The Grapes of Wrath Reviews

• "I'll be all aroun' in the dark."

  
  By A3D6TFYRMIV3ZL on 2004-07-19
  "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loos'd the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword, His truth is marching on." - Battle Hymn of the Republic.
  
  In 1936, John Steinbeck wrote a series of articles about the migrant workers driven to California from the Midwestern states after losing their homes in the throes of the depression: inclement weather, failed crops, land mortgaged to the hilt and finally taken over by banks and large corporations when credit lines ran dry. Lured by promises of work aplenty, the Midwesterners packed their belongings and trekked westward to the Golden State, only to find themselves facing hunger, inhumane conditions, contempt and exploitation instead. "Dignity is all gone, and spirit has turned to sullen anger before it dies," Steinbeck described the result in one of his 1936 articles, collectively published as "The Harvest Gypsies;" and in another piece ("Starvation Under the Orange Trees," 1938) he asked: "Must the hunger become anger and the anger fury before anything will be done?"
  
  By the time he wrote the latter article, Steinbeck had already published one novel addressing the agricultural laborers' struggle against corporate power ("In Dubious Battle," 1936). Shortly thereafter he began to work on "The Grapes of Wrath," which was published roughly a year later. Although the book would win the Pulitzer Prize (1940) and become a cornerstone foundation of Steinbeck's Literature Nobel Prize (1962), it was sharply criticized upon its release - nowhere more so than in the Midwest - and still counts among the 35 books most frequently banned from American school curricula: A raw, brutally direct, yet incredibly poetic masterpiece of fiction, it continues to touch nerves deeply rooted in modern society's fabric; including and particularly in California, where yesterday's Okies are today's undocumented Mexicans - Chicano labor leader Cesar Chavez especially pointed out how well he could empathize with the Joad family, because he and his fellow workers were now living the same life they once had.
  
  Having fought hard with his publisher to maintain the novel's uncompromising approach throughout, Steinbeck was weary to give the film rights to 20th Century Fox, headed by powerful mogul and, more importantly, known conservative Daryl F. Zanuck. Yet, Zanuck and director John Ford largely stayed true to the novel: There is that sense of desperation in farmer Muley's (John Qualen's) expression as he tells Tom and ex-preacher Casy (Henry Fonda and John Carradine) how the "cats" came and bulldozed down everybody's homes, on behalf of a corporate entity too intangible to truly hold accountable. There is Grandpa Joad (Charley Grapewin), literally clinging to his earth and dying of a stroke (or, more likely, a broken heart) when he is made to leave against his will. There is everybody's brief joy upon first seeing Bakersfield's rich plantations - everybody's except Ma Joad's (Jane Darwell's), that is, who alone knows that Grandma (Zeffie Tilbury) died in her arms before they even started to cross the Californian desert the previous night. There is the privately-run labor camps' utter desolation, complete with violent guards, exploitative wages, lack of food and unsanitary conditions; contrasted with the relative security and more humane conditions of the camps run by the State. And there is Tom's crucial development from a man acting alone to one seeing the benefit of joining efforts in a group, following Casy's example, and his parting promise to Ma that she'll find him everywhere she looks - wherever there is injustice, struggle, and people's joint success. In an overall outstanding cast, which also includes Dorris Bowdon (Rose of Sharon), Eddie Quillan (Rose's boyfriend Connie), Frank Darien (Uncle John) and a brief appearance by Ward Bond as a friendly policeman, Henry Fonda truly shines as Tom; despite his smashing good looks fully metamorphosized into Steinbeck's quick-tempered, lanky, reluctant hero.
  
  Yet, in all its starkness the movie has a more optimistic slant than the novel; due to a structural change which has the Joads moving from bad to acceptable living conditions (instead of vice versa), the toning down of Steinbeck's political references - most importantly, the elimination of a monologue using a land owner's description of "reds" as anybody "that wants thirty cents and hour when we're payin' twenty-five" to show that under the prevalent conditions that definition applies to virtually *every* migrant laborer - and a greater emphasis on Ma Joad's pragmatic, forward-looking way of dealing with their fate; culminating in her closing "we's the people" speech (whose direction, interestingly, Ford, who would have preferred to end the movie with the image of Tom walking up a hill alone in the distance, left to Zanuck himself). Jane Darwell won a much-deserved Academy-Award for her portrayal as Ma; besides John Ford's Best Director award the movie's only winner on Oscar night - none of its other five nominations scored, unfortunately including those in the Best Picture and Best Leading Actor categories, which went to Hitchcock's "Rebecca" and James Stewart ("The Philadelphia Story") instead. Still, despite its critical success - also expressed in a "Best Picture" National Board of Review award - and its marginally optimistic outlook, the movie engendered almost as much controversy as did Steinbeck's book. After the witch hunt setting in not even a decade later, today it stands as one of the last, greatest examples of a movie pulling no punches in the portrayal of society's ailments; a type of film regrettably rare in recent years.
  
  "Ev'rybody might be just one big soul - well it looks that-a way to me. ... Wherever men are fightin' for their rights, that's where I'm gonna be, ma. That's where I'm gonna be." - Woody Guthrie, "The Ballad of Tom Joad."
  
  "The highway is alive tonight, but nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes. I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light, with the ghost of old Tom Joad." - Bruce Springsteen, "The Ghost of Tom Joad."
  
