#23 - The Grapes of Wrath

This movie has always been hard for me to watch. Not because it is overly gruesome or maudlin, but because I cannot seem to stay awake through the entire thing at one time. I started it last night, got about 20 minutes in and was fast asleep. This afternoon when I tried to start again I fell asleep again. The same thing happened the last time I tried to watch this movie. Today I had to force myself to sit in an upright chair and just watch the movie.

"The Grapes of Wrath" is a 1940 film based on a 1939 novel by John Steinbeck. Set in the late 1930s American West, the film tells the story of the Joad family who travel from Oklahoma to California, looking for work.

Once I actually watched the movie, I decided that it was just good, not great. This is one of the movies I think should be very much farther down the list than #23, but that's just my opinion.

Henry Fonda stars as Tom in the role that put him on the map, and he is just fine at making the viewer feel the pain of coming home to a changed place and having to pick up the pieces and move on from there. But the star of this movie is his mother, Ma Joad, an Oscar-winning role for Jane Darwell. She spends most of the film blubbering about her family's poor condition, but what else do you expect from an aging Depression-era matriach?

The moods set in the film are truly legendary--the dance scene near the end is a perfect example. I feel like I have been to that dance. With the teenagers dancing chastely, a fight (a riot according to the sheriffs) breaking out between the compound's authorities and vigilantes, and the children dancing in a wide circle, it's scenes like this that make you almost want to live through the Depression.

Tom eventually moves on from the Joad family, leaving them in the middle of the night (not without saying goodbye to the worrisome Ma, of course). The movie ends on a hopeful note, with Tom leaving to enact some of the social reform his friend who died once lived for. He vows to stand up for the little guy, and his final speech was one of the most moving I've seen in a while. Watch it for that speech and Darwell's performance, and you'll get your money's worth (if you can stay awake, that is).

To boil it down: Top 100? Of course. Top 50? Sure, I guess. Top 25? Nah.