Most films set during the Great Depression tend to focus on the criminals that were active at the time or just use the economic downturn as a background event for a fictional story (think King Kong). However, there is one major work, adapted from a book, that looks at the actual economic effects on the working class. John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath was a product of research he did for a series of articles on migrant workers in California during the Great Depression. He was struck by the plight of the migrants, their poverty, desperation, and struggle against limited jobs and exploitation. These migrants were perhaps the hardest hit people of the Depression, as just after the economic downturn the Dust Bowl, a series of dust storms, destroyed thousands of farms and livelihoods. Steinbeck decided to write the tale of the Joads, a tenant farmer family that, after being forced off their land by the company they work for, all pack into one overloaded car and head to California, where there is the promise of employment and thus food and dignity. Instead they find frustration and suffering.
The
book was a big success and remains a fixture of top American novels today. 20th
Century Fox immediately decided to adapt it to the big screen with none other
than John Ford at the helm. The resulting movie was released less than a year
after the novel’s publication. Thus Grapes
of Wrath the first case on my watchlist where the movie was released amidst
the same historical event it was covering, as thousands of migrant farmers were
still struggling in southern California (albeit with the worst of the Dust Bowl’s
effects having passed). As with the novel, the film is highly regarded and is
no stranger to greatest films lists.
The first half of the movie is very accurate to the novel. Thomas Joad (Henry Fonda), is a paroled prisoner who heads to his family’s farm in Oklahoma. He finds the farm abandoned and inhabited by one of the neighbors, Muley Graves. Using narration and flashback footage, we learn that the farmers, now unable to pay the landowners, are being evicted. In some cases the homes they grew up and lived in have been bulldozed. Tom finally finds his family and they head west to California.
The famous Joad family car
They
are initially optimistic, but run across a series of miserable, impoverished
migrant camps where many people die from malnutrition and disease. Promised
work amounts to nothing as there are too many applicants, and in some cases the
migrants get work, but are then quickly ejected once the work is over. There’s
one scene where a man scoffs at the Joads’ optimism, pointing out that flyers
advertising a need for a few hundred apple pickers but that there too many
migrants. Indeed there was, as an estimated 400,000 farmers that headed westward to
California, and there was massive, sometimes violent, competition between the
migrants (overall, up to 3.5 million people migrated thanks to the Dust Bowl).
The
movie doesn’t show the migrants fighting amongst themselves, though the Joads often
get mean looks when they show up at a camp. As in the novel, the antagonists
are the heads of the businesses and the authorities. The Joads are often given
the runaround, turned away when they follow instructions to get work, and see
the police working with big business to quash dissenting farmers, complainers,
and strikers.
This
would be a good moment to address the politics of the film. John Steinbeck was
certainly left-leaning and associated with far-left political groups (though he
notable supported the Vietnam War later on). The novel has some clear examples
of communists and similar types expressing what’s wrong with the American
economic system. 20th Century Fox was actually concerned about how
their film would look, so they cut down on the political monologues. In one
scene a group of characters say that most of the people noticing things aren’t
Reds and that this is about human decency, not some attempt to impose a
Communist system. Noticeably, most of the leftist politics were in the second
half of the novel, and it’s here that the movie diverges from the source
material.
One of the many bad camps the Joads end up in
The
movie has a much more optimistic ending, which is perhaps fitting because less
than two years after its release the still poverty-stricken migrants would find
more gainful employment thanks to World War II. Back to the film, the
government camp that most of the characters end up in for the last act is
presented as much nicer than the company camps, perhaps a bit of propaganda for
President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies. While the Joads have suffered
and lost a few members, there are places where they can actually rest and refit.
On the character front, the novel ends with Rose-of-Sharon, Tom Joad’s unusually named sister, delivering a stillborn baby. The remainder of the family then ends up at an abandoned barn when a flood takes their new home and their car. Rose-of-Sharon (in the movie very quietly played by Dorris Bowdon) finds a starving man and offers to let him drink her breast milk. This downer ending wasn’t going to cut it in Hollywood, so instead we get an inspiring scene where Tom Joad leaves with the declaration that he will travel the country fighting for workers’ rights. The film provides no specifics as to what this means, probably to avoid getting too political, but it was decided by producer Daryl Zanuck that instead of the revolutionary implications of Steinbeck’s novel, the story should highlight perseverance of the American.
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| Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) and Ma Joad (Jane Darwell) |
Before
my final thoughts, I should get into the characters. Tom Joad is wonderfully
played by Henry Fonda in one of his great early roles. He’s been to prison for
homicide (he claims it was self-defense), but he’s one of the nicest,
soft-spoken characters and is hardly impulsive. The other highlight is Ma Joad
(Jane Darwell), the moral center of the family who also becomes its rock when
her at first optimistic husband, Pa Joad, completely breaks down upon seeing
what conditions are like in California. Darwell won a supporting actress award
for her performance, and thanks to the changes from the novel she comes off
much more triumphantly.
Unfortunately,
we don’t get to see a lot of what she can do since, with limited screentime,
most of the Joad family is reduced to minor characters, sometimes bordering on
becoming extras. The grandparents do stand out at the beginning, but then die
off, and Pa Joad is sidelined by his despair. Tom’s brother Noah just
disappears in one scene (in the novel he says he’s going to leave because he
can’t stand it any more). The other major character is ex-preacher Jim Casy
(John Carradine), who tags along with the family to see what’s up in California.
He makes many observations and helps set Tom Joad on the path to becoming a
workers’ advocate.
I’m
not the biggest scholar on this historical event, but from what I’ve gathered
both the novel and the movie are mostly accurate describing what the uprooted
farmers faced. One can debate whether the government and business employers’
treatment of them was greedy exploitation or an unavoidable result of having
literally millions of people compete for limited jobs, but regardless many
people went through what the Joads experience.
So
is The Grapes of Wrath one of the
greatest films of all time? Well, it was near-perfect for a while, but it is
odd how undeveloped some of the Joads are, with one character literally just vanishin. Also, the ending where Tom plans to
go off and become a champion for workers’ rights smacks of Hays Code intervention.
I’m okay with it, but it could have come off as a little more natural.
Otherwise this is a great film with excellent performances, some good messages
about human dignity, and great cinematography employing black-and-white shadow
visuals. It was refreshing to take a break from war and crime films, and also refreshing to see people deal with the Depression without cheering on bank robbers like in the last two movies I watched.
Rating:
8/10
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