  Also recommended:
  John Steinbeck : Novels and Stories, 1932-1937 : The Pastures of Heaven / To a God Unknown / Tortilla Flat / In Dubious Battle / Of Mice and Men (Library of America)
  John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath and Other Writings 1936-1941: The Grapes of Wrath, The Harvest Gypsies, The Long Valley, The Log from the Sea of Cortez (Library of America)
  Steinbeck Novels 1942-1952: The Moon Is Down / Cannery Row / The Pearl / East of Eden (Library of America)
  John Steinbeck: Travels with Charley and Later Novels 1947-1962: The Wayward Bus / Burning Bright / Sweet Thursday / The Winter of Our Discontent (Library of America)
  America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction (Penguin Classics)
  John Steinbeck, Writer: A Biography
  East of Eden (Two-Disc Special Edition)
  Of Mice & Men
  Viva Zapata!
  The Ox-Bow Incident
  
  

• "We're the People"

  
  By AM9U6DF6BP2TZ on 2002-03-01
  This is it! This is the movie to show to your preteen children to give them an understanding of what it means to struggle for something, for the barest of necessities.

  John Steinbeck and John Ford did America proud, allowing us to look inward to discover solutions for our social problems. As a country we would do well to do the same again.

  Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) and Ma Joad (Jane Darwell) are the central characters of this film, but many other, richly defined, roles can be found here. The young husband who deserts his wife because he's ashamed that he can't provide for her ... the waitress whose, somewhat hardened, heart is softened by the plight of the Joads ... the Grandfather who dreams of California and eating grapes while their juice runs down his chin ... the grieving father warning the Joads of the hard times ahead in California ... and who can forget the family friend who refuses to leave Oklahoma, and slides further and further into insanity as his entire community disappears.

  Each secondary member of the cast has something invaluable to add to the story and the standout is the great John Carradine as the disillusioned, x-preacher, Casey. It is Casey who helps Tom to recognize the injustice in their 'migrant' world, and Casey who provides the supreme sacrifice and catalyst for Tom's promised future of being "there" for the little guy.

  Yes, this movie can fall victim to overt sentimentalism, but the underlying feeling of injustice is probably the main 'character' in the story. While it's overall theme can be depressing, you can't help but smile when Ma Joad says "We're the people that live."

  I absolutely love this movie, I think you will too.
  
  

• An Oklahoma family's hardship during the Great Depression

  
  By A17FLA8HQOFVIG on 2002-06-08
  This 1940 film, based on John Steinbeck's novel depicts the searing injustices to a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers during the Depression. Who can ever forget the Joad family, forced off their land during those difficult times? Henry Fonda is cast as the older son, out on parole, but who chooses to travel to California with his family in search of jobs. John Carradine is a former preacher who joins the family. And Jane Darwell, cast as Ma Joad, won an academy award for her performance. I read the book years ago and it will forever be seared in my memory. And even though the film left out the most memorable scene of all, I was moved by the family's plight, as they joined the great migration to California in a rickety truck.

  The film has stood the time well if viewed as a history lesson. It was a horrible time in America and it certainly is realistic in depicting the times in general and the plight of the Okies in particular. Some of the dialogue though, is a bit too preachy, and it's hard to believe that it would have come from a poor share-cropper's mouth. The hardship was relentless and hard to watch and there was little opportunity for the characters to make choices. However, this is just nit picking on my part. On the whole, I feel it is a serious film well worth viewing, especially for those who find it difficult to understand what living through the Depression was like. Of course I recommend it. It's a classic.
  
  

• Not as good as the book, but that probably was impossible

  
  By AMIEMM74GMRRD on 1999-09-23
  I may be a bit biased, because I read the book just prior to watching the film, but the book is better.

  The film is VERY faithful to the book, with much of the dialogue having been directly extracted. But, there is no way the movie could have contained the detail, historical background, local color and just sheer brilliant descriptions that can be captured in a 600-page book.

  Outstanding performances: Fonda in a performance generally regarded as one of his best; Jane Darwell, as Ma Joad, evolves as the story progresses and provides the continuity among the disintegration of the other characters; John Carridine, as Jim Casy, gives, for me, the best performance among the great cast, and perhaps captures his character's importance to the story even more fully than in the book.

  A previous review mentions the Depression-era photography of Dorothea Lange. I recently bought a number of her collections (from Amazon, of course) and it is indeed striking how frequently during the movie I saw the resemblance. This connection really enhanced the overall mood, that is, the despair and the unbelievably bad living conditions.

  Read the book...then see the movie, perhaps the best literary/cinematic pairing ever.
  
  

• SOMEWHAT DISAPPOINTING EFFORT FROM FOX!

  
  By A1M9DQDGE07Q0U on 2004-04-06
  "The Grapes of Wrath" is an inspired, harsh and critical retake on the Great Depression and its human fall out. While other studios were producing ultra high glamour and star driven vehicles, Darryl F. Zanuck chose to turn his spotlight on the crisis of the country and came up with an all time box office winner. It stars Henry Fonda as the forgotten man of conscience who is forced to leave his homestead in search of a hopefully better life that, sadly, is not to be. Jane Darwell is brilliant as Ma Joad, the defiant, resilient and compelling matriarch who keeps the family together through these tough times. Dark was the world of the 1930s in reality, but never was it more magically brought to life than in this inspirational film of hope, courage and the dream of prosperity that must have seemed so far out of reach at the time of the film's general release.
  TRANSFER: Previous versions of this film have looked as though they were caught in their own dust bowl. This DVD managed to recapture much of the lost visual style absent in earlier versions. Greg Tolland's evocative camera work is magnificently captured. Black levels are deep. The gray scale, for the most part is well balanced and captures the stark harshness of the original presentation. There are a host of age related artifacts present throughout but these have at least been tempered and do not terribly distract. There is some shimmering of fine details and more than a hint of pixelization in this transfer. Nevertheless, the image quality is an improvement over previous incarnations. Somehow it almost seems to add to the vintage of subject matter of this film. The audio is remixed to 5.1 but really - this is a mono film with very little spread or reason for it across your other channels.
  EXTRAS: A biography on Darryl F. Zanuck, audio commentaries, restoration comparison and theatrical trailer. One should expect no less!
  BOTTOM LINE: "The Grapes of Wrath" is an enduring tale of enduring souls caught in the uncertainty of their times. But there's no uncertainty about my recommendation of this disc. An absolute must!
  
