2020 Social documentary from 1940: Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath
Even handed an amateur student project, John Ford would have made it into an Academy award-winning feature. I was familiar with Ford’s work, but to me he was always the western guy. When I first watched The Grapes of Wrath (1940), I realized what an incredible director he was. Anyone can tell they’re watching a Ford film within two minutes.
Based on Steinbeck‘s 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the film tells the story of a poor family in the middle of the Great Depression, traveling to California in search of work. Of course, here’s Henry Fonda, playing Tom Joad, who has just been released from prison and is on parole. The farmers are forced off their farms by the deed holders, so his family packs everything they own into a 1926 Hudson “Super Six” converted into a truck, and ventures off to California to find work. The film was allegedly banned in the Soviet Union because it showed that even the poorest families can own a car.
Along the way, we don’t see a movie or a reflection of a novel – we see a strong social documentary. Migrants are all around the place, camps are overcrowded with desperate and starving people, and man is a wolf to his fellow man. Some things never change, I guess. Hungry children come to Ma, and she shares some stew with them. But there are more of them. And there’s her family to feed.
Al Joad: Ain’t you gonna look back, Ma? Give the ol’ place a last look?
Ma Joad: We’re goin’ to California, ain’t we? All right then let’s go to California.
Al Joad: That don’t sound like you, Ma. You never was like that before.
Ma Joad: I never had my house pushed over before. Never had my family stuck out on the road. Never had to lose everything I had in life.
Steinbeck himself believed that Fonda did a great job portraying Tom Joad, so the two stayed close friends and Fonda even read a eulogy at Steinbeck’s funeral. After a series of unsuccessful quests for work, the family realizes that California is not a promised land, having left everything it had to reach it. Tom, seeing a clean camp run by the Department of Agriculture, which has the luxury of toilets and showers, decides to be the change he wants to see in the world.
The overall bleakness is characterized by the film’s expressionist look and feel, in which Ford could play with lighting and contrast to emphasize the gloomy atmosphere. Lights and shadows are here to guide us in seeing how our characters feel, rather than plainly showing their emotions on the screen. The wonderful cinematography was done by Gregg Toland, famous for his work in Citizen Kane (1941).
Ford’s western movies are the best examples of natural scenery and beautiful juxtapositions of landscapes and people, along with musical scores that are often folk-tune variations, enveloping the notion of a community. His heroes are often outsiders, but he does value the force of a group. Visual imagery connects the family as a unit. Ford often uses natural elements to illustrate the characters’ emotions. Desert storms destroying the family’s home. Immense heat makes their jobs difficult. Rainfall.
However, he also pictures some ceremonial rituals and habits that are part of the human spirit. Objects are often tools for nostalgic moments, or they’re here to connect or estrange people. Ma looks through memorabilia before embarking on a journey, and she throws the trinkets into the fire, symbolizing a new beginning. Grandpa dies during the journey, and they give him a funeral. The sacrifices of the dead are here to guide the living ones. They leave a note so that if his remains were discovered, people would not think it was homicide. Even when people are falling apart, they still need to consider societal norms.
Casy: I wouldn’t pray just for an old man that’s dead, ’cause he’s all right. If I was to pray, I’d pray for folks that’s alive and don’t know which way to turn.
Ford uses static and long shots, and he’s known for his limited use of close-ups. The camera is almost stationary, compared to the great Ozu. People are here to do simple things – the emotions are expressed through their acts, and we don’t need close-ups to be reminded of that. Ford preferred spontaneity, but he was also extremely tough on his actors. Henry Brandon referred to Ford as the only man who could make John Wayne cry.
However, giving little explicit direction sometimes produced the best improvised results. For the final scene of the film, Ford led Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell – who received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for this feature – through the scene, waited for them to be immersed in the moment, and then shot it in a single take.
And because of Ford, this film looks like it was done in a single take as well. All the emotions are perfectly conveyed in the bleakest of moments where there’s nothing to lose because they don’t have anything left. We see the story of migrants losing everything and yet standing tall, trying to survive mentally and physically in a world that wants to crush the human spirit. This film was made in 1940, but it might become a social documentary of 2040 as well.
Ma Joad: Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good an’ they die out. But we keep a’comin’. We’re the people that live. They can’t wipe us out; they can’t lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa, ’cause we’re the people.
References
- Gallagher, Tag (1986). John Ford: The Man and His Films. University of California Press.
- Hasumi, Shigehiko (2004). John Ford, or The Eloquence of Gesture. Rogue.
- Landau, John (1973). John Ford: An American Director. RollingStone.
- Sobchack, Vivian C. (1979). The Grapes of Wrath (1940): Thematic Emphasis Through Visual Style. American Quarterly 31 (5): 596–615.