Les Raisins de la colère

Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) hitchhikes back to his family's farm in Oklahoma after getting released from prison. He finds his family gone after the landowner kicked out all the small farmers moving in the bulldozers and tractors. He and ex-preacher Jim Casy (John Carradine) go to his uncle John's place. The Joad family decides to travel to California. It's a long arduous journey.

This John Ford epic is an American classic. It has some funny moments, tough social injustices and loads of heart-breaking stories. Ford delivers some beautiful destitution. It is more the human story that is so powerful. Henry Fonda does a great everyman which allows the audience to feel for the family right away.

In rural Oklahoma, Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) is walking and hitchhiking home from prison, after a stay of four years. After taking a knife at a dance, Tom hit the attacker with a pan, killing him. Nevermind that it was self-defense, Tom still gets sent to prison. He hasn't heard from his parents, Ma (Jane Darwell) or Pa because they aren't the "writing types". A fierce dust storm makes Tom's final few steps treacherous. Arriving back at their small cabin, where his family are sharecroppers, Tom and his passing friend, Casy (John Carradine) are startled to find no one at home. A shell-shocked neighbor informs the other two that the family has been kicked off their land in foreclosure. They are nearby at Uncle John's house, where his family is about to suffer the same fate. Its the Depression and the Dust Bowl has ruined the land, taking off the top soil; no one can grow crops. When Tom catches up with his Ma and company, they are overjoyed to see him, for their plans are to pack a truck and move to California, where handbills show pickers are needed. Grandpa doesn't want to leave the only home he has ever known, so they drug him with medicine and haul him along. Now on the Mother Road, route 66, the journey is difficult; the truck breaks down frequently, no one wants them to stay long anywhere they rest, and Grandpa dies of a stroke. Will California really be the Golden, Promised Land? NOT ON YOUR LIFE! This heartbreaking adaptation of Steinbeck's classic is a must-see for the whole wide world. This family of hard-working folks has one calamity after another, just trying to earn an honest and living wage. Those who lived in the Dust Bowl part of the country were hit especially hard, as the soil had been overworked and winds took the topsoil off, creating damaging storms to crops, humans, and animals. No better were the "lies" of the handbills, advertisements that migrants were needed in California, where over 300,000 poor helpless folks showed up for very few jobs. The cast, with Fonda at the helm, is wonderful as is the scenery, costumes, and careful direction to show the truth of a desperate situation. Wanna get down on your knees and thank the Lord for what you have, Americans? You will when you view this amazing film!

Henry Fonda's portrayal of Tom Joad captures perfectly the humanity and compassion of the Steinbeck character, an ex-con who breaks his parole conditions by joining his family in their epic journey across the southern US to a "better life" in California.

This is not the usual Hollywood fare. Tragedy and betrayal beset the Joad family from the outset. But it is nonetheless an uplifting movie. Spirit, compassion and tenderness mark them out. Fonda's role is particularly understated, and we see, as in Steinbeck's masterly epic, the maternally robust figure of Ma holding the family together.

The performances all round are wonderful, and Ford's direction and sense of space under the big sky of the Midwest is breathtaking.

This film is now largely a testament to the time in which it was set, but like the war movies that were soon to follow, a story that needed telling lest we forget.

It's a time that you are glad you were not given, forced from your land to make a life changing transition, as a journey on jalopy, not at sea but very choppy, presents a family with an awful proposition. It's as if you are a refugee at home, as you're treated like vermin where you all roam, no one cares about your plight, the authorities just fight, to force you on your way, until you're gone. It may get you cogitating on today, that the world has not moved on that much to say, there are those still dispossessed, living a life engulfed by stress, with little help, support or welfare where they stay.

Classic Hollywood films that tried to tackle important issues or answer big questions, typically were cheesy and hard to take seriously. They had gratuitous overacting, fake "Hollywood" dialogue, and just general over dramatization. Since these films are typically over-dramatized in this way, their attempts at having a deeper or meaning or some sort of a message are ruined. But not all classic Hollywood films fall into this abyss of clichés. And the ones that don't are still remembered and cherished to this very day, films like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, or Modern Times, or 12 Angry Men, faced serious social issues at the time and succeeded. Films like these are unforgettable and in many ways life changing, and John Ford's Grapes of Wrath is one of these precious films.

As I'm sure you all already know Grapes of Wrath is an adaptation of the John Steinbeck Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name, that was published only a year before the film was first released. The novel is one of the greatest of the 20th Century, and I highly recommend that you should check it out. The film and the novel are both about Tom Joad, (played by Henry Fonda, who collaborated with John Ford several times.) who returns to his family's home in Oklahoma after spending 4 years in prison, but unfortunately by the time Tom Joad makes it out of prison, the country has fallen into the Great Depression. And the Joad family were unfortunately sharecroppers, so of course the bank repossessed there home and land, and the Joad family are forced to head west to California to look for work. But as they get closer and closer to California things begin to seem hopeless as they learn the truth about what is going on out in the west.

If I were to choose one word to describe The Grapes of Wrath it would be haunting, so many scenes and lines of dialogue send shivers down your spine and make tears grow in the back of your eyes. I won't spoil any of these fantastic moments, but dear god the combination of John Steinbeck's masterful writing and the actors's somber performances combine to make these scenes and lines of dialogues absolutely devastating, you will be thinking about them for weeks after you watch the film. The cinematography (done by the legendary Gregg Toland, who also was the cinematographer for Citizen Kane.) is also outstanding. Shots of the deserted houses in Oklahoma, the wide open road on highway 66, and the overcrowded filthy slums of California, all give The Grapes of Wrath a bleak depressing atmosphere.

Every single actor in the film gives it his/her all, Jane Darwell won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her role as Ma Joad, and Henry Fonda was nominated for best leading actor. And while these two performances are just perfect, every single roll in the film no matter how small is also perfect. (well, except for some minor child-actor roles.) John Ford is an excellent actor director though, so this should come as no surprise. John Ford also won the Oscar for best director, this was his second Oscar (his first was for The Informer.) and it is well deserved, each scene is meticulously crafted to dig real deep into the audiences emotions and not in a way that feels cheap by exploiting the audience or something. No instead of going for cheap shallow emotions the way an Oscar-bait movie would, Grapes of Wrath instead has characters that don't even feel like characters that are going through actual struggles, there is no cheap manipulation in this film. It is 100% genuine.

John Ford was a strange person for 20th century fox to pick to direct The Grapes of Wrath, because he was politically conservative and the book/film supported several liberal political ideas like strikes and unions. But John Ford was definitely the right choice. (see what I did there.) Grapes of Wrath was one of the few American films that was allowed to be released in the Soviet Union,it was only allowed because it supported pro-communist ideas. But it eventually had to be pulled from The Soviet Union when Soviet audiences saw that even dirt-poor begging Americans could still afford cars. In 1989 The Grapes of Wrath was one of the first 25 films to be added to the national film registry, alongside films like Citizen Kane, Vertigo, and Casablanca. And it deserves its spot there, Grapes of Wrath has become the definitive Great Depression film, and should be viewed by everyone.

9.5/10