  
• Ford and Fonda do justice to Steinbeck
  By A36EW68H08UOCS on 2004-07-06
  Take John Steinbeck's Pulitzer-Prize-Winning Novel. Turn it into a movie and let John Ford direct it, and get Henry Fonda to star. In 1940 you could hardly find a more certain recipe for a cinema classic.

  As good as the film is, it really should be a companion-piece to Steinbeck's original masterpiece, and if you haven't read it I recommend setting aside enough time to read one of the greatest pieces of American literature ever written.

  That being said, the medium of the cinema allows for a visual impact that can't be matched with the written word.

  The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joad family during the great depression. That period of economic hardship hit the farmers in Oklahoma a little harder than the rest of the world, at the time of the dust bowl the "Okies" were at the end of their ropes, financially speaking.

  Thousands of Okies packed up the house after being foreclosed and moved out to California - many winding up around Bakersfield, at the California end of old US Route 66. (Merle Haggard's family did so and the "Okie from Muscogee" wrote about it in songs like "California Cottonfields".)

  Anyway, this is the historical context of the movie. The theme of the movie, and of Steinbeck's book, is the ability of the human spirit to remain intact in these worst of times. The Joads suffer terrible humiliations, one after another, most of them because of their desperate financial status. But as the story proceeds we see that they are fundamentally decent, hard-working people, and every time life knocks them down they get back up, brush the dirt off themselves, and keep moving forward. As a national characteristic, this was an important trait because this was the generation that produced the hard-working, high-minded individuals who did important things like win World War II, followed by America's greatest financial flourishing and the Baby Boom. Tom Brokaw called them "America's Greatest Generation".

  The cast is picture-perfect, with Henry Fonda as the spirited Tom Joad and John Carradine as the former preacher with a new social consciousness. Jane Darwell won a well-deserved Best Supporting Actress Award as Ma Joad, and the remainder of the cast is in every way equal to the story and the film.
  
  

• An astounding film, especially for its time.
  By A2ICI500LRO01K on 2001-07-21
  This 1940 classic is a film that was remarkable for its time and still packs a punch today. It is a movie that contains a very complex political message within a very simple story of simple people. It takes a very basic story of a family moving to California during the depression and turns it into a powerful, enthralling and heartfelt film about people, politics and the way the world works. It is an excellent adaptation of John Steinbeck's classic novel, which even Steinbeck himself declared to be a powerful thing on its own.

  The film centers around the main character of Tom Joad who is played brilliantly by Henry Fonda. Tom has just gotten out of prison only to find that his family and all of the other families in the area have been kicked off their farms by the banks. Most of these families decide to head to California in search of work that has been promised to them by pamphlets and brochures. Tom's family decides to do the same and the rest of the movie is about the hardships these people come across on the way to and in California. It is a well-known story that is loved by many people but the true core of the story is the political message within. It is a very leftist film and the message of the verge of communist or "red" but it was at the time a very real and much needed idealism. The message is mainly presented through the character of the Preacher or Casy but by the end it is Tom himself who is spreading the word of unions and fair work.

  The directing is fantastic and who would expect anything less from John Ford who is considered by most to be one of the, if not the greatest director from the days of old Hollywood. This is one of the films that proves this statement and is bested only by "The Searchers" in my opinion. The skill in which Ford frames his shots is incredible and quite unheard of for the time. He uses techniques and shooting styles that would have been more common in the Seventies up until now but here's John Ford using them in 1940. The lighting is one of the best parts of the film and Ford uses every available chance to use natural lighting usually at the hand of a candle or match and the results are astounding. The film has a feeling and a huge amount of style to it. It is truly a work of art.

  I think Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine put it best when he said, "In the film, Joad butts heads with the behemoth of capitalism and realizes he can find redemption only through struggle. It really spells out the capitalist system's indifference to humanity. I'm shocked the movie even got made in the U.S.". I would agree with this statement and go even further to say that it was amazing that this film was not only made in the U.S. but in 1940. This is a time when the more "red" way of thinking was not as accepted as it has been for the last thirty years or so.

  Steinbeck's book is amazing and the movie is a powerful adaptation that is fit for any fan of great movies, particularly fans of films that have a social message to deliver. If you have not seen it I whole heartily suggest that you do.

  Thanxs...
  
  

• An American Classic
  By A1345VRK5MYG7 on 2000-03-12
  This is a great movie based on a great novel, and I am surprised by how honestly the film captures the raw humanity of the book. Steinbeck weaved social commentary into the story, and the movie makes many points about the human condition and spirit without being heavy-handed. The story of the Joads and their fight for survival rings very true, thanks to the realistic performances and the atmosphere created by director John Ford. Henry Fonda gives one of the best performances I have ever seen him give, and his "I'll be there" speech is one of the great movie moments. Jane Darwell is also very impressive, and her direct, down-to-earth style of acting makes the quiet strength and the suffering of Ma Joad seem very real. The Grapes of Wrath is an American classic, both as a novel and as a film.
  
  
• A great American movie. Watch it again and again.
  By A3CFT5LHFCB46K on 2002-03-18
  Based on the novel by John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath" is the story of an Oklahoma family moving to California during the Great Depression. They move to California to find better work and jobs, only to find that there s little opportunity. The family goes through rough times, but they hold together because they know that they can preserver.

