The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath is a testament to the people whose story is told, and is a profound and revolutionary social and economic critique, the meaning of which goes far beyond the Oklahoma dust-bowl and the orchards of California. It is both mythic and real, and its humanity universal. It is the greatest American film ever. John Ford's realisation captures the spirit of Steinbeck's novel completely. His adaptation is respectful, and his ending utterly faithful to the book's intent. Steinbeck's suckling metaphor is one of hope, where from the deepest tragedy rises a like a phoenix the basic decency of simple people giving all that they have left to a stranger. Tom's leaving is inevitable. He is radicalised and his path is strictly defined. What happened to the Joads happened to thousands of families: the banks' perfidy, the exploitation by farmers, and the hostility to organized labour, are historical facts, and these essential elements are the backbone of the film. The killing of Casy is one of the most politically powerful scenes in US movie history, and the case for government intervention is as strongly stated as it can be in the camp sequence. Gregg Toland's photography prefigures the neo-realists. The integrity of Nunnally Johnson's script and Ford's unerring sense of pathos, have left us not only a film of deep humanity but an important social artefact. The makers of The Grapes of Wrath, to paraphrase De Sica on the neo-realists, offer us "a transformed reality from which they drew forth the inner, human, and therefore universal meaning: it is reality transposed to the realm of poetry". Roberto Rossellini's landmark neo-realist Open City, is also a film the meaning of which goes beyond the immediate drama of the story and its historical genesis. It is film where the struggle of daily existence and life's tragedies are related unadorned and with supreme empathy and authenticity. Open City is a film of its time and beyond time, grounded in real lives played out in real homes and real streets. The film opened up the horizon not only of a freedom so harshly won, but of a new cinema beyond the 'illusion of reality'. When Francesco speaks to Pina on the eve of their wedding, he speaks of aspirations that are timeless: "We're fighting for something that has to be, that can't help coming. Maybe the way is hard, it may take a long time, but we'll get there, and we'll see a better world. And our kids will see it. Marcello and - him, the baby that coming". Tom Joad's last word's to his mother echo the same sentiments: "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."

John Ford's The Fugitive (1947)

Directed by John Ford; written by Dudley Nichols, based on the novel, The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene; cinematographer, Gabriel Figueroa; edited by Jack Murray; music by Richard Hageman; art designer, Alfred Ybarra; produced by John Ford and Merian C. Cooper; released by RKO Radio Pictures. Starring Henry Fonda and Dolores Del Rio. Black and white. Running time: 104 minutes.

John Ford's The Fugitive is not widely known or referenced in film writing, but it is reported to have been Ford's favorite film, of which he said: "It had a lot of damn good photography - with those black and white shadows. We had a good cameraman, Gabriel Figueroa, and we'd wait for the light - instead of the way it is nowadays, where regardless of the light, you shoot." While dismissed by critics as too arty and not faithful to the source novel, a story of a 'whisky priest' in a revolutionary latin country, for me The Fugitive is a magnificent film. It may have flaws, but it is such a sincere statement of faith that any shortcomings are like the minor blemishes in a sparkling diamond. Filming entirely on location in Mexico, Ford and Mexican cinematographer, Gabriel Figueroa, fashioned a scene-scape of monochrome chiaroscuro that is a ravishing homage to the Renaissance. The movie was the first production of Argosy Productions, the film company Ford setup in 1946. He found a willing distributor in RKO, who thankfully released the picture without interference. The movie sadly failed at the box office, and to recover the financial losses Ford retreated from this bold experiment and returned to his traditional fare in subsequent productions. The picture also led to a rift between Ford and his long-time collaborator, screenwriter Dudley Nichols. According to Nichols, "I don't know what happened in Mexico, I didn't go down with him... To me, he seemed to throw away the script. Fonda said the same. There were some brilliant things in the film, but I disliked it intensely - and, confidentially, I don't think Ford ever forgave me for that." At the time of its release Bosley Crowther was among the few who were able to appreciate this gem in his eloquent review for the New York Times: "Out of the flood of pictures which opened on Broadway yesterday emerges in monolithic beauty John Ford's The Fugitive. For here, in this strange and haunting picture... is imaged a terrifying struggle between strength and weakness in a man's soul, a thundering modern parable on the indestructibility of faith, a tense and significant conflict between freedom and brute authority... Mr. Ford has made The Fugitive a symphony of light and shade, of deafening din and silence, of sweeping movement and repose. And by this magnificent ordering of a strange, dizzying atmosphere, he has brewed a storm of implications of man's perils and fears in a world gone mad. The script, prepared by Dudley Nichols from a novel by Graham Greene, is a workmanlike blueprint for action, failing only to define the deeper indecision of the hero as it was apparently conceived by Mr. Greene. And the performances are all of them excellent, from the anguished straining of Henry Fonda as the priest to Ward Bond's stony arrogances as an American gangster 'on the lam'. Dolores Del Río is a warm glow of devotion as an Indian Magdalene and Pedro Armendáriz burns with scorching passion as a chief of military police. The musical score by Richard Hageman is a tintinnabulation of eloquent sounds. Let us thank Mr. Ford for giving us, at this late date, one of the best films of the year." - 26 December 1947 Beyond its visual beauty, this story of a weak man, a priest who when he finally confronts his cowardice, says "I began to have pride", has a simple resonance and trajectory, but the characterisations have a subtle complexity, and none of the protagonists is strictly biblical. As the last priest in the country, he is pursued with revolutionary zeal by a fanatical young Lieutenant, who has also fathered the Magdalene's illegitimate baby. The Magdalene, 'Maria Dolores', hides the priest and, with unsolicited help from the Barabas, who ambushes the military, aids him in his eventually futile escape across a mountain. The priest finds redemption only after he is betrayed by a perversely comical Judas and shot by revolutionary firing squad. His otherwise zealous pursuer lacks the courage to witness his execution.