The Grapes of Wrath

DVD, The Grapes of Wrath (1940) film

Simple, yet profound. I think that's the best way to sum up this film. It's a story of such troubles and hardship and sadness, but in all the troubles it shows the family sticking together. They go through so much badness, no one wants them around, they're exploited, they live in squalor, always hungry. But a lot of the time they seem more happy than they have a right to be, especially the children who experience it as one long adventure because they don't know anything else.

When so much depression happens, it is such a relief to come to the civilised camp, fronted by a kind of miniature Roosevelt figure. At last there is a place to live, not fenced in and hungry, but free and with amenities. But for Tom Joad, his sins, forced into the guilt even though he was, catch up with him. He has killed, and can never rest. But he still has grand ideas, that even he doesn't understand. Perhaps that was what the American Dream came from. For, as bad as these events are, they are a picture of history.

I only saw this film once before. It would have been back in 1998, I believe, for GCSE History, but I always hoped to see it again. Not because it's a fun film and something that you can enjoy, but more because it's a hard story, based in fact, and it was fascinating. I didn't remember much from it, since a decade had passed, and there isn't much to distinguish one part of the story from the next - it's mostly one long, depressing journey. I did remember the time when they had to leave, all bundled on a truck like that.

It's aged well, helped immensely by John Ford's legendary direction. It may be black and white, but this seems right for such a tale of faded life. And there are some nice shots. But it's the speeches, the observations on human life that make it starkly as much about the modern world as about the American dust bowl. Life, death, and survival in between. That's what it's all about.

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