  "The Grapes of Wrath" is a very well made movie. The acting is superb from all sides. I didn't notice any melodramatics from anyway, though there might be an occasion or two. The only other problem I had with them movie was some occasional slowdown. But I don't mind, because I'm not one of those people who expect excitement every second.

  Henry Fonda is great as Tom Joad. A convict out on parole, he goes with his family to California. Some experiences along the way help to change him and make him a better person. He soon realizes that people are more important and vows to devote his help to those who need it more and to those who aren't as fortunate. He got an Oscar nomination,
  But was unsuccessful. The film also got a Best Picture nomination, but lost to "Rebecca", the first American film of Alfred Hitchcock (Then again, I've rarely agreed with the Academy). Jane Darwell, however, won Best Supporting Actress as Ma Joad, the "emotional anchor" of the family, and Director John Ford picked up is second award. He would also win one the following year to "How Green Was My Valley" and in 1952 for "The Quiet Man".

  Another of the film's best virtues is in the cinematography. There is usage of low angle shots in interior scenes (Rare in movies at this time because that's where the equipment was placed) and deep focus in several scenes (Where everything in the scene is focused in). If it looks familiar, that's because it was done by Gregg "Citizen Kane" Toland.
  
  

• A classic of the human condition
  By A1LP6O85Z894GT on 2004-11-23
  I think it is most ironic that independent filmmakers claim to despise the mainstream Hollywood film in favor of making "personal cinema". When one considers the work of director John Ford it becomes so obvious that he was very much a part of the "system" and yet made several stunningly personal films.
  
  His films hold up well today because they display his personal love of character, land, place (there is a difference), time, honor, tradition and ritual. THE GRAPES OF WRATH is one of his finest pictures. His obsessions and political leanings come to life in Steinbeck's haunting, searing and highly religious narrative.
  
  I agree with many other reviewers who believe that the film is largely leftist propaganda. Certainly the other great political film directors Leni Reifenstahl and Sergei Eisenstein can be see in many of Ford's compositions- as is the case with the masked tractor trooper montage. But propaganda, like the very medium of film itself, operates on pure emotion. This film is loaded with one emotional image after another.
  
  The photography of Gregg Toland matches the best of Life Magazine in its immediacy and realism, while at the same time dramatically recapturing the best of German Expressionsim. There are so many frames that could stand proudly next to the works of Adams, Bourke-White, Wood and Robert Capa as examples of photographic art.
  
  The cast is uniformly excellent. The sincere and utterly real performances of John Carradine, Russell Simpson, Jane Darwell, John Qualen and the great Charley Grapewin all give performances that are on the level with anything ever produced from an Actor's Studio graduate.
  
  Enough cannot be possibly said about Henry Fonda's performance as Tom Joad. How fitting that Fonda would play Henry Stamper in the film version of Kesey's SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION as Old Henry S. really is in many ways Tom Joad all grown up. Simply put it is one of the finest characterizations ever captured on film. He was not just an American icon, he was a fine dramatic artist.
  
  The script retains much of the best of Steinbeck's novel and many of its great quotes. Yes, it does preach, but never at the expense of the narrative. This is a lesson so many "serious" filmmakers have yet to learn. The film has not dated in THE GRAPES OF WRATH is about a specific time and place in American History yes, but it is also about what it means to be a human being. In that sense it transcends nationalism and is a fine work of World Literature. It is an equal with CITIZEN KANE as one of the finest films ever made.
  
  Now finally available on a beautiful transfer DVD, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, with his glowing silver and black images belongs on any serious film fan's shelf.
  
  
  
• The Grapes--and Apples and Oranges--of Wrath
  By AK7PLGEJ01JBV on 2004-07-10
  It's striking how many reviewers here base their comments on a simplisitic comparison between the film version of "The Grapes of Wrath" and the Steinbeck novel on which it was based. For many such a comparison seems to function simply as an excuse to proclaim the inherent superiority of the Steinbeck original--and, by extension, the superiority of their own literary taste values-- when all it really does is highlight the patent silliness of trying to pit different artforms into some sort of evaluative competition. Literature and cinema are two vastly different modes of representation each with their own strengths and limitations, so the framing question shouldn't be which version of "The Grapes of Wrath" is "better"--as if there were a universal yardstick with which to measure such things--but rather how do they perform in terms of their respective mediums? On that count, I think we are extraordinarily fortunate with both the Steinbeck and Ford versions of "The Grapes of Wrath" to have two masterworks that operate consummately at the peak of their respective artforms. What each does well, it does brilliantly. As a verbal medium that unfolds slowly, literature is good at offering rich, layered descriptions of person and place and mapping complicated narrative links and Steinbeck makes the most of this in his novel. Cinema, by contrast, is an expressive medium that works best through registers of visual and aural metaphor, allegory and performance...and it's on this ground that I think the film version of "The Grapes of Wrath" more than merits its classic status. It is a magnificently "cinematic" film that uses the expressive capacities of the medium to produce a richly layered experience that is truly moving and that lingers long afterward, sometimes for years or even a whole lifetime. I first saw "The Grapes of Wrath" on TV one rainy afternoon in my childhood and it left indelible impressions that have impelled me to go back to the film time and again: The haunted eyes of Jane Darwell's Ma Joad as she sits in the truck cabin, lit from beneath, driving into an uncertain future, the winds of history howling oustside; the terrifying collision montage as the monstrous "cats" move in to destroy the Okies' homes; the soulless gas station attendants, standing together in uniforms like corporatized automata, muttering that the Joads are too miserable to be human. It's a film dense with iconic richness and an enduring testament both to the artistry of the many workers that created it, and to the democratic spirit of popular cinema at its very best.
  
