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Film · 1940 · Drama
The Grapes of Wrath
Directed by John Ford
1940
★ 6.8 editorial score
That a major studio released this in 1940 is still hard to believe: Ford films an Oklahoma family driven west by the banks, and Gregg Toland lights the migrant camps like documentary photographs.
“The Grapes of Wrath is a left-wing parable, directed by a right-wing American director, about how a sharecropper's son, a barroom brawler, is converted into a union organizer. The message is boldly displayed, but told with characters of such sympathy and images of such beauty that audiences leave the theater feeling more pity than anger or resolve. It's a message movie, but not a recruiting poster.”
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