Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Tom Joad returns to his home after a jail sentence to find his family kicked out of their farm due to foreclosure. He catches up with them on his Uncle’s farm, and joins them the next day as they head for California and a new life... Hopefully.
John Ford's adaptation of Steinbeck's classic is a landmark of American cinema. The plot is an unflinching portrait of Depression-era displacement and capitalist exploitation, with Fonda delivering one of the great performances in Hollywood history. Gregg Toland's deep-focus, chiaroscuro cinematography is stunning and expressionistic. Novelty is solid but constrained by its literary source and the well-trodden social-realist road-narrative tradition. The ending, while emotionally resonant with Ma Joad's famous monologue, softens Steinbeck's far bleaker conclusion, pulling its punch in a way that slightly undercuts the film's otherwise unflinching vision.