How Green Was My Valley
Synopsis
Millions Have Read This Great Novel... Millions more will see an even greater picture!
At the turn of the century in a Welsh mining village, the Morgans (he stern, she gentle) raise coal-mining sons and hope their youngest will find a better life. Lots of atmosphere, very sentimental view of pre-union miners' lives.
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Sing out echoes of my past
Of the warmth that family made.
A kiss in the shadows
A gentle pass of hands....So wow.
Maybe I do need to be a little more discerning with my grades in general (this is my third 10 this month) because how often do you walk out of a film in which you 1) cry multiple times at the most subtle of gestures and most expressive of compositions and 2) decide that you need to reconsider who you call your favorite director.
On the surface, Ford is your granddaddy's favorite director: heavy, a bit slow, perhaps a little too moralizing, and (oh dear no!) sentimental. But then there's the actual Ford, the one I…
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**Part of The Best Picture Project**
Many films will forever be treated ill due to winning a Best Picture Oscar over a more deserving film. I can't think of a film that's probably treated more poorly than How Green Was My Valley for beating Citizen Kane. The fact of the matter is that, had it been released any other year, How Green Was My Valley might be looked upon more favorably, because in truth it is a quite excellent film.
How Green Was My Valley tells the story of a Welsh working class family in a small mining town, and details their long history along with their close relationship with the town preacher played by Walter Pigeon (redeeming himself from…
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What am I supposed to say here? I know for many cinephiles John Ford is closer to god than man ("one might spend a lifetime contemplating The Searchers or Wagon Master or Young Mr. Lincoln (39) and continually find new values, problems, and layers of feeling" — Kent Jones) , but it was impossible for me to watch this without getting extremely frustrated by the lumpy, one-damn-thing-after-another narrative of what's clearly a massive book (651 pages!) funneled into a rush of disconnected incidents: romance here, schoolmaster bullying here, vignettes from the coal mines throughout. It was kind of brilliant to program this as part of a series on movies influenced by Weimar cinema (all those cross-hatched shadows and stark shadows), but basically there's enough group singing here for five Terence Davies movies and an overwhelming amount of "sentiment," but it all seems patchy and sticky to me. SORRY.
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No director is better at establishing context via landscape, dwarfing his characters while still granting them enough reflected grandeur to feel iconic. Emphasizing the natural features that surround it, he sets up this quaint Welsh village as a place of timeless recurrence, of small lives lived within a framework of specific tradition, even as the story he tells takes place at a very specific moment, amid the industrialization that will change these people’s simplistic lifestyle forever. Ford clearly yearns for these simpler times, and the way he frames the characters in the shadows of these hills demonstrates both his affection for nature and his routine de-emphasizing of the individual, who’s but a speck in this huge, mostly-vacant world. But the…
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There's a mythology of small-town yesteryear (all salt-of-the-earth folks and tight-knit families dedicated to helping one another) and a counter-mythology (a place of secrets, gossip, narrow-mindedness and petty judgment). Here's a near-perfect synthesis of the two, a reminiscence that allows for both the good and the bad of the good old days. Old World vs. New World tensions drive virtually every conflict, from the labor dispute at the coal mine, to Angharad's choice between marriage for love and marriage for family security, to the Morgan parents' differing perspective on the value of book-learning for youngest son Hugh. And it's all unified by the idea of the valley community as both comforting and confining, quick to provide support but just as…
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I have limitless gratitude for John Ford. The man was an extraordinarily active filmmaker, will go down as one of the best directors ever, and inspired a plethora of filmmakers including Orsen Welles and Akira Kurosawa. That said, I've had trouble connecting with his films so far. At least with Stagecoach and The Grapes of Wrath I can see why they're so celebrated. But I don't see the appeal of How Green Was My Valley. The film has some solid ideas and is never unwatchable, but at the same time the film is pretty dull and the lead character wholly uninteresting. I hope to one day see a John Ford film I can fully embrace, but How Green is not that film.