  
• Far short of the book
  By on 2003-08-17
  Steinbeck's book is a superb piece of literature. It presents characters who are full of life and a story that needed to be told. The movie falls short on every front. Scene after scene is ignored or changed beyond recognition. The movie is an embarrassment to the book. Suggest you read the book and skip the movie.
  
  
• Skip The Movie, Read The Book
  By on 2003-08-26
  Steinbeck's novel is a must read for anyone interested in American history, especially that of the 20th Century. The book is well crafted with fully developed characters and a strong story line. The movie skips important developmental information, assumes unreasonable knowledge on behalf of the viewer, and distorts the story line. If you have read the book you will be very disappointed in the movie. If you have not read the book you will be confused by leaps in logic throughout the movie.
  
  
• Things that i find from this Movie
  By A2H44UIDIJUKBC on 2003-11-19
  Social Consequences of dis-location and Poverty:

  "The Grapes of Wrath" is the story of an Oklahoma family moving to California during the Great Depression. They move to California to find better work and jobs, only to find that there is little opportunity. The family goes through rough times, but they hold together because they know that they can preserver. Henry Fonda plays an important role as Tom Joad. A convict out on parole, he goes with his family to California. Some experiences along the way help to change him and make him a better person. He soon realizes that people are more important and vows to devote his help to those who need it more and to those who aren't as fortunate.
  The things which I found from the movie are:
  * There were no written papers that can prove that land belongs to an individual at that time.
  * Absolute poverty: people didn't have enough food and money to meet their basic necessities of life.
  * Poor people were dependent on rich for their basic needs such as food, shelter and clothes.
  * Monarchy System: Poor people were doing whatever rich people were saying them to do.
  * Wages were low and workers had no rights to fight for their wages, working conditions etc.
  * Tenant Farmers
  * Unequal distribution of wealth.
  
  

• Grapes of Wrath
  By ACWHHJ645D4RU on 2005-01-18
  Did hollywood really believe it could take a John Steinbech novel and turn it into a propaganda tool for socialism? Not quite. Having seen this film forty years ago, my recolection was a family of the dust bowl 1930's coping with the harsh realities of a changing deprssion era time.
  Small family against big banking; david against goliath. The most graphic and telling sequence is when the evangeliquel government agent appears just as the
  joad's truck quits working. The Joad's now have to coast their disabled truck to the lights that turn out to be a US Department of Agriculture "sanitary unit #4".
  This film was made at the time, before the second world war and after FDR's welfare state programs. It is a reaffirmation of a program that has ensnared millions of people then, as well as now.
  
  
• Superb filmaking by John Ford
  By AV9VF19CE1H1R on 2003-10-03
  I have seen this movie more times than I can count, and it is justly included among the all-time best. I have known people like the Joads in my lifetime, and their simple dignity is the linchpin of this story. The depiction of how they must deal with the plight of losing nearly everything they have, which wasn't that much in the first place, should be a lesson for those of the contemporary generation who consider not having two cars and a big-screen TV to be "hardship." Every aspect of the production is wonderful, and the actors rise to the challenge of the story. Many scenes are among the best ever put on film, such as Muley recounting the loss of his farm, or Pa Joad and the kids buying bread in the diner. Truly a work of art which will continue to stand the test of time. Highest possible recommendation.
  
  
• The Wrath of Grapes
  By A3EU0CFFEY9RLE on 2004-05-13
  I could not understand this movie. No starships, no capt kirk, no klingons, just old people in an old movie. By the way, there are NO GRAPES in this movie!!!!!! Now 'Wrath of KaHn', THAT WAS A MOVIE!!!! Still, I liked the part where there wuz some drinkin.....and that is my ekspert opinion.
  
  
• A TRUE STORY AND TRIBUTE TO THE GREAT DEPRESSION!
  By A2AK5QAPDFY5Y8 on 2001-08-20
  My father lived this story in real life. He too has seen the video and rates it very high on accuracy. My father is 78 years old and one of the few remaining OKIES left from the GREAT DEPRESSION. Every time he sees the movie "THE GRAPES OF WRATH" he starts to cry, because he lived the hard ship and pain of losing his home and being hungry for lack of food or money to buy any. This movie is one of the great treasures of our history!!!
  
  
• The Grapes of Wrath Movie vs. Book
  By A3EMRV427TEYJT on 2005-10-21
  The Grapes of wrath movie was excellent, and was a great rendition of the book. Unfortunately, it left out some parts from the book. Because it was a movie, it would have been difficult to represent the "Metaphor" chapters, which are every other chapter in the book. Each metaphor chapter is basically explaining what the Joads will experience next, from a different point of view. It also cuts some things short, like grandpa's death. In the movie, grandpa dies suddenly, only a little while after the family starts going west. In the book, the family is very close to the CA border and his death is longer, and more drawn out. Also, Steinbeck writes that "He never really left Oklahoma", which was one of the reasons Grandpa died. The movie also leaves out how the Joads leave their dog with Muley because there just isn't enough room. Also, in the book, Casy gets killed and Tom goes into hiding at the end of the story. In the movie, this happens a little more than halfway through the movie. After this happens, the family moves to the Government camp, which has dances and running water. After this, the movie ends abruptly, not really tying the story in at the end, whereas in the book, the family moves to pick cotton. The story ends with the family caught in a storm and trying to find higher ground before the boxcar they live in floods completely.
  One of the most important parts the movie leaves out, is Rose of Sharon's baby, which dies at birth. I think that this is too important to leave out, but the movie ends before Rose of Sharon gives birth.
  Over all, I enjoyed the book better, and hope people will read the book before they watch this movie.
  
