Monday, February 27, 2006
Worth 1,000 Words
John Ford's 1940 film 'The Grapes Of Wrath' is probably the most affecting, subtly heart-rending Depression story I've ever seen. Steinbeck considered the film superior to his own boo, and it's certainly more compact and tightly-constructed. What bats this ball out of the park are the images, reproduced below. Here you see American families, evicted from their homes, fleeing westward in impossibly overloaded vehicles, just looking for honest work, to see their hopes dashed to pieces in a humanity-sapping supply-and-demand nightmare. Somehow John Ford manages a light touch to this state of affairs, as does the humble dignity of the characters. He largely avoids heavy-handedness. The images, though, say it all.
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