GRAPES OF WRATH

Directed By John Ford
Released on January 24,1940

The Grapes of Wrath is the 1939 John Ford movie based upon the John Steinbeck(the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature) novel by the same name.Set During the Great Depression On the screen, the film honestly and realistically recreates the socio-economic impact of the Great Depression and a mid-30s drought upon one representative family - the Joads. Its theme of an oppressed people's epic move to a new home parallels the Biblical story of Exodus. Their family name, Joad, also evokes the Biblical character of Job.

It is a sympathetic look at the fate of the farmers who fled the Dust Bowl for brighter futures in California, but encountered there instead the same class system and prejudices that had impoverished them back home.

Story-Line

The film opens with Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) being released from prison and hitchhiking his way back to his family farm in Oklahoma only to find it deserted. Tom finds an itinerant ex-preacher named Jim Casy (John Carradine) sitting under a tree by the side of the road. Tom remembers that Casy was the preacher who baptized him, but now Casy has "lost the call" and his faith. Casy leads him to find his family at Tom's uncle John's place. His family is happy to see Tom and explain they have made plans to head for California in search of employment as their farm has been foreclosed by the bank. The large Joad family of twelve leaves at daybreak, packing everything into an old and dilapidated modified truck in order to make the long journey to the promised land of California. The trip along Highway 66 is arduous and it soon takes a toll on the Joad family. Weak and elderly Grampa is the first to die on their journey. After he dies, they pull over to the shoulder of the road, unload him, and bury him. Tom writes the circumstances surrounding the death on a page from the Family Bible and places it on the body so that if his remains were ever found his death would not be investigated as a possible homicide. They park in a camp and they meet a man, a returning migrant from California, who laughs at Pa's optimism about conditions in California and who speaks bitterly about his awful experiences in the West. He hints at what the Joads will soon find out for themselves. The family arrives at the first transient migrant campground for workers and find the camp is crowded with other starving, jobless and desperate travelers. Their truck slowly makes its way through the dirt road between the shanty houses and around the camp's hungry-faced inhabitants. Tom says, "Sure don't look none too prosperous."

After some trouble with a "so-called" agitator, the Joads leave the camp in a hurry. The Joads make way to another migrant camp named the Keene Ranch. After doing some work in the fields they discover the high food prices in the company store for meat and other products. The problem is that the store is the only one in the area, by a long shot. Later they find there is a striking group of migrants in the camp and Tom wants to find out all about it. Tom goes to a secret meeting in the dark woods. The meeting is discovered and Casy is killed by one of the guards. Tom tries to defend Casy from the vicious attack and inadvertently kills the attacking guard when he retaliates. During the altercation, Tom suffers a serious facial wound on his cheek and the camp guards realize it won't be difficult to identify him. That evening the family hides Tom under the mattresses of the truck just as guards arrive to question them and search for the killer of the guard. Tom avoids being spotted and the family successfully leaves the Keene Ranch without further incident. At the top of a hill, the car runs out of gas, and they're able to coast into a third type of camp: Farmworkers' Wheat Patch Camp, a clean camp run by the Department of Agriculture. After Tom becomes personally idealized by what he has witnessed in the various camps, he describes how he plans to carry on Casy's mission in the world by fighting for social reform. Tom goes off to seek a new world, and he must leave his family to join the movementcommitted to social justice. Tom Joad says: I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be everywhere. 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. As the family moves on again, they discuss the fear and difficulties they have had, but recognise that they have come out the other side. Ma joad concludes the film, saying: I ain't never gonna be scared no more. I was, though. For a while it looked as though we was beat. Good and beat. Looked like we didn't have nobody in the whole wide world but enemies. Like nobody was friendly no more. Made me feel kinda bad and scared too, like we was lost and nobody cared.... Rich fellas come up and they die, and their kids ain't no good and they die out, but we keep on coming. We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out, they can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, cos we're the people.

When Ford released The Grapes of Wrath, some people found it depressing and pretentious; why, critics asked, would people struggling through the Great Depression want to go and watch a movie about people like themselves taking it in the teeth? Despite this criticism, The Grapes of Wrath was an extremely popular and critically well-received movie; Ford won the Oscar for Best Director, although Henry Fonda lost out as Best Actor to James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story. And many in the audience found it inspiring, especially the speeches delivered by Fonda and Jane Darwell, as Ma Joad, at the end of the film. Ford, and not Steinbeck, wrote those inspiring speeches; Steinbeck's vision was infinitely darker than Ford's. The Grapes of Wrath made such an indelible impact on the minds of Americans that just a few years later, when Preston Sturges made a funny and moving film which responded to and parodied The Grapes of Wrath, called Sullivan's Travels (1941), everyone recognized the connection.

Academy awards

• Best Supporting Actress, Jane Darwell as Ma Joad.
• Academy Award for Directing, John Ford.

Academy awards nomination

• Best Actor in a Leading Role, Henry Fonda as Tom Joad.
• Best Film Editing, Robert L. Simpson.
• Best Picture, Darryl F. Zanuck and Nunnally Johnson.
• Best Sound Recording, Edmund H. Hansen.
• Best Writing Adapted Screenplay, Nunnally Johnson.

American Film Institute recognition

100 Years...100 Movies #21

100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary) #23

100 Years...100 Cheers #7