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How Green Was My Valley (1941)
Lookback/Review by Markdc
When I was younger, I was a huge fan of the Oscars and would follow the pre-awards buzz and watch every telecast with an almost religious devotion, but, alas, they have long since devolved into a boring, predictable affair. Oh sure, there have been some unexpected moments in recent years, like when the wrong Best Picture winner was announced at the 89th Academy Awards; however, these rare surprises are but a few sparkling drops in an ocean of banality. Near as I can tell, unless sitting through these interminable vanity shows is part of your job, the only reason to undergo such an ordeal is if you’re suffering from a bad case of insomnia. After the latest ceremony has taken place and the winners announced, it will be time for cinephiles everywhere to indulge in a sacred Oscar tradition—griping. You hear it all the time: “Such-and-such should’ve won that award!” or “I can’t believe so-and-so was nominated for this award!”, etc., etc., etc. And over no other Oscar category have the complaints been loudest or more vociferous than the one for Best Picture. It has long been a widely held belief among movie-lovers that when it comes to the Big One, the Oscars rarely—if ever—get it right.
Of course, any movie is incredibly fortunate to be deemed worthy of the top prize by Academy voters, but the verdict of history is something else entirely. Of the 96 films that have won Best Picture since the Academy Awards were first established nearly a century ago, I would guestimate that at least a third of them are widely considered to have been the “wrong” choice. It’s bad enough for a Best Picture winner’s legacy to be cursed with such a damning judgment in the glaring light of hindsight, but this unenviable situation is even worse when popular consensus also favors one of that winner’s (losing) competitors. For example, the 1990 epic western Dances with Wolves, made by actor and first-time director Kevin Costner, may have been an unexpected smash hit and reaped a treasure trove of awards gold, including the Best Picture Oscar, but time has judged Martin Scorsese’s gangster classic Goodfellas to be the “better” film. Sometimes, a consensus against a certain Best Picture winner materializes immediately after the awards ceremony—or even before that. For instance, The King’s Speech may have taken home the top prize at the 2011 Oscars, but its win was widely criticized at the time by many people who felt that The Social Network was far more deserving; and it doesn’t look like that sentiment has changed in the years since—quite the opposite, in fact. However, it appears that Tom Hooper’s British drama has been fortunate enough not to engender the widespread, visceral hatred that Crash has received for committing the unforgivable sin of defeating the much-loved Brokeback Mountain at the 2006 Oscars. Over the years, I have watched all but three of the Best Picture winners, and while the vast majority of these films wouldn’t have been my first choice for the top prize, with one notable exception, I still thought they were fantastic cinematic works. For this retrospective review, I’m revisiting what must surely be the most notorious Best Picture winner in movie history: How Green Was My Valley.
Directed by the legendary John Ford, How Green Was My Valley is based on an award-winning novel of the same name by Richard Llewellyn. Both book and movie take place around the end of the Victorian era and tell a classic coming of age story of Huw Morgan, a young boy who lives with his large family of nine in a coal mining village located in a picturesque valley in Wales. The film opens with an adult Huw preparing to leave his home forever and then turns to his childhood. Huw is the youngest in his family, and his father Gwilym and five older brothers labor in the coal mine, which serves as the heart of the village, while his mother Beth and Angharad, his sister, tend to household affairs.
At the wedding of Ivor, one of Huw’s brothers, and his fiancée Bronwyn, Angharad develops romantic feelings for Mr. Gruffydd, the new minister, and he reciprocates them. The Morgan family thrives at first, but things take a bad turn when the owner of the mine lowers wages—an action that causes most of his employees to go on strike. Gwilym attempts to mediate the dispute, but this puts him in direct conflict with Huw’s brothers, who leave his home in protest. One cold winter night, after Beth has an acrimonious meeting with the strikers, she and Huw are making their way home when they fall into a freezing river and have to be rescued by the strikers. For a long time, they are both bedridden but gradually make a full recovery. The striking miners and the mine owner reach a deal, and Huw’s brothers make peace with their father and return to his house.
