How Green Was My Valley

As one of John Ford’s masterpieces of the human condition, How Green Was My Valley wound up beating out one of the so-called greatest movies of all time, Citizen Kane, for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The movie was nominated for ten awards in all, winning five of them. Based on Richard Llewellyn’s best-selling novel, How Green Was My Valley contains all of the components of sweeping epics and tells a large-scale tale of a coal-mining Welsh family.

The film is less a cohesive story and more a series of episodes in the life of the Morgan family. Taking place in the South Wales coalfield at the heart of the South Wales Valleys (shot in the hills of Malibu), How Green Was My Valley features themes that were controversial in 1941 Hollywood. Themes of labour, socialism and troubled domestic living help give Ford’s picture realism, but the war and the attitude of the time toward such themes prevented it from being the four-hour epic first imagined.

Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall) is the centrepiece of How Green Was My Valley. We are introduced to Huw as a grown-up via voiceover (Irving Pichel) and he begins to recall the events of his life as a young boy. He is from a lush green valley and lives with his God-fearing, traditional family. The men, his brothers and his father, all work at the coal mine. His father, Gwillym (Donald Crisp), is a stern but respected man. He is traditional in his ways and doesn’t mind the hard work of the mines.

Huw, as the youngest of six sons, observes family life day after day. His sister, Angharad (Maureen O’Hara), is seventeen and beautiful. She helps Huw’s mother, Beth (Sara Allgood), with the chores of the house. The film follows various events in the lives of the Morgans, including a relationship between Angharad and a preacher Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon), and a strike at the coal mine that eventually leads Huw’s brothers to form a union and eventually leave for America.

Ford does an incredible job at pulling performances out of his actors, especially with young Roddy McDowall. His ability to quietly carry the weight of the motion picture and stand under the emotional consequences brought forth by his family and their actions is tremendous. McDowall never overdoes it, but he still brings out a sense of youth and toughness that makes him an ideal fit as a member of the tough-and-tumble Morgans.

The movie was shot in black and white to help sell Malibu as Wales. While it certainly would have been beautiful to see some of Ford’s terrific shots in colour, the black and white cinematography really brings out the darkness and dreariness of the mining culture and adds more depth to the scenes within the coal mine. Ford’s direction is impeccable and he pulls everything he can out of each sequence. How Green Was My Valley marked Ford as the first director to win two Oscars in a row.

The episodic nature of the film both helps and harms things. While it does give us a real sense of family life for the Morgans and makes us casual observers, it does also risk leaving us high and dry just when things are getting good. The final scenes of the picture seem to be setting up something grand, but How Green Was My Valley leaves out some of the more interesting situations. I would have liked to have seen more of how young Huw got on with his newfound responsibilities and how the family continued to deal with the pressures in the town, but such is life.

It is hard to say whether How Green Was My Valley is a better picture than Citizen Kane or even The Maltese Falcon. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen those movies, so I’ll have to plead ignorance for the time being. I will say that How Green Was My Valley is a powerful, emotional epic that stands out as a story about the struggles of a hard-working, faithful family. It is well-acted and expertly crafted by John Ford, making it well worth a watch for fans of fine cinema.

Trailer: