The Grapes of Wrath
Odyssey about a farming family that migrates from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression era. This film is widely regarded as one of John Ford’s masterpieces.
After serving a prison sentence, Tom Joad returns to his home. Here he learns that his family has been evicted from their farm. When his family decides to travel to California, the promised land, Tom joins them. Yet, as the ideal of a sun-drenched and promising California proves different from the harsh reality, Tom decides to put his life on the line for social reform.
THE GRAPES OF WRATH is a film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s eponymous 1939 novel. That book shocked readers at the time by revealing the cruel downside of the American Dream. Ford cast Henry Fonda, so often the paragon of American domestic virtue, as Tom Joad, an ordinary man driven by economic injustice. Gregg Toland’s striking high-contrast black-and-white cinematography lends this classical drama an extra sense of urgency. (wg)