  
• Disgrace to Steinbeck
  By A1QZEFJD8SUPEX on 2004-02-05
  John Steinbecks book is the most beautiful book ever written and this movie is an abomination. It is completly different from the book and if someone really wants to know the story, READ THE BOOK!!!!!!
  
  
• A big yawn. Another overrated "classic".
  By on 2004-04-26
  For years I heard what a magnificent film THE GRAPES OF WRATH was. Perhaps the build-up was too much, and I expected a masterpiece. It isn't. Fonda and Jane Darwell give good performances, but the film feels wooden and dull most of the time.

  Fox's presentation also leaves something to be desired. The print is not up to the kind of restoration a film with this reputation would seem to warrant. Further, the extras are pitiful for what is supposed to be a "special edition". A particularly banal and recycled A&E biography is supposed to be the highlight. The "expert" commentary is by a film historian who gets his facts wrong. (In discussing Henry Fonda's lost Oscar to James Stewart, he says that Stewart lost the year before to Clark Gable in GWTW, when in fact Stewart lost to Robert Donat). You'd think an authoritative commentator would do his homework!

  I'm sorry I wasted my money on this one.
  
  

• A little too studio-mandated to be truly great
  By AEXGGB9P0MOTN on 2005-09-22
  The story of the Joad family - and more than anyone, Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) is simple, realistic, and pretty heartwrenching. They are thrown out off their family land in the Dust Bowl and forced to move west, seeking mythical work as fruit pickers promised by some well-circulated handbills. Along the way, they deal with death, sickness, poverty, cruelty, oppression by the wealthy and jackal-like need by their fellow impoverished. It's not a happy story, and really, no one would expect it to be. The lead is played quietly but effectively by Henry Fonda, always very good as the somewhat yokel-ized, simple and silent everyman (as opposed to his friend Jimmy Stewart's monopoly on the clumsy but smart average guy). His performance is overshadowed, though, by Jane Darwell as Ma Joad, and John Carradine (yes, that John Carradine) as former preacher Casey. These are also quiet, strong performances, and it's in these performances that the real strength of the story comes out. You can relate to these people, to their hardship, and to their various reactions.
  
  Unfortunately, the film has a significant pacing issue that gets worse with every passing scenario. When the film starts, we get a good ten minutes of pure dialogue - no doubt lifted straight from Steinbeck - between Tom and Casey. This is riveting film because the characters are coming to life before our eyes. The same trick is repeated later, in other sequences that take their time: Ma Joad going through old possessions before the move, Pa Joad and the youngest kids trying to buy bread in a diner, and the climactic speech by Tom. As a director, Ford really seems to want to take his time with the material, and I wouldn't be too surprised if he'd originally wanted a four-hour film. As it is, though, we get a film of just 129 minutes (still at the long end, for the time), and for each of those remarkable sequences there's two or three that fly by so fast they don't have time to make an impact. In fact, a fairly pivotal point - that they lose more and more family members with each stop - is glossed over because there's not enough time to see every departure. You just hear the decreasing number, and the family drives on. Other scenes that should have been important, like the shocking death of one character, seem thrown away as transitions between bigger scenes. By the end of the film, it starts to feel so episodic that the ending just pops out of nowhere.
  
  The ending is a problem, too. The book's original ending - exceedingly bleak, and a bit scandalous - would have been far too controversial for a film in 1940. (Although, ironically, the silent era would probably have done just fine with it.) Instead, we get an "inspiring" speech from Ma about how the Joads will just keep going and going, representing the "common people" - stirring sentiment, yeah, but it doesn't make any sense. The Joads have been torn apart as a family unit, and the idea that their ship is going to suddenly come in just over the next rise is laughably silly, and a betrayal of these characters. The whole point is that they, most likely, won't survive, and they'll be left as one more sacrifice on the road to progress. It's the same sort of goofy speech, patriotic or nearly so, that heralded the end of so many '40s-era B pictures. It's okay in that sort of context, because the material has an inherent cheesiness and, often enough, a propoganda message; "The Grapes of Wrath" is neither cheesy nor particularly complimentary toward the government. You can tell a producer forced this decision.
  
  I haven't mentioned John Ford much in this review because he is, to me, almost an "invisible" director. His guiding hand is there - you can see it in the pacing, in the lingering close-ups on faces and long-shots of the truck moving slowly down the road, but he eschews the visual tricks of many other filmmakers of the time. In fact, the entire visual feel of the film is largely down to award-winning cinematographer Gregg Toland's beautiful photography (perhaps better remembered for "Citizen Kane," the following year). No, the main way to tell a Ford movie is by this quiet, studious pace, and the use of a certain "company" of actors; many of those seen here, and especially Henry Fonda and John Carradine, would be seen again (or had been seen) in other Ford pictures. That's not a problem for me. The "invisible" touch is just as valid as the showier approach, and there's certainly no denying Ford was a talented man. I do feel, however, that this is not one of his more successful films - possibly, as I've suggested, because he might not have had as much control over the end product as he liked. It's still worth seeing, and it's still a good movie, but there are many other films - Ford films, even - that I would put above it.
  
  
• Grapes of Wrath DVD Vs. the book
  By A1U6SAPBIFUWXP on 2005-10-03
  The Grapes of Wrath is a great movie, perhaps one of the best I have ever seen. However, having read the book, I notice that some of the most interesting parts of the story have been left out. By taking out these crucial, yet quiet scenes; the movie has a faster pace than the book.
  