Then Iestyn Evans, the mine owner’s son, seeks Angharad’s hand in marriage. Angharad wants to be the wife of Gruffydd, but he refuses marriage because he doesn’t wish to subject her to the hardscrabble life of a clergyman, so she reluctantly consents to wed Evans. Huw’s family has high hopes for him because they believe he’s the one Morgan who possesses the intelligence to break free from their impoverished world and eventually enter into a lucrative and prestigious profession, such as medicine or the law. To this end, they send him to a public school, which is located a few miles away. When he arrives, Huw is chastised and ridiculed in front of the entire class by Mr. Jonas, the schoolmaster, who scorns the boy’s coal mining roots.
The Morgan family endures tragedy when Ivor is killed in a mining accident, causing a pregnant Bronwyn to give birth prematurely. Then two of Huw’s other brothers are laid off from their mining jobs and replaced by men who possess less experience but will work for lower wages. Huw is offered a scholarship to attend college but disappoints his parents when he decides instead to work in the mine. Meanwhile, Angharad returns to the village sans her husband, and the rumor mill churns furiously with talk of divorce. Scandalized, the elders of the local church hastily convene a meeting to decide her fate. When he realizes that they are about to excommunicate the woman he loves, Gruffydd berates them and prepares to leave town. However, he changes his mind after another accident at the coal mine occurs and Gwilym and several of his fellow miners are trapped inside. Huw goes with Gruffydd and another man to help, and all of the miners are rescued. Unfortunately, Gwilym was terribly injured in the accident, and he dies in Huw’s arms shortly before the two of them reach the surface. However, the adult Huw tells the audience that his father isn’t really dead, for he will live on in the memory of the son who loved him so. (Note: Llewellyn claimed his novel was semi-autobiographical, but it was discovered after his death that the book was actually non-autobiographical. Although he was of Welsh ancestry, the author was born in England and had no experience with coal mining while growing up.)
As was often the case with John Ford’s pictures, How Green Was My Valley received a rapturous reception from professional critics when it was released on October 28, 1941. For example, the New York Times’ Bosley Crowther called it “outstanding” and “a stunning masterpiece.” Variety called How Green Was My Valley “one of the year’s better films, a sure-fire critic’s picture.” The movie was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won five, including Best Picture. Also, Ford became one of only three persons in movie history to win back-to-back directing Oscars. (He had won the previous year for The Grapes of Wrath.) Earlier in this piece, I said How Green Was My Valley was the most notorious Best Picture winner in Oscar history, and if you, dear reader, possess even a modicum of Academy Awards knowledge, you know why this is so. How Green Was My Valley is, of course, the film that beat Citizen Kane. When you consider the legacies of these two movies, the decision by Academy voters to award the top prize to Ford’s picture hasn’t aged very well. To be sure, the film is still highly regarded; it enjoys a stellar 93 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was nominated for the American Film Institute’s (AFI) “100 Years…100 Movies” list as well as its 10th anniversary edition. However, How Green Was My Valley isn’t nearly as popular as other films from Hollywood’s Golden Age, such as The Wizard of Oz or It’s a Wonderful Life. In contrast, Citizen Kane has been routinely named by cinema experts everywhere as the greatest movie ever made going back at least the last half-century, and it topped both editions of the AFI’s “100 Years…100 Movies” list.
Before I share my assessment of How Green Was My Valley, let me first get the obligatory statement out of the way: yes, Citizen Kane should have won the Best Picture Oscar for 1941. Although I disagree with the consensus that this movie is the “greatest” of all time (my personal choice for that honor would be D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance), Welles’ groundbreaking masterpiece is certainly one of the very best. Also, How Green Was My Valley doesn’t rank among Ford’s greatest works, such as The Grapes of Wrath or The Searchers. With that being said, How Green Was My Valley is a fantastic piece of cinematic art that captures the nostalgic beauty of Llewellyn’s pseudo-memoir. The cast is superb. Roddy McDowall, who plays Huw Morgan, is a joy to watch; McDowall was a fine child actor who grew up to be a fine adult actor. Donald Crisp and Sara Allgood received well-deserved acting nominations for their performances as Huw’s father and mother, and Crisp ended up winning an Oscar. I also think Walter Pidgeon should have been nominated for his dignified, understated portrayal of Mr. Gruffydd.
