The Grapes of Wrath

Few American pictures in the 1930's got to grips with the suffering and dislocation of the Great Depression. Hollywood largely left it to other media such as the theater, novels, and photography to document the national disaster.John Steinbeck's novel, first published in 1939, was based on solid research, following dispossessid farming families from Oklahoa as they journeyed to the orchards of California in search of casual labor.

Despite objections from the conservative financiers wno controlled the studio, Darryl Zanuck bought the book for 20th-Century Fox. He knew that John Ford was the right man to direct, with his feeling for the American people and their history. Ford also identified what was most heartbreaking about the plight of the Joad family - not their acute poverty, but the psychological trauma of being uprooted from their home, of being cast out on the road, rootless. In a memorable scene Ma Joad (Jane Darwell) burns the possessions she can't take with her the night before they must abandon their farm.

For his hero, Tom Joad, Ford cast Henry Fonda, who had just appeared in Ford's 'Young Mr. Lincoln' (1939) and Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), two other pieces of Americana. Members of the unofficial John Ford stock comany to appear include Russell Simpson as Pa Joad, John Qualen as their friend Muley, and John Carradine as an itinerant preacer. And for his cameraman Ford made an inspired choice. Gregg Toland captured brilliantly the documentary look of the pictures that had been taken of the dustbowl tragedy by government-employed photographers such as Dorothea Lange. No-where is this better seen than in a sequence where the Joads drive into a squatters camp, the camera dwelling on the grim faces of the occupants and on the run-down shacks where they live.

Though The Grapes of Wrath does not shirk from showing the full enormity of its subjects' plight, there is a significant departure from the novel. In Steinbeck's book the Joads first find easier conditions in a government-run camp, but by the end are recuced to starvation wages. In the film, they find the government camp later on, thus making their progress an upward curve, marked by Ma's final speech: 'We're the people...We'll go on forever.'