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.
