The Grapes of Wrath

Rating:
Summary: Strong Points of the Book Lost in Making the Movie
Review: Frankly I was disappointed. The book is a literary masterpiece. The movie was a pale summary of the book, but with a different ending. I will not give away the plot, but it is very different. For the most part the movie attempts to follow the highlights and the main theme of the book. Also the movie chronologically duplicates the book up to a point near the book's end. But then the movie ends abruptly before the end of the book.

The movie seems rushed compared to the slow paced and detailed writing of Steinbeck. The book is long and has many details. Steinbeck is a master writer filling in every small detail. In summary, the book is a classic and the movie is not. The movie seems rushed to try and include as many scenes as possible from the book and stuff them into a 129 minute movie, but in doing so just skims the surface of the plot.

One thing that struck me in reading the book and then watching the DVD was that the movie version followed the book only so far, about 90% of the way through the book, then it injected a Hollywood ending not found in the book. It is as if the movie producer and director decided that the public was not ready for the writer's ending. Also the book is very detailed and depressing. The book has a sense of foreboding that things might just get worse and worse, which they do. Also there is struggle for day to day survival that does not translate well into the movie. The Joads fight for each meal and each dollar and that struggle is lost in the movie. Finally, in the book the other characters, especially the other Joad children are much more complicated characters with a lot more plot, but that is trimmed in the movie to make Henry Fonda's character Tom the central focus of the movie.

Henry Fonda is of course outstanding as Tom Joad, but the rest of the players gave weak performances. So I thought the movie was interesting because it gave some life to the book, but the book is five stars and the movie just so so. It has the story approximately reproduced - to a point - but it does not measure up to the book and stops before the end of the book.

Read the book.


Rating:
Summary: Classis Film
Review: This is one of the few movies where the movie is just about as good as the book. If it's not as good, it's at least close. This was Henry Fonda's first starring role, and he does an incredbile job as Tom Joad. Since seeing the movie, I can't read the book without hearing his voice when Tom speaks.

If you aren't familiar with the story, it's the story of the Joad family. During the Great Depression, these people were forced off their farm in Oklahoma by a combination of dust storms and bankers. They travel west, hoping for a better life in California, but run into more trouble when they get out to California. Tom Joad fights injustices against the little guy trying to earn an honest living.

Watch the movie, or read the book. You can't go wrong either way.

Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable film !
Review: Only the genius of John Ford and the merciless pen of Steinbeck could build such powerful movie . In these hard times when the WW2 covered the whole environment and the people went to movies to get fun , Ford showed this dark nightmare about the desillusion of a crowd of hopeless people literally exiled when they are ejected from their original lands and persuaded to live in California where best times are yet to come .
This realist portrait , sober and moderate adaptation of the novel of John Steinbeck presents a sinister chronology of misery so painful and bitter as any other one in the American cinema . The landscape is behind of all these afflictions of the Joad and Ford carries the dusty highways and the unlimited horizons of such intensity that the loaded truck appears as a Noah Ark which takes to one or two of each generation far from a desert beated by the wind . The darkness brings uncertainity and fear . But with this premise Ford will turn the destiny and will provide of optimist hope for the new and promised land .
Without any doubt , this film is one of the merciless and powerful films which deals with such theme .
Far from North America , the echoes of the new ideologies shocked the world ; the utopic projects inflamed the imagination of famous writers and Steinbeck was one of them , infected for those old fashioned moods . In the Eastern World Shostakovich and Boris Pasternak ; in Europe Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill , and in America John Dos Passos and Sinclair Lewis who had shocked the literary world with his unforgettable work : Babbit .
Those were hard days , and the shadows of the war foretold dark large threatening clouds.
The Manhattan Project was in full development and Walt Disney handseled Fantasy.
John Ford made a curious twist in his filmography ; specially when he had thrown The stagecoach , a mythical film about the emblematic mythology of the American cinema as the Western meant. Nevertheless this picture was awarded with all the possible honors and somehow was the initial jump for a young actor as Henry Fonda who would become in one the antihero archetype along two decades in films such The Ox bow incident , 12 angry men , The wrong man .
Fundamental issue in the early forties .
Magistral transfer on DVD .


Rating:
Summary: Reality: Cutting to the Bone.
Review: "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940) is an extraordinary movie. It shows a stark historical period with unwavering frankness.
Is the story of an impoverished Oklahoma family forced to abandon their land & home and start a fateful journey to California, the new Promised Land.
They are not the only ones. An ecological disaster, in the middle of the Great Depression, affects them and their neighbors forcing them into exile & desperation.
The key character is Tom Joad (a very young & expressive Henry Fonda), a paroled convict, that goes back home to find his house deserted & family gone.
A dispossessed neighbor updates him on what's going on and tells where his family is.
They start their odyssey on a shattered truck crossing Oklahoma, Arizona & New Mexico along the famous 66th Highway. In each stop they are harassed or run out by police or frightened town people. But they also receive the solidarity of teamsters, a bar tender & a friendly cop.
Finally they arrive to California just to find out that abuse, ill payment & injustice are awaiting them.

The film making is outstanding. Black & white pictures are really beautiful from the opening scene, showing Fonda walking in a deserted highway, to the last closing one. Gregg Toland (the same as for "Citizen Kane") shows shrewd hand and great composition taste.
John Houston deservedly earned Best Director Oscar for this film. He uses expressionist techniques to underline some griping scenes as the encounter between Tom Joad, Casy and Muley in the abandoned Joad's home. There is no doubt in my mind that Italian neo-realist directors found a well of inspiration in this film.
A final mention for the anthological performance of Jane Darwell as Tom's Mother, she wined that year's Oscar deservedly.
A true Classic film to enjoy!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.