John Carradine as Jim Casey
I don't know if you can make movies like this anymore. By today's standards it's a bit too obvious and straightforward. But I couldn't help but think throughout the movie of what a modern-day Grapes of Wrath would look like: something about the mortgage crisis and the loss of manufacturing jobs in America, maybe.
John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939, and the film adaptation, directed by John Ford, was released in January of the following year. Henry Fonda stars as Tom Joad, the recently-paroled eldest son in an "Oakie" family who've just been kicked off their farm by some mega-farm industrialists who like to bulldoze honest people's houses with Caterpillar tractors. The story follows the family as they head west to California as they struggle to find work as migrant farmers picking peaches and cotton. We get excellent performances from Fonda as well as Jane Darwell as his mother, Ma Joad, and John Carradine (yes, the father of David Carradine) as Jim Casey, an ex-preacher-turned-1940s-hippie/commie. Casey walks around the entire movie wearing a grin that apparently reflects his post-Christian enlightenment -- he looks like he's constantly high on mushrooms or something.
There's some excellent photography in this movie, and some great sets (most of the film was obviously shot on a sound stage, but there are a few legit outdoor shots as well). It's not a short movie, and despite running 129 minutes it still feels like a lot of the story has been condensed. I didn't really know much about this movie going into it (despite the fact that it's probably among the most well-known titles there are), other than the fact that it had to do with the dust bowl and the great depression. I had no idea it was practically a communist propaganda film. I got that feeling watching it, but reading about it later I guess the producers of the film were in fact fairly conservative and did their best to limit the pro-communist message (there's a memorable line where Fonda's character asks, "What's a 'Red' anyway?" (okay so the line isn't that memorable; trying to find the exact wording I found at least three different variations on the web). The implication is that we (Americans) are Reds, or could be, or at least we could sympathize with the ones who are, or something. The enemies in this movie are the corporations and their cronies (which includes the police), and the heroes are the farmers and the government (at least that part of the government that was responsible for that nice camp the Joads stayed in). Early in the film there's a line that suggests that it's somehow the corporations themselves, and not any individual human being, that's really to blame. An agent from the farm corporation has come to kick a farmer off his land:
Agent: I can't help that. All I know is, I got my orders. They told me to tell you to get off, and that's what I'm tellin' ya.The Grapes of Wrath is definitely a movie I feel like I could watch again and again. I love it when I find one of the true classics that I haven't seen yet. Even though it seems like there are fewer and fewer of them, it's a great joy when you do get to experience one.
Muley: You mean get off of my own land?
Agent: Now don't go to blamin' me! It ain't my fault.
Muley's son (Hollis Jewell): Who's fault is it?
Agent: You know who owns the land. The Shawnee Land and Cattle Company.
Muley: And who's the Shawnee Land and Cattle Company
Agent: It ain't nobody. It's a company.
Muley's son: They got a President, ain't they? They got somebody who knows what a shotgun's for, ain't they?
Agent: Oh son, it ain't his fault, because the bank tells him what to do.
Muley's son: All right, where's the bank?
Agent: Tulsa. What's the use of pickin' on him? He ain't nothin' but the manager. And he's half-crazy hisself tryin' to keep up with his orders from the East.
Muley: Then who do we shoot?
Agent: Brother, I don't know. If I did, I'd tell ya. I just don't know who's to blame.
