Word: ma
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...film is 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...
...ma'am," when you answer your mother?-"Yes; because she makes...
...becaws they got no money to pay for funerls. Nobody kilt him. Jus a stroke an he dyed." John Ford's touch is everywhere. It is in Tom Joad's laboriously adding an s to funerl in the burial note. It is in the marvelous pantomime as Ma Joad burns her box of letters and keepsakes before starting west-a silent scene that is broken by two meaningful words: "I'm ready." It is in the three tense worried faces reflected in the windshield of the jaloppy as the family crosses the weird desert at night. Above...
...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...
...played by Jane Darwell, Ma is a great tragic character of the screen, even her victory is tragic. She can win it only by losing everything. But faced with hunger, homelessness, death, she sees that none of these was important. Ma is the incarnation of the dignity of human being, and the courage to assert it against odds...