  In the movie, Grandpa died suddenly. The only explanation for his death was that he had a stroke. In the book, the preacher, Casy, explained to the family members that the old man could not leave his land, his home and his way of life. Casy explained that Grandpa was spiritually dead when he left his house, and it did not take long for his body to also die. This shows the great sacrifice that the Joads must make in order to survive. In the movie, it just seems that they pack up, leave, and arrive, without any moral dilemmas. Grandpa dies in another family's tent, not just on a blanket by the road. This is important because in the book it symbolizes the way people have to help one another in times of need.
  
  In the scenes in California, the pace slows down a bit, so I can feel the details of the book surface in the movie. With the events leading up to Casy's death crisp and clear, I could understand his death as brutal murder, and Tom's speech about him carrying on Casy's work beautifully taken from the book. I really loved these scenes, because unlike most of the movie, these scenes do remain true to the book, and because of that, they are full of detail, and you can see the hand of Steinbeck at work.
  
  Despite all of these forgotten scenes, the Grapes of Wrath is one of the best movies of all time.
  
  
• Meaningful
  By AF83WDJOWR3VQ on 2005-10-22
  This was a very interesting movie. It starts out slow, with the Joad family losing their farm and heading west, and mostly follows the storyline of the original novel. However, unlike other movies (from books), it has its own spirit and excitement.
  
  The characters that are most intruiging are Ma and Tom Joad. Instead of being quirky humor characters, they say many interesting things that may make you reflect on your own life in that manner. However, the movie may become uninteresting, with many repetitive/unnessecary scenes in the middle.
  
  Compared to, say, Harry Potter this movie is brilliant. It follows the storyline more than any other movie I've seen and really has some amazing acting by Henry Fonda.
  Overall, the movie is a good buy. Go for it!
  
  
• John Ford + John Steinbeck = Amazing
  By AN9J46667D80O on 2007-01-22
  "Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good an' they die out. But we keep a'comin'. We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out; they can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people."
  
  The history of the Dustbowl Era is one that looms large in the minds of most of my family. The mere fact that some of us were born in Washington to people that came from Kansas and Oklahoma explains volumes about what it must've been like in those places back in the day when you could have a wonderful crop one year, and the next year you could be turned out of your house and home.
  
  John Ford's 1940 film version of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" is a flim like none other. Listed on many critics film lists as the best ever made, at least prior to "Citizen Kane" showing up in that position starting in the late 1950's, it tells the story of the Joad family, uprooted from their home in Oklahoma and sent hurtling into a new life in California.
  
  As the family travels to California, they deal with many setbacks, including the deaths of two of their clan. When they finally reach California, they find that a glut of cheap labor has led to depressed wages, meaning that for a whole day's work they earn barely enough to scrape by.
  
  Eventually after many trials and tribulations, the family reaches a camp run by the government (with a camp superintendent played by a man who actually did run such a camp in reality). There the family finds a safe place to live, decent wages, and a hopeful future... at least until the past catches up with one family member.
  
  While Henry Fonda plays the protaganist in this movie, the real stand-out star is Jane Darwell, who played Ma Joad. From her first real scene, where she expresses concerns her son might've turned "mean" while in prison, to a touching farewell to her possessions when she tosses them into a stove before leaving, to the end, where she has one last dance with her son then gets the last words in the film (those at the start of the article), every moment she's on the screen is incredible. It's a movie worth seeing for performance alone. Women like her are, to a great extent, what this country is built on.
  
  This was also a very political film. It was one of the first films to show poverty, true, soul-crushing poverty, in the United States. Most of are fortunate enough not to know what it's like to nearly starve to death (heck, put all the family together and we'd start to influence the tides), but in the not-so-distant past people were starving, dying, on the streets of our nation. Not because they were lazy, or foolish, but because they were being destroyed by a system that had left them to fend for themselves.
  
  It also explored, somewhat obliquely, ideas of Communism that were floating around at the time. There was a large, simmering, vocal minority that believed only Communism could save the workers of the world from exploitation at the hands of big business. Looking at the way the world was then, one begins to sypathise.
  
  All in all, this is a very personal film that's also quite epic. You see the sweeping panoramas for which Ford is rightly famous, but then you also get the small strokes, the tiny personal touches, such as when the children see flush toilets for the first time. It's a must-see for anyone interested in history, and anyone interested in film.
  
  
• A POEM OF A FILM
  By A3BSS2M2DPPV4T on 2001-11-13
  This isn't one of those films which need a lot of explaining to tell why they deserve to be called great. To those who know something about John Steinbeck's novel, it is enough to say that the picture is way ahead of anything even the most hopeful had reason to expect. It is all beautifully direct and literal, like clear-cut themes in a symphony. There is Tom Joad, on parole from prison, going back to his family on their farm. The shell of a farmhouse, deserted, the family blown out by dust-storms and tractor-farming. The family, found again, setting out westward in their junky old truck, for work and a place to settle on the soil once more. The long trek west, over the endless inter-state highways, joing the miserable stream of other families driven away from their own birthright and seeking a promised land of home and work again. Nunnally Johnson, who wrote the screenplay, had to do something more with Steinbeck's book than cut pages out of it and paste them together. He had to dramatise it, which meant concentrating its essence while he built it to mounting emotion and action. If Johnson's script narrows the gist of the story to only what happens to the Joad family, director John Ford had spread it wide again, in the way that only a movie can do. The chief thing about the acting is that it almost never seems to be acting at all. Perhaps John Carradine and Grant Mitchell give an occasional impression of doing their stuff, but the rest, from the most casual extra to the stars, might have been caught in some episode of actual life. Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell are the most important because they embody the main spirit of the drama: they both fill their parts with such life, that they are peerless in their playing. There is, too Ford's fondness for mist and shadows and music-but all in their place here, integral and rarely mannered. THE GRAPES OF WRATH proved that Hollywood could lead the world in serious as well as merely entertaining pictures; this is a poem of a film.
  
