The Grapes of Wrath
"The movie was based on John Steinbeck's novel, arguably the most effective social document of the 1930s, and it was directed by a filmmaker [John Ford] who had done more than any other to document the Westward movement of American settlement." "The novel and movie do last, I think, because they are founded in real experience and feeling. My parents were scarred by the Depression, it was a remembered devastation I sensed in their very tones of voice, and "The Grapes of Wrath" shows half a nation with the economic rug pulled out from under it. The story, which seems to be about the resiliency and courage of "the people," is built on a foundation of fear: Fear of losing jobs, land, self-respect. To those who had felt that fear, who had gone hungry or been homeless, it would never become dated. And its sense of injustice, I believe, is still relevant. The banks and land agents of the 1930s have been replaced by financial pyramids so huge and so chummy with the government that Enron, for example, had to tractor itself off its own land." -------- Roger Ebert Selected for the Library of Congress National Film Registry of American Film. DVD
Curator's Comments: Read Roger Ebert's essay on this DVD Classic. Director: John Ford Country: U.S.A.
|
|
Copyright 1996, 2005, Library Media Project, Chicago,
IL dvdclassics@librarymedia.org
|
