Grapes of Wrath

In a peaceful, prosperous, progressive America of 1956, Grapes of Wrath can be seen without evoking the violence of feeling it did in 1940, except perhaps in the drought-stricken Southwest where the farmers are again having to move out. Untimeliness is not the only reason that the movie does not produce sufficient impact. Although producer Darryl F. Zanuck thought the condition of the Okies even worse than John Steinbeck had reported, in a supposedly superior medium, he does not attain as graphic a portrayal of their plight as did the author.

But it would be difficult to make a movie as effective as Steinbeck's novel, a work that was both publicly blessed and burned soon after its 1939 publication. Director John Ford and screenwriter Nunnally Johnson tried to recreate the book's impact by quite faithfully transcribing the original story and dialogue. Grapes of Wrath uses the Joads to exemplify the poor, Southwest farm family "tractored-off" their land by the big operators and forced west to California. The movie captures the epic quality of this last major westward migration, and the frightened hatred of the Californians towards these people.

The cast, however, tries a little too hard to achieve the spontaneous earthiness of the Okies, but the acting is generally capable. Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, who has to kill in his concern for his fellow man, and Jane Darwell as Tom's mother, whose only concern is to keep her family together, are particularly competent. Although the Okies are represented sympathetically, the characters are not really developed as people, but serve more as vehicles of idea expression. This is an even more noticeable fault than it was in Steinbeck's novel. The concern with idea expression seems especially artificial at the movie's end when Ma Joad delivers a "The People, Yes!" speech, but it is no more than Steinbeck's symbolic life affirmation conclusion.

The movie did, if less effectively, convey the main purpose and ideas of Steinbeck's novel. Steinbeck attempted to show the similarity of these people to their better-to-do persecutors, the similarity of involvement in the same collective struggle for the perpetuation of life. The movie does this, and ends with the hope that these people will do better in the future, as they of course did. Although Grapes of Wrath has much less value as social criticism and protest in 1956, it still is worth seeing for its successful portrayal of an heroic human drama.