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Really wasn't into the movie, a couple of decent scenes but the story wasn't interesting to me
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@Camdun_Roar: The inconsistency in the accents is ridiculous. It is good but it in no way is better then Citizen Kane 6.25/10
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No director is better at establishing context via landscape, dwarfing his characters while still granting them enough reflected grandeur to feel iconic. Emphasizing the natural features that surround it, he sets up this quaint Welsh village as a place of timeless recurrence, of small lives lived within a framework of specific tradition, even as the story he tells takes place at a very specific moment, amid the industrialization that will change these people’s simplistic lifestyle forever. Ford clearly yearns for these simpler times, and the way he frames the characters in the shadows of these hills demonstrates both his affection for nature and his routine de-emphasizing of the individual, who’s but a speck in this huge, mostly-vacant world. But the…
-
There's a mythology of small-town yesteryear (all salt-of-the-earth folks and tight-knit families dedicated to helping one another) and a counter-mythology (a place of secrets, gossip, narrow-mindedness and petty judgment). Here's a near-perfect synthesis of the two, a reminiscence that allows for both the good and the bad of the good old days. Old World vs. New World tensions drive virtually every conflict, from the labor dispute at the coal mine, to Angharad's choice between marriage for love and marriage for family security, to the Morgan parents' differing perspective on the value of book-learning for youngest son Hugh. And it's all unified by the idea of the valley community as both comforting and confining, quick to provide support but just as…
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A terrific film about growing up, taking a stand, and living as part of a community. The best moments here work because of Ford's framing and lighting (that opening shot, a mournful wedding, a shadowy funeral, a walk into the first day of school...). My only quibble, and this is pretty minor and will likely pass from memory, are a few broadly depicted marginal characters. The film's cumulative power is unimpeachable.
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I have limitless gratitude for John Ford. The man was an extraordinarily active filmmaker, will go down as one of the best directors ever, and inspired a plethora of filmmakers including Orsen Welles and Akira Kurosawa. That said, I've had trouble connecting with his films so far. At least with Stagecoach and The Grapes of Wrath I can see why they're so celebrated. But I don't see the appeal of How Green Was My Valley. The film has some solid ideas and is never unwatchable, but at the same time the film is pretty dull and the lead character wholly uninteresting. I hope to one day see a John Ford film I can fully embrace, but How Green is not that film.
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What am I supposed to say here? I know for many cinephiles John Ford is closer to god than man ("one might spend a lifetime contemplating The Searchers or Wagon Master or Young Mr. Lincoln (39) and continually find new values, problems, and layers of feeling" — Kent Jones) , but it was impossible for me to watch this without getting extremely frustrated by the lumpy, one-damn-thing-after-another narrative of what's clearly a massive book (651 pages!) funneled into a rush of disconnected incidents: romance here, schoolmaster bullying here, vignettes from the coal mines throughout. It was kind of brilliant to program this as part of a series on movies influenced by Weimar cinema (all those cross-hatched shadows and stark shadows), but basically there's enough group singing here for five Terence Davies movies and an overwhelming amount of "sentiment," but it all seems patchy and sticky to me. SORRY.
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While How Green Was My Valley is a bit heavy on melodrama and sentimentality, which took me out the film every so often (hated the excessive use of music), the material is pretty good thematically; I liked how it examined the many hardships of life through the spectacle of the family, and felt the religious content was rather refreshing. John Ford's direction is, as you would expect, peerless, the production design was great (the movie wasn't even shot on its novel-based location in Wales due to WWII, so an 80-acre set was built in California -- pretty damn impressive), the performances are all well done, and the rich cinematography deserves mentioning. A fine film overall, but it joins the long list of unworthy Best Picture winners (infamous for beating Citizen Kane & The Maltese Falcon).
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Wonderful drama, affecting performances and plenty of rousing Welsh singing.