Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. How Green Was My Valley is the fourteenth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. The early track record of the Academy in awarding its Best Picture prize could reasonably be called spotty but the list of those that directed the first few winners of the Oscars’ second decade are rather impressive. How Green Was My Valley sees John Ford follow in the footsteps of Capra, Fleming and Hitchcock, an illustrious group. It may not be the most acclaimed product of the American filmmaker’s career but it is a fascinating look at a community in flux. Adapted from a bestselling novel of the same name by British author Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley tells the tale of life in a small Welsh mining village as seen through the eyes of young Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall.) Across his formative years Huw sees how the tenor of his valley changes when the coal miners go on strike and the ideological lines that drawn between one time friends and family members. His family is at the center of these divides, particularly his union involved brothers and his well-intentioned but old fashioned father (Donald Crisp.) Further tensions ensue when his sister Angharad (Maureen O’Hara) falls for the new town preacher, Mr Gruffydd (Walter Pigeon.) Narrated by Irving Pichel as an older Huw some fifty years after the events of the film, much changes in Huw’s recollection of his childhood home. He recalls his valley as peaceful and harmonious until cold realities like labor strife and poverty tore the town apart. In reality Huw was simply growing up, seeing the darker sides of life that were not exposed to him as a small boy. Is any place ever as simple and idyllic as it was in the mind of a child? How Green Was My Valley may be more well known in some circles as the film that bested Citizen Kane in the Best Picture race after tremendous pressure was applied by William Randolph Hearst. That framing is a bit discrediting to the what Ford accomplished with this film, even if Citizen Kane has held up better over the years. Ford imbues his film with an interesting, if muddled, set of ideas. Huw’s brothers and father feud over the formation of a coal mining union in the valley, a move that protects worker pay but at the cost of tremendous suffering during a prolonged strike. In the narrative of the film, the miners collective bargaining seems to cost the town far more than it helps the workers. Characters argue over the creation and effects of the union but no real definitive stance is taken. The religious perspective of How Green Was My Valley also presents interesting ideas. Pigeon’s Gruffydd is central to the lives of most every character in the film, particularly Huw and Angharad. He preaches faith as the solution to what ails the townsfolk and is generally supportive of their organizing. In one overly sentimental sequence he tells Huw that prayer will heal his legs after an accident leaves him paralyzed from the waist down. Still for all the ways in which Gruffydd presents a somewhat progressive form of faith, he also allows the church Deacons to banish a young woman who becomes pregnant out of wedlock. Only Angharad’s generosity moves him to action later in the film. Ford’s presentation of themes at the heart of his film are messy and convoluted but in reality people are too. In that way the conflict inherent in How Green Was My Valley is a genuine reflection of mostly well intentioned people trying to preserve the soul of their community. The union organizers nobly want to protect wages and livelihoods in an industry that is slowly dying. Religious leaders try to preserve what they see as the soul of the village even if their actions target vulnerable members of the community. Huw sees this all through the innocence of youth, not staking out a side but rather seeing his idyllic view of his home begin to fracture. How Green Was My Valley takes aim at all sides of the debates that roil Huw’s childhood home in South Wales. By not staking out a view the film lacks a propulsive theme but does paint an exceptionally well lived in portrait of a particular people and place in time. A people that battle for and with each other in order to survive in a world that is leaving them behind. 7/10
Comments
|