Caliente

Remastered masterpiece from 1940 is out on DVD

One of 1940's most acclaimed films opens with this mouthful of a title card: "Twentieth Century-Fox Presents Darryl F. Zanuck's Production of 'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck." Today, however, most film fans would credit the movie's success primarily to director John Ford, whose name appears at the end of the opening cast-and-crew list. "The Grapes of Wrath" - which won Academy Awards for its director and for Jane Darwell (best supporting actress) - probably remains Ford's most prestigious film, at least in terms of mainstream respectability. It was ranked No. 21 on the American Film Institute's 1998 list of the 100 greatest American movies, higher than any other Ford feature. Many critics, however, now consider the movie inferior to Ford's more personal Westerns, such as "The Searchers" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," which lack the overt social consciousness that occasionally slows "The Grapes of Wrath" like unnecessary baggage on the Joad family's overloaded truck. Still, the film is a powerful viewing experience, especially during a grim, almost ghostly early sequence in which a stubborn, possibly mad Okie fugitive (John Qualen) rails against the howling dust bowl wind that is "blowin' the land away, blowin' the crops away, blowin' us away. . . ." "The Grapes of Wrath" has just been released on DVD by Fox Home Entertainment as part of the company's ongoing "Fox Studio Classics" line. The movie has been beautifully remastered and contains such extras as Fox Movietone newsreels dealing with drought and commentary by experts on Ford and Steinbeck. The remastering highlights the superb black-and-white cinematography of Gregg Toland, who photographed "Citizen Kane" the following year. Toland said his lighting was inspired by Rembrandt's work. The impressive production design was inspired in part by the Depression photos of Dorothea Lange. "The Grapes of Wrath" begins with a classic image of American lonesomeness and independence, as Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) walks along an empty road after four years in prison for killing a man with a shovel in a dance-hall brawl. Now, says Tom, "I'm just trying to get along without shoving anybody, that's all." When he returns home, Tom is shocked to discover that the Joads and their neighbors have lost their land to the bankers, who replaced sharecroppers with Caterpillar tractors. Hearing that California is "the land of milk and honey," the 11 Joads - including tough Ma (Darwell) and beat-down Pa (Russell Simpson) - load their old truck like a covered wagon and head West. On the trip, the Joads are bullied and exploited, met with kindness and disdain. A gas-station attendant, unable to see the dignity and decency within their poverty, comments: "They ain't human. No, a human being wouldn't live the way they do. Just don't know any better, I guess." At times the movie is preachy, but at other times its silence is eloquent, as when the Joads drive through an Arizona town inhabited by the ultimate land-grab victims, American Indians. Unfortunately, the movie loses steam during its final act, set in a relatively Utopian federal government camp run by an administrator who resembles Franklin Roosevelt. Although Ford later was a supporter of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War, at the time of "Grapes" he was a Socialist Democrat; he and Steinbeck were investigated by the FBI. It probably didn't help that Woody Guthrie called the movie the "best cussed pitcher I ever seen" when he reviewed it for the American Communist newspaper, The People's World. One of Guthrie's disciples, Bruce Springsteen, named an album "The Ghost of Tom Joad," with song lyrics that quoted from Fonda's climactic speech: "Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beating up a guy, I'll be there." Despite occasional excesses of sentiment and politics that are sometimes naive, "The Grapes of Wrath" remains essential viewing.