The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

John Ford's memorable screen version of John Steinbeck's epic novel of the Great Depression--often regarded as the director's best film--stars Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. After having served a brief prison sentence for manslaughter, Joad arrives at his family's Oklahoma farm only to find it abandoned. Muley (John Qualen), a neighbor now nearly mad with grief, tells Tom of the drought that has transformed the farmland of Oklahoma into a desert and of the preying land agents who have plowed under the shacks of the sharecroppers. Joined by former hellfire preacher Casy (John Carradine), Tom finds his extended family, including Pa (Charles Grapewin) and his indomitable Ma (Jane Darwell), packing their ramshackle truck to seek work in the fields of California. As the family treks across the country, their dissolution begins with the deaths of Tom's grandparents at close intervals. When they arrive in California, the Joads find only an abundance of poverty-stricken migrants like themselves and little in the way of potential work. Yet, ever resilient, they maintain their dignity, hoping for the best.

Among the talented cast, Fonda does perhaps the best work of his career, as does Qualen in the film's most haunting sequence. Director of photography Gregg Toland captures the suffering and the weathered, luminous nobility of the Joads and the other uprooted, drifting families, creating striking images equal to the best work of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. In a stirring film that stands as a microcosm of the depression experience of millions, Ford gives poverty a human face in a way that was rare then and even rarer in the decades to follow as Hollywood films with a sense of class consciousness dwindled like a species nearing extinction.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*百大之21唷~
*John Steinbeck的原著小說,在小說的排行榜總是All-Time Favorites;其它被翻拍的著名小說有Lifeboat (1944)由Alfred Hitchcock執導;A Medal for Benny (1945);Viva Zapatal (1952),Marlon Brando飾演男主角~
*Henry Fonda可是25影星的No. 6~
*Henry Fonda在劇中擔綱Tom Joad深得作者的喜愛,Steinbeck表示,看到Fonda的演出,讓他"believe my own words"~
*不過呢,Fonda的最佳男主角卻等很久哩!他因此片入圍,但是沒得獎;一直到1982(41年後),才以On Golden Pond (1981)奪得哦!那片看來也是經典,同時獲得3大獎,男主角 / 女主角(Katharine Hepburn) / 改篇劇本;另外,男女主角當晚都沒到現場,也是Academy歷史上少見的情形哦~