Arthur Miller’s cinematography, which also won an Oscar, is gorgeous, and whenever I watch How Green Was My Valley, it really feels as though I’m seeing the Welsh countryside—as opposed to, say, Southern California. However, I had a problem with the cinematography being in black-and-white. Don’t get me wrong, I normally love seeing black-and-white films, be they old classics, such as Sunset Boulevard, or more modern ones like Schindler’s List. However, in this case, I think Technicolor would have really made the picture pop; after all, the movie is called How Green Was My Valley, and it’s awfully hard to tell just how green that valley is when it’s in black-and-white. My biggest criticism of How Green Was My Valley is the same one I had about another classic coming of age movie that I reviewed and which was also about a child growing up in a rural community—Roy Rowland’s Our Vines Have Tender Grapes. I love both films, but they contain an episodic plot structure, whereas I prefer a coming of age movie that has an overarching narrative structure, such as The Yearling. With that being said, this isn’t a significant problem, and How Green Was Valley has some truly wonderful moments. My favorite one was the scene where Huw is beaten up by a bigger boy at the public school, so a pair of local boxers named Dai Bando and Cyfartha teach him how to fight. The next day, he beats his tormentor in a boxing match, but Mr. Jonas sees this and mercilessly whips Huw with his heavy wooden pointer. After Dai Bando and Cyfartha learn of this harsh and unfair punishment, they go to the school and give Mr. Jonas a thorough boxing “lesson” in front of Huw and the other students.
Films that capture the Best Picture Oscar are fascinating time capsules that tell us a lot about the cinematic and cultural context in which they won. Maybe it often turns out to be the case that a given “best picture” wasn’t the real best picture, but it’s difficult, if not impossible, for Oscar voters—or anyone else for that matter—to know what a winner’s (or loser’s) legacy will ultimately be. As I said at the beginning of this retrospective review, even if many Best Picture winners didn’t necessarily deserve the top award, they are nonetheless great movies with many cinematic virtues, and How Green Was My Valley is no exception. To be sure, this movie is no Citizen Kane, but it’s still a classic that deserves to be loved. If you have never seen this reel gem, then watch it now, for I promise that once you enter John Ford’s Valley, you’ll never want to leave.
Lookback/Review by Markdc
When I was younger, I was a huge fan of the Oscars and would follow the pre-awards buzz and watch every telecast with an almost religious devotion, but, alas, they have long since devolved into a boring, predictable affair. Oh sure, there have been some unexpected moments in recent years, like when the wrong Best Picture winner was announced at the 89th Academy Awards; however, these rare surprises are but a few sparkling drops in an ocean of banality. Near as I can tell, unless sitting through these interminable vanity shows is part of your job, the only reason to undergo such an ordeal is if you’re suffering from a bad case of insomnia. After the latest ceremony has taken place and the winners announced, it will be time for cinephiles everywhere to indulge in a sacred Oscar tradition—griping. You hear it all the time: “Such-and-such should’ve won that award!” or “I can’t believe so-and-so was nominated for this award!”, etc., etc., etc. And over no other Oscar category have the complaints been loudest or more vociferous than the one for Best Picture. It has long been a widely held belief among movie-lovers that when it comes to the Big One, the Oscars rarely—if ever—get it right.
Of course, any movie is incredibly fortunate to be deemed worthy of the top prize by Academy voters, but the verdict of history is something else entirely. Of the 96 films that have won Best Picture since the Academy Awards were first established nearly a century ago, I would guestimate that at least a third of them are widely considered to have been the “wrong” choice. It’s bad enough for a Best Picture winner’s legacy to be cursed with such a damning judgment in the glaring light of hindsight, but this unenviable situation is even worse when popular consensus also favors one of that winner’s (losing) competitors. For example, the 1990 epic western Dances with Wolves, made by actor and first-time director Kevin Costner, may have been an unexpected smash hit and reaped a treasure trove of awards gold, including the Best Picture Oscar, but time has judged Martin Scorsese’s gangster classic Goodfellas to be the “better” film. Sometimes, a consensus against a certain Best Picture winner materializes immediately after the awards ceremony—or even before that. For instance, The King’s Speech may have taken home the top prize at the 2011 Oscars, but its win was widely criticized at the time by many people who felt that The Social Network was far more deserving; and it doesn’t look like that sentiment has changed in the years since—quite the opposite, in fact. However, it appears that Tom Hooper’s British drama has been fortunate enough not to engender the widespread, visceral hatred that Crash has received for committing the unforgivable sin of defeating the much-loved Brokeback Mountain at the 2006 Oscars. Over the years, I have watched all but three of the Best Picture winners, and while the vast majority of these films wouldn’t have been my first choice for the top prize, with one notable exception, I still thought they were fantastic cinematic works. For this retrospective review, I’m revisiting what must surely be the most notorious Best Picture winner in movie history: How Green Was My Valley.
