Word: joads
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...office appeal; with director John Ford, whose skill in recreating the stark reality of Steinbeck's situations and in preserving variety where repitition would have been easy, has made of the film more than the vehicle for a message; and with the actors--especially Jane Darwell, Ma Joad--whose performances are well-nigh jawless...
Preacher Casy in the book was the medium through whose garrulousness Steinbeck presented a stern and simple moral. "We're all part o' one big soul." Casy said and reasoned from this that the individual salvation lies in common, united action. It was to this truth that Tom Joad awakened after the death of Casy. And it is this truth which underlies the whole book...
...less than that--it is a documentary masterwork, but it is not quite the call to militant action which the paper "Grapes" sounds. Casy's talkative moments are fewer, and though John Carradine acts him to a T, the preacher is a less significant figure in consequence. Ma Joad grows in stature in the movie at Casy's expense; the courage and family unity which she symbolizes replace his message as the central theme...
...people die on the march. There are great simple moments like the burial of Grandpa (Charley Grapewin). Wisely Nunnally Johnson has retained only the bare bones of dialogue from the novel. So the burial scene is terser, more moving in picture than in book. High point is still Tom Joad's quiet rebuke when the irreligious Preacher (John Carradine) does not want to speak at the grave: "Ain't none of our folks ever been buried without a few words." There is the note Tom Joad writes to bury with the body: "This here is William James Joad...
...more important that California deputies kill strikers than that Tom Joad is a killer before the picture begins, kills again before it ends. It is equally unimportant that the Preacher, who has never understood religion, becomes an agitator, or that Tom Joad becomes a fugitive from justice. Ma is the important thing in The Grapes of Wrath, for Ma begins as one thing, ends as another. A bewildered, homeless, heartbroken woman when the picture opens, at its close she is an immovable force, holding the crumbling family together against things she does not even understand, against agitators as well...