  
• 5 star movie -- up until the last 60 seconds.
  By on 2002-11-29
  This movie was almost worthy of the book, and was deserving of 5 stars, until the last 60 seconds. Then Ma Joad gives her "We're the people" speech (which ends something like "We're the people, and the people keep a'goin'" or "We're the people, and the people keep on" or something like that). Then the music track swells inspiringly, and the film ends on an upbeat note.

  HUH? Grapes of Wrath was NOT an upbeat book. The story was one of despair, and at the end of the book the Joads were in very dire straights indeed -- no money, no food, no shelter, and Tom on the lam from the law. The ending of the movie -- which other Amazon reviewers have inexplicably praised -- completely distorted Steinbeck's message.
  
  

• he Grapes of Wrath
  By AQGU9JTAI9JGV on 2003-01-05
  What a Great movie, one of the best. Authentic to the core! I was brought up knowing all about the depression and the okies. My parents as well as grandparents, aunts, uncles, to name a few. All came from Oklahoma to California during the depression. They lived this movie, in every sense of the word. My Mama loved watching this, even though she cried throughout it. The okies were tough, strong and proud folks. As Jane Darwell so aptly put it " were the people and the people keepa agoin" A true American classic!
  
  
• Overrated
  By A28ZVIYPLKMFBH on 2004-04-14
  First, the title is very misleading. There are no grapes to be found in this movie. Beyond that, it's just a very depressing movie. They could have at least given it a happier ending to redeem all the drudgery that goes on for what seems like eternity. And I'm not a historian or anything, but did a "dust bowl" really exist?? Buy this movie if you if you like to be depressed, but otherwise stay clear and get something like Police Academy instead.
  
  
• Henry Fonda in John Ford's version of John Steinbeck's novel
  By A2NJO6YE954DBH on 2004-10-10
  I have absolutely no problem with the idea that the greatest ending in American literature comes on the final pages of John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes of Wrath." The symbolism of the final image of Rosasharn and the starving man is as potent as anything every found in an American novel, whether you are talking white whales or green-tinted glasses and silver slippers. But there is no way on earth that a Hollywood film made in 1940 was going to film that scene and Nunnally Johnson's adaptation of Steinbeck's novel, which had only been published in 1939 when the censors were in apolexy over Clark Gable saying the word "damn," has to come up with a suitable but obviously inadequate substitute.
  
  While Johnson remains remarkably faithful to the novel for most of the film, it is helpful to remember that a year earlier he had written the screenplay for "Jesse James," and there is clearly a sense in which the Tom Joad of this film is a "good" outlaw in a similar sense. The difference is that instead of joining the Confederacy this Tom Joad becomes a union man. Tom (Henry Fonda) has just gotten out of prison and hitches a ride home in time to find that his family is being forced off of the Oklahoma farm that they have been sharecropping. So the entire Joad family, Pa (Russell Simpson), Ma (Jane Darwell), Grandpa (Charley Grapewin), Rosasharn (Dorris Bowdon), and the rest pile into the family truck, joined by Casy (John Carradine in by far his finest role), a defrocked preacher who has a new, more human gospel to preach. The truck heads for California, the family hoping that this is the Promised Land it is claimed to be in the handbills blowing across the Oklahoma landscape.
  
  Tom was in prison for killing a man who had stabbed him in a barroom brawl and at the end of this film he will kill again when he reaches a breaking point in the treatment that the migrant workers are enduring at the hands of the thugs wearing badges. In the difference between those two murders is the transformation of Tom Joad from a brawler in to a fighter and more specifically a fighter with a cause. Along the way is a journey that is as much a descent into Hell as the one Virgil took Dante on in "The Inferno," with the horror being that this is taking place in America and (for the original film goers), in the present as well. The Joads struggle to stay alive and stay together, and it seems that they are not going to be able to afford pride or dignity.
  
  The flaw in the film, if you are inclined to see it that way, is that Joad becomes a Christ-figure (with Casy forced into the John the Baptist role). But pay attention to Tom's memorable closing speech to Ma Joan: "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 there in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be there in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they built - I'll be there, too." Yes, Tom Joad is out there fighting for the little guy, but the problem is that since Tom Joad is out there, we do not have to be. We wish him well and certainly root for him as he walks out to meet his destiny, but like Ma Joad we are going to stay behind and leave it to our hero to go fight the good fight. The film's final line, which belongs to Ma Joad, sounds like something we would expect from a Capracorn movie.
  
  Director John Ford directs this black & white film with the same sense of human spectacle set against the grandeur of the American landscape that he displayed in his westerns "Fort Apache" and "Rio Grande." Put this is the end of that grand Old West, where cattle barons and sodbusters have given way to giant, nameless companies who gobbled up the land even when the winds have turns it into a Dust Bowl. The black & white cinematography by Gregg Toland provides a documentary like nature, recalling Dorothea Lange's famous 1936 photograph "Migrant Mother."
  
  Ford and Darwell won Oscars, but Alfred Hitchock's "Rebecca" and Jimmy Stewart in "The Philadelphia Story" won for Best Picture and Best Actor respectively. Yet today it is clearly "The Grapes of Wrath" and Henry Fonda's performance that are a quintessential part of our American film heritage (Did you know that until 1958 it was "The Grapes of Wrath" that was considered the greatest American film and not "Citizen Kane"?). For a decidedly different but no less effective version of the story adapted by Frank Galati for the Steppenwolf Theater of Chicago check out the 1991 stage version with Gary Sinise as Tom Joad which ends as the novel does, with the mystical smile on the face of Rose of Sharon.
  
  

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