Directed by the legendary John Ford, How Green Was My Valley is based on an award-winning novel of the same name by Richard Llewellyn. Both book and movie take place around the end of the Victorian era and tell a classic coming of age story of Huw Morgan, a young boy who lives with his large family of nine in a coal mining village located in a picturesque valley in Wales. The film opens with an adult Huw preparing to leave his home forever and then turns to his childhood. Huw is the youngest in his family, and his father Gwilym and five older brothers labor in the coal mine, which serves as the heart of the village, while his mother Beth and Angharad, his sister, tend to household affairs.
At the wedding of Ivor, one of Huw’s brothers, and his fiancée Bronwyn, Angharad develops romantic feelings for Mr. Gruffydd, the new minister, and he reciprocates them. The Morgan family thrives at first, but things take a bad turn when the owner of the mine lowers wages—an action that causes most of his employees to go on strike. Gwilym attempts to mediate the dispute, but this puts him in direct conflict with Huw’s brothers, who leave his home in protest. One cold winter night, after Beth has an acrimonious meeting with the strikers, she and Huw are making their way home when they fall into a freezing river and have to be rescued by the strikers. For a long time, they are both bedridden but gradually make a full recovery. The striking miners and the mine owner reach a deal, and Huw’s brothers make peace with their father and return to his house.
Then Iestyn Evans, the mine owner’s son, seeks Angharad’s hand in marriage. Angharad wants to be the wife of Gruffydd, but he refuses marriage because he doesn’t wish to subject her to the hardscrabble life of a clergyman, so she reluctantly consents to wed Evans. Huw’s family has high hopes for him because they believe he’s the one Morgan who possesses the intelligence to break free from their impoverished world and eventually enter into a lucrative and prestigious profession, such as medicine or the law. To this end, they send him to a public school, which is located a few miles away. When he arrives, Huw is chastised and ridiculed in front of the entire class by Mr. Jonas, the schoolmaster, who scorns the boy’s coal mining roots.
The Morgan family endures tragedy when Ivor is killed in a mining accident, causing a pregnant Bronwyn to give birth prematurely. Then two of Huw’s other brothers are laid off from their mining jobs and replaced by men who possess less experience but will work for lower wages. Huw is offered a scholarship to attend college but disappoints his parents when he decides instead to work in the mine. Meanwhile, Angharad returns to the village sans her husband, and the rumor mill churns furiously with talk of divorce. Scandalized, the elders of the local church hastily convene a meeting to decide her fate. When he realizes that they are about to excommunicate the woman he loves, Gruffydd berates them and prepares to leave town. However, he changes his mind after another accident at the coal mine occurs and Gwilym and several of his fellow miners are trapped inside. Huw goes with Gruffydd and another man to help, and all of the miners are rescued. Unfortunately, Gwilym was terribly injured in the accident, and he dies in Huw’s arms shortly before the two of them reach the surface. However, the adult Huw tells the audience that his father isn’t really dead, for he will live on in the memory of the son who loved him so. (Note: Llewellyn claimed his novel was semi-autobiographical, but it was discovered after his death that the book was actually non-autobiographical. Although he was of Welsh ancestry, the author was born in England and had no experience with coal mining while growing up.)
