esrosedotblog

LOSS

Today's NYT 1176 Best Film was a weeper; but a good weeper. Five Academy Awards!

How Green Was My Valley (1941)

They say that it is John Ford's best (?) non-western which may be damning with faint praise.

Set in a Welsh mining town we see the green, happy valley fall to a misbegotten slag heap through the eyes of the Morgan family.

The first 15 minutes are all happy sunny days with the wonderful family (six sons, one daughter) and then, bit by bit, it all falls apart.

Cut wages, two sons go to America, one son is killed, the daughter is asked to marry the mine owner's son, two more sons go off, the slag continues to pile up symbolically.

It is, despite the melodrama, the story of the losses wrung out in the name of 'progress'. It is here right now and quite up to date. It is just that the way the story was told 60 years ago seems a bit trite and over the top now.

It is a social document nonetheless. These things did and are still happening. Just go to Sago, West Virginia and all the other wastelands being created each day.

There is one really annoying thing—the constant fucking music. Mood music.

I grew up with it and I am sure that at the time it was just fine to have. Now, it just seems ludicrous and inappropriate. Noise. I doubt that there is any minute in which there is not a sobbing violin or a men's chorus singing traditional songs.

What else? Roddy Macdowell as a child star in the making. He is a bit too cute here and it is hard to imagine our Roddy working in the pits but there he is. I am more attuned to his turn in Lassie and Lassie Come Home which I saw as a child. Then, he grew up to be a pretty good photographer, actor, out gay man and one of the apes on that planet.

I am meandering.

It was a rich film with plenty to look at and there were even some tears. Helpless. All that sobbing music made me do it.

I will give it a 3 out of Netflix5. Maybe a 4 if it stays with me.