How Green Was My Valley (1941)

Producer: Darryl F. Zanuck Copyright 26 December 1941 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Rivoli: 28 October 1941. U.S. release: 26 December 1941. Australian release: 9 April 1942. U.S. length: 10,730 feet. 119 minutes. Australian length: 10,902 feet. 121 minutes.SYNOPSIS: A Welsh mining family copes with the Depression.NOTES: Nominated for the following Academy Awards: Best Picture (won); Best Supporting Actor, Donald Crisp (won); Best Supporting Actress, Sara Allgood (the voters preferred Mary Astor in The Great Lie); Best Directing (won); Best Screenplay (incredibly passed over in favor of Sidney Buchman and Seton I. Miller's Here Comes Mr Jordan), Best Black-and-white Photography (won); Best Sets (won); Best Sound Recording (in another amazing aberration, the Academy preferred That Hamilton Woman); Best Film Editing (William Holmes received the ultimate honor for Sergeant York); Best Music Scoring (Bernard Herrmann carried off the statue for All That Money Can Buy).How Green Was My Valley figures on many Ten Best Pictures of the Year lists, including The New York Times, The Film Daily (with 500 votes - nearly twice as many as the third place-getter - it was second to Mrs Miniver), and The National Board of Review (second to Citizen Kane). John Ford won The New York Film Critics' Award for Best Direction.COMMENT: Today's brain-washed kids may find it slow-moving and too remote from their own having-it-so-easy experience, but it would be supremely difficult to find anyone over forty who is not touched and moved by How Green Was My Valley. One of the cinema's great emotional experiences - doesn't matter how many times you see it - the film is so involving, its characters so sympathetically real and so superlatively played by a well-nigh faultless group of players: Even dull old Walter Pidgeon is brilliantly cast!Maureen O'Hara was never more convincing, while Roddy MacDowall contributes a performance so intensely luminous it actually lights up the screen. Rarely have writing and acting been brought so powerfully close to perfection not only by the direction but by the incredibly skilful narration delivered with such insight and beauty by Irving Pichel.Zanuck's vision as producer, Ford's adroit staging and dramatic sense of composition, Miller's appealingly atmospheric photography, Day and Juran's impressive sets, and Newman's deft use of Welsh song and chorus contrib¬ute mightily to the heart and soul of How Green Was My Valley. With such a powerful story and such forceful acting, the film would undoubtedly have made its impact on a less generous budget and less inspired craftsmanship. But with unlimited funds at its disposal and unlimited technical expertise lovingly poured into every aspect of its production, How Green Was My Valley comes across with such stunning power as to lift it to the rarest heights of motion picture achievement.

I finally watched this film after hearing about it for many years. John Ford was well respected for "The Searchers", "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", and "The Grapes of Wrath" and several others. The black and white imagery is breathtaking, filled with shadows, reminding me of "Citizen Kane" by Orson Welles. Roddy Mcdowall is the narrator as an adult and he tells the story of his close knit Welsh family of his mother, father, and three brothers and sister. The men all work in the local coal mine and his sister, played by Maureen O'Hara, helps around the house. As happened here in America, the workers banded together to form a union in order to gain fair wages and work conditions. Along the way, there are love affairs and heart break involving the boys' sister and a local well meaning minister of the local church. Ford keeps it all moving as a compelling tale of family love and loyalty. A wise choice for best picture at the Academy Awards for 1941.

What can you say about a film that is known less for the fact that it won the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture than the fact that it beat out Citizen Kane? It also beat out The Maltese Falcon and Sergeant York--both of which, I would argue are more revered today than HGWMV.I will not assign a score to this film, because I did not watch all of it. This is not to say that it's a bad film, but I grew tired of the painfully precious tone at the beginning of the film, coupled with the very heavy-handed dramatization.John Ford directed many fine films (for example The Quiet Man),but in this film I felt at times that he thought he was directing a silent film, so overly dramatic was the action and the behavior of the actors.The story is primarily about a family of miners, the Morgans. They live in a valley with a one-industry economy. This is a prescription for economic instability. There may be a great story in the trials of the town and the Morgan family, but the film's slowness and it's reliance on overdramatization stopped me from watching its entirety. Perhaps one day I will watch it again, being prepared for it's style ahead of time.

John Ford directed this Academy Award winning film(Best Picture & Director) that is set in a Welsh mining town, seen through the eyes of young Huw Morgan(played by Roddy McDowall) who works in the mine with his family. Despite his age, Huw is determined to help his family, and have his parents(played by Donald Crisp & Sarah Allgood) be proud of him, though they really want him to better himself by going to school. Film also deals with the trials and tribulations dealing with the unseen mining owners, and the unsafe conditions of the mines, which will one day have tragic consequences...Good film is overpraised, since its beating "Citizen Kane" in the 1941 Academy Awards is legendary. Though I agree it was the wrong choice, this is still an effective little movie, with fine performances by all.