As was often the case with John Ford’s pictures, How Green Was My Valley received a rapturous reception from professional critics when it was released on October 28, 1941. For example, the New York Times’ Bosley Crowther called it “outstanding” and “a stunning masterpiece.” Variety called How Green Was My Valley “one of the year’s better films, a sure-fire critic’s picture.” The movie was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won five, including Best Picture. Also, Ford became one of only three persons in movie history to win back-to-back directing Oscars. (He had won the previous year for The Grapes of Wrath.) Earlier in this piece, I said How Green Was My Valley was the most notorious Best Picture winner in Oscar history, and if you, dear reader, possess even a modicum of Academy Awards knowledge, you know why this is so. How Green Was My Valley is, of course, the film that beat Citizen Kane. When you consider the legacies of these two movies, the decision by Academy voters to award the top prize to Ford’s picture hasn’t aged very well. To be sure, the film is still highly regarded; it enjoys a stellar 93 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was nominated for the American Film Institute’s (AFI) “100 Years…100 Movies” list as well as its 10th anniversary edition. However, How Green Was My Valley isn’t nearly as popular as other films from Hollywood’s Golden Age, such as The Wizard of Oz or It’s a Wonderful Life. In contrast, Citizen Kane has been routinely named by cinema experts everywhere as the greatest movie ever made going back at least the last half-century, and it topped both editions of the AFI’s “100 Years…100 Movies” list.
Before I share my assessment of How Green Was My Valley, let me first get the obligatory statement out of the way: yes, Citizen Kane should have won the Best Picture Oscar for 1941. Although I disagree with the consensus that this movie is the “greatest” of all time (my personal choice for that honor would be D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance), Welles’ groundbreaking masterpiece is certainly one of the very best. Also, How Green Was My Valley doesn’t rank among Ford’s greatest works, such as The Grapes of Wrath or The Searchers. With that being said, How Green Was My Valley is a fantastic piece of cinematic art that captures the nostalgic beauty of Llewellyn’s pseudo-memoir. The cast is superb. Roddy McDowall, who plays Huw Morgan, is a joy to watch; McDowall was a fine child actor who grew up to be a fine adult actor. Donald Crisp and Sara Allgood received well-deserved acting nominations for their performances as Huw’s father and mother, and Crisp ended up winning an Oscar. I also think Walter Pidgeon should have been nominated for his dignified, understated portrayal of Mr. Gruffydd.
Arthur Miller’s cinematography, which also won an Oscar, is gorgeous, and whenever I watch How Green Was My Valley, it really feels as though I’m seeing the Welsh countryside—as opposed to, say, Southern California. However, I had a problem with the cinematography being in black-and-white. Don’t get me wrong, I normally love seeing black-and-white films, be they old classics, such as Sunset Boulevard, or more modern ones like Schindler’s List. However, in this case, I think Technicolor would have really made the picture pop; after all, the movie is called How Green Was My Valley, and it’s awfully hard to tell just how green that valley is when it’s in black-and-white. My biggest criticism of How Green Was My Valley is the same one I had about another classic coming of age movie that I reviewed and which was also about a child growing up in a rural community—Roy Rowland’s Our Vines Have Tender Grapes. I love both films, but they contain an episodic plot structure, whereas I prefer a coming of age movie that has an overarching narrative structure, such as The Yearling. With that being said, this isn’t a significant problem, and How Green Was Valley has some truly wonderful moments. My favorite one was the scene where Huw is beaten up by a bigger boy at the public school, so a pair of local boxers named Dai Bando and Cyfartha teach him how to fight. The next day, he beats his tormentor in a boxing match, but Mr. Jonas sees this and mercilessly whips Huw with his heavy wooden pointer. After Dai Bando and Cyfartha learn of this harsh and unfair punishment, they go to the school and give Mr. Jonas a thorough boxing “lesson” in front of Huw and the other students.
Films that capture the Best Picture Oscar are fascinating time capsules that tell us a lot about the cinematic and cultural context in which they won. Maybe it often turns out to be the case that a given “best picture” wasn’t the real best picture, but it’s difficult, if not impossible, for Oscar voters—or anyone else for that matter—to know what a winner’s (or loser’s) legacy will ultimately be. As I said at the beginning of this retrospective review, even if many Best Picture winners didn’t necessarily deserve the top award, they are nonetheless great movies with many cinematic virtues, and How Green Was My Valley is no exception. To be sure, this movie is no Citizen Kane, but it’s still a classic that deserves to be loved. If you have never seen this reel gem, then watch it now, for I promise that once you enter John Ford’s Valley, you’ll never want to leave.