‘They can’t wipe us out; they can’t lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa, ’cause we’re the people...’
The great thing about cinema is that there is always more to discover. Despite the thousands of hours I’ve spent watching movies, I’ve never seen a single John Ford film. The only man to win Best Director at the Oscars four times. A man with almost 150 directing credits on his IMDB page. Where to start with such an intimidating oeuvre? Well, an adaptation of one of the best books ever written ought to do…
The Joad family leave Oklahoma after being driven off their land and attempt to start a new life in California. Unfortunately, thousands of others have the same idea. Recently paroled Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) is the leader of the Joad clan, but Ma Joad (Jane Darwell) and Grandpa Joad (Charley Grapewin) make for tough cookies also. Elsewhere, former preacher Jim Casy (John Carradine) tries to keep his head above water.
I’ll start by saying that if I hadn’t read John Steinbeck’s seminal source material, I think I’d have loved this film adaptation. As it is, because that book is just so good, so heart-breaking, so bleak, it is impossible to convey the level of suffering that Steinbeck manages in his prose. That’s not to say that the talented cast don’t have a good go with Fonda excellent as ever as Tom Joad.
Ford tells the story of the Joad family in a way that is simple and unobtrusive, much like Steinbeck’s writing, but there is just too much story to pack into two hours to really do justice to the novel. While Ford makes the wise move of dispensing with the bizarre original ending (seriously, look it up), there isn’t enough time to truly covey the suffering of the Joad family and their ilk and when the ending comes here it feels uncomfortably abrupt.
Perhaps the fact that nobody has seriously attempted a second adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath suggests that this is a book that doesn’t lend itself to a cinematic adaptation but John Ford gives it a good go. A beautifully acted but slightly underwhelming movie.