The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Henry Fonda, workers' hero.

Directed by John Ford
Written by Nunnally Johnson, John Steinbeck (novel)
Starring Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine




A little over three years passed between the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and American intervention into the war at the end of 1941.  This time might seem at first to be one when the storms of the world, of Japanese conquest as well as the Nazis’ spread across Europe, fell quiet when they reached the coasts of the United States - but appearances can be deceptive, especially when viewed from such a distance.  It was a time of great change and great national debates – a time when isolationist faced interventionist, a time when left met right met various points in the middle in argument and with conflict barely suppressed, a time when waves of immigrants fleeing totalitarianism in Europe and Asia brought countless new skills, new experience, new beliefs and new traditions to the country that had rescued them.  It was also a time when the US began, finally, to pull itself clear of the greatest crisis in its history, the catastrophe of the Great Depression.

That said, there was one respect in which the Depression wasn’t a disaster, but a revelation.  The movies – particularly in Hollywood, though the groundbreaking output of Weimar Germany should never be overlooked, even if that is another story for another day – boomed spectacularly, launching into a Golden Age built on innovation, grandeur, and an audience desperate for a spot of sunshine, an audience who went to the pictures in numbers unmatched before or since.  When this glittering cinematic explosion barrelled on into the new shapes of American society found at the end of the 30s, the films that emerged make for an astonishing catalogue of innovation and wonder.  Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, The Wizard of Oz, The Grapes of Wrath, Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, The Great Dictator, Mr Smith Goes To Washington, Suspicion, High Sierra, The Roaring Twenties, Fantasia, The Philadelphia Story, Rebecca… it would be easy to go on.  And on.  It was a quite remarkable period in Hollywood history, and one that was ended suddenly and utterly when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour.

That’s not to say, of course, that there were no American films of such a standard made during the War – of course there were:  Casablanca, Double Indemnity, and Gaslight spring immediately to mind – but they’re fewer and further between.  More importantly, they’re not quite the same, less questioning, less of anything that could be seen as UnAmerican (a word that would become rather too relevant in the decade that followed).  And even after the war was over, and a slew of genuinely great pictures burst forth in the second half of the 40s, filmmakers were never again really able to utilise the power of Hollywood at its most chest-out and bright-eyed without the heavy knowledge of what they weren’t allowed to do weighing upon them.

Of course, even by 1938, Hollywood was restricted in what it could do – the Production Code was introduced in 1930 – but restricted in terms of morals, of kissing and sharing a bed and letting the bad guy win, not in terms of ideas.  Two of the films mentioned earlier, John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath and Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, both reach conclusions that make an inescapable political statement:  America, along with so much of the western world, was going badly wrong in how it treated ordinary people, and the left can show a far better and fairer way forward.  In both cases, the main character concludes with a powerful, affecting speech about unity and equality and giving ordinary working people a decent chance in life.  They’re both undoubtedly stirring moments.  However, stirring wasn't always enough.  For J. Edgar Hoover, Chaplin’s speech – don’t give yourself to these unnatural men, machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! – was the last straw, the last he’d take from a little foreign guy who cared about the poor a bit more strongly than could be accepted. 

Chaplin's speech has much in common with the end of The Grapes of Wrath:  

 A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody ... Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too.

Ford's film won two Academy Awards, and was nominated for five more (The Great Dictator was nominated for five Oscars), but acceptance of these principles didn't last much beyond 1940.  Chaplin was exiled in 1952, a year after John Ford and John Steinbeck were investigated by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee for The Grapes of Wrath (film and book separately, as you'd imagine, although Steinbeck was hugely impressed both by Ford's interpretation and by Fonda's career-transforming turn as Tom Joad).  Today, McCarthyism is as dead as the Cold War, The Great Dictator is hailed far and wide as the masterpiece that it certainly was.  But The Grapes of Wrath, though still acclaimed, doesn't enjoy anything like the popularity of Ford's great westerns.  Perhaps the association of one of America's very finest and most innovative directors - and its most American - with an explicitly socialist tale is still uncomfortable.  Or perhaps his westerns are just too beloved in the imagination to allow much space for other tales (and of course, Ford later went on to deconstruct the frontier myth in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance).  It's dangerous, I suppose, to read too much into people's behaviour.

Still, it's worth flagging up, whatever the reason, because of how much of a treat is being missed here by those who overlook it, or simply aren't aware of it.  The Grapes of Wrath is every bit as good as any western Ford ever made, and better than most (maybe all), a genuine high-water mark in an extraordinary period for American cinema.  Powerful, poignant, and deeply political, we should hail Ford not only for creating an exceptional piece of work, but also for the courage shown in standing up for the ordinary worker against big business and insitutions (Steinbeck and Ford, as well as being investigated during the McCarthy era, also received death threats from the Associated Farmers of California).  We ought also to hail him for making a film that retains a deep and important truth today, more than seven decades later; today, as in 1940, the ordinary worker finds himself driven further and further down, while those at the top reap ever more of the profits of his labour.  The Grapes of Wrath is as much a film for today as it is a Depression-era classic.

One final point:  John Ford quite rightly receives the lion's share of the acclaim for this wonderful picture, but there's someone else who shouldn't be ignored.  Here is a film that's gorgeously, strikingly, inventively shot, a film made so much better for looking so good.  The director of photography deserves his share of the credit.  Fellow by the name of Gregg Toland.  I think I might have mentioned him before.