TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Amy Adler In rural Oklahoma, Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) is walking and hitchhiking home from prison, after a stay of four years. After taking a knife at a dance, Tom hit the attacker with a pan, killing him. Nevermind that it was self-defense, Tom still gets sent to prison. He hasn't heard from his parents, Ma (Jane Darwell) or Pa because they aren't the "writing types". A fierce dust storm makes Tom's final few steps treacherous. Arriving back at their small cabin, where his family are sharecroppers, Tom and his passing friend, Casy (John Carradine) are startled to find no one at home. A shell-shocked neighbor informs the other two that the family has been kicked off their land in foreclosure. They are nearby at Uncle John's house, where his family is about to suffer the same fate. Its the Depression and the Dust Bowl has ruined the land, taking off the top soil; no one can grow crops. When Tom catches up with his Ma and company, they are overjoyed to see him, for their plans are to pack a truck and move to California, where handbills show pickers are needed. Grandpa doesn't want to leave the only home he has ever known, so they drug him with medicine and haul him along. Now on the Mother Road, route 66, the journey is difficult; the truck breaks down frequently, no one wants them to stay long anywhere they rest, and Grandpa dies of a stroke. Will California really be the Golden, Promised Land? NOT ON YOUR LIFE! This heartbreaking adaptation of Steinbeck's classic is a must-see for the whole wide world. This family of hard-working folks has one calamity after another, just trying to earn an honest and living wage. Those who lived in the Dust Bowl part of the country were hit especially hard, as the soil had been overworked and winds took the topsoil off, creating damaging storms to crops, humans, and animals. No better were the "lies" of the handbills, advertisements that migrants were needed in California, where over 300,000 poor helpless folks showed up for very few jobs. The cast, with Fonda at the helm, is wonderful as is the scenery, costumes, and careful direction to show the truth of a desperate situation. Wanna get down on your knees and thank the Lord for what you have, Americans? You will when you view this amazing film!

leplatypus This remarkable movie is among the best ever done for emotional content and in spite of its old age, it confirms me 3 facts:1) I have always heard John ford about open fields, distant horizons and that's true here: the unlikely journey of the family offers us stunning visuals about the wild, dangerous and yet beautiful american landscape and yes, it's maybe even more gripping in black and white!2) This old movie is an eye opener about exploitation of men by men and it's much more essential than the today cries about skin, gender, sex or arms. The last prejudices are just like toys for babies, bones for dogs, something easy and inoffensive to focus the attention while the main, big attack is left untouched and unchallenged! In a way, those old american movies were thus more intelligent, assertive and free back then than today because i can't name a single recent movie about the poor, the exploited and the left-over of the American Dream while crisis and inequalities have never been so strong! 3) This old movie is like Missisipi Burning a precious proof for the case prosecuting America! So this country genocides natives, crushed workers rights, corrupts its politicians, makes war all over the globe, practiced slavery and segragation but ends up considered like the worldwide light of freedoom! Just unbelievable (and excellent propaganda)! Here the case is clear: money is the only value, reference to deal with people life, law is made for the rich and powerful and that's all! Thus destroying farms is lawful, mourning relatives and memories is a waste of time... In the same period, Soviets were into collective farming and they are the only bad guys! Honestly, in America, lands is owned by a few tycoons so i don't see a fundamental difference. In Germany, labor camps were built and those that we watched in sunny free California seems to be like them: workers behind barb wire, in barracks with the minimum of comfort and exploited to their death!And for sure, Ma Joad is an exceptional angel, a unforgettable ray of light in this world of terrible darkness: a must see if you have human feelings!

Miguel Nascimento The magnificent adaptation of the novel "The Grapes of Wrath", with John Ford on his best shape. The whole movie is a lesson on how to convey the feeling behind a time (the great depression in America) on the masterpiece images that resulted in the film. Cinematography, acting, edition, all are there with a purpose and combined they produce an outcome that only a great director is able to mind. Every detail is made important, like the clothes condition along the movie, the despair that increases in every face, the familiar ties that responds to every fact. Every detail tells the story in a way to make the spectator take place on the happenings. Special attentions to the constant use of shadows, which almost play as another group of characters. Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell and John Carradine are absolutely great but fit in the story in a way to lever the shinning of all the other actors/characters. Finally, it's a crazy idea, but it seems that the people in charge of "The Walking Dead" had in this movie a great playbook to guide them in a way to produce the story of a group of hopeless people trying to survive every new day in a society that has just been reduced to ashes.

John Brooks As subjective as it may seem, I cannot avoid making the comment this film was a bit boring. Painful to watch. There's a strain that the narrative builds over the watcher, the pressures of an incredibly tough and depressing series of life events, where a viewer may be left thinking: "well I don't have an issue with dramas or tough films, but why focus on such difficult and common life events ?" It's one of these things about historical movies - a particular event having occurred doesn't necessarily make for a great film plot or story to tell. The incredibly rough Great Depression years were awful and all, sure, but to make 2 hours plus of film based on the Steinbeck novel... this is like an American Emile Zola, an American Germinal. That monotonous old naturalism/realism narrative of exploring the misery of the working class... why, out of everything else there is to write about or make a film about... You'd ask yourself why an author would focus all his energy on something so bleak and real, there's such a lack of fantasy, the story telling is just totally flat and linear. What, we're barely given 30 seconds of poetry at the end from Fonda and then a speech from the mother in that last scene, but 2hrs10 for that ?...Good film. Tough to watch. 6.5/10.