerges as a theme throughout Ford's
oeuvre. The film is virtuosic in the way that it presents the dilemma of the choices the characters
must make, and in its demonstration that their systemic economic problems must be responded to
with a combination of self-interest and social empathy.
At some points, though, Ford's melodramatic film techniques become jarring. For example,
despite the film's cinematography being hailed as documentary-like in its realism, director of
photography Toland (who also did 1941's Citizen Kane) gives it a calculated sheen,
particularly in the patterning of light and shadow. The performances, while strong, at certain
points hit an overly broad comic note, due to the actors' delivery of lines; while sometimes
devastatingly emotional, they often go for laughs, rather than talking in the knowingly laconic
style of Steinbeck's writing. The emotional depth of Fonda and Jane Darwell (as Ma Joad) more than
compensate for the film's flaws, though. When Tom vows to be spiritually present whenever
oppression occurs, it is a tribute to Fonda whether Tom says this out of personal vigilantism
or human solidarity, leaving the question open.
DVD Extras: The restoration comparison will be of note to film buffs, since it
demonstrates the difference between not only the original film transfer and restoration, but
between the film and digital video restoration processes as well. However, the differences might
have been more noticeable had identical images been shown side by side rather than splitting the
screen into two halves.
The A&E bio on producer Zanuck is entertaining and breezily informative, detailing
the more creative role of the executive in the Hollywood studio system. Besides providing
riveting personal gossip, it goes into how Zanuck was the first filmmaker to actually be in charge
of a studio, and how he founded 20th Century Fox, balancing its slate of films, with both
commercial fare, and more personal "social-problem" projects, such as The Grapes of
Wrath.
The audio commentary is also insightful, with scholars McBride and Shillinglaw comparing
Steinbeck's book and its film adaptation in terms of their different structures and emphases. One
similarity they find, though, is in the manner the film, like the book, moves from purely
individualistic concerns to more communal ones - a tension that goes back-and-forth, since, as
McBride remarks, Ford himself adhered to a mixture of liberalism and conservatism. This is
reflected in the film's ambivalent conclusion: the last scene with Ma Joad was, after all, added by
Zanuck in order to have the film end on a more positive note than not only the book, but also
Ford's original ending. Reymond Levy
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