How Green Was My Valley (1941)

John Ford’s ‘How Green Was My Valley’

In 1941, America had not yet joined the war efforts and John Ford was still cranking out films. After the wild success of "The Grapes of Wrath," which dealt with the end of a way of life, Ford decided to make something close to his heart with the adaptation of the 1939 Richard Llewellyn novel, "How Green Was My Valley," which also seemed to deal with a withering away of a way of life. The reason this story hits close to home for Ford is that it deals with a heritage familiar to himself, dealing with an Irish community  - Ford's parents were Irish immigrants. The story takes place at the turn of the century, and showcases the dramatic effects industrialism and capitalism has on a lower class Victorian community.

The film begins with a sense of community. A small boy, Huw, whose family works in the nearby coal mine, feels apart of something bigger than himself. The town is green and beautiful, his home is warm and loving, and the community is firmly together, as they sing Irish songs while they make their way home. This idyllic senario begins to crumble, however, when the coal mine begins to lower wages. When Huw's brothers begin to form a union to protect their workers' rights, they are kicked out of the house by their family for stoking 'socialist' ideas. As many of the townspeople join the efforts to strike against the factory, many others feel differently. This causes great derision amongst the community, as the whole town begins to fight and hate each other. It even gets to a point where the town preacher is excommunicated from the church board members for being sympatheic to the workers. As the town fracturing increases, the black smoke that emits from the smokestacks begins to turn the lush greenery of the village into a black, smoky hellscape. Throughout this hardship, young Hew must deal with economic downfall, personal injury to his legs, his family breaking apart, and finally, his father dying in the mine. The young boy's idyllic family and community have now become fractured, leading to a 'coming-of'-age.' 

This story is able to deal with larger social and generational issues while, at the same time, being a story about growning up. Young Huw must deal with the harsh realities of life very quickly. Through these harsh realization, the audience gets to examine the largescale effects the turn of the century had on a community and people. The industrialization and capitalism that really took off during this time allowed for the collapse of the Victorian era. The sense of common community amongst the townspeople was a well-established structure in the beginning, as all would gather for church, sings praises to the queen, party and celebrate together, and even share in each other's wealth by donating funds to one another. However, these social structures begin to deteriorate as the capitalistic machinations of the mine owners begin to instill economic downfall. This new world is fall of hatred for one another, as capitalism has turned each man into an individual who must look out for his own well-being, rather than a member of a community. This changing of social attitudes created the new landscape for the twentieth century. Fast forward to the time the film was released, 1941, and you see those effects still. The world was in a place full of bigotry, hatred, and separation. The tensions throughout Europe had erupted into genocide and horror. In America, civicilians were paranoid and resentful of one another, as their capitalist structure had turned all of them against each other, especially since the economic collapse of the global market only 12 years prior. "How Green Was My Valley" was a film that depicted the origins of this chaos, told threw the eyes of a small child watching his Victorian community descend into hatred, distrust, and economic despair.

The painterly way in which Ford stages his images enhances their visual efficiency. This is because Ford is able to portray the way characters look, where they are in relation to the space they're in, and in relation to the perspective of the viewer. The result looks visually efficient, as it is able to provide full context to the situation, rather than have to put in the work to overly explain everything. The visual space the characters are in, what they are doing in that space, how they are behaving, who they are in realtion to, and where they are located in the depth of the image all allow the viewer to create a dimensional understanding of the characters and their situations. The camera will open a scene to show characters all interacting for a common goal, to showcase community. A scene will demonstrate a character's headspace by examining their visual movements against a backdrop. Character relationship are showcased by having the characters visage bounce off of each other in various ways, like having characters turn away from each other to demonstrate a disagreeing sentament. The best example of Ford's painterly images are the scenes of workers leaving the mine. The image shows the workers huddled up in one mass, demonstrating their 'herd' state. They are shown vacating the mine, as it spews black smoke over the picturesque landscape of the small village. The mine, as it sits perched atop of the hill, is elevated. This elevated state creates the abstract sense of power, as it contains power over the village and it's people. The 'herd' state of the community as it descends the hellish mine provides so much information, both literal and abstract, in its single image. The industrial capitalist structure of the mine turns its workers into a herd of sheep, exerting its ultimate power of them, as well as creating blackness on a green, warm, world.

Ford's unmistakable style lent itself greatly to the telling of a simple coming of age story. This story was fully of its time in 1941, showcasing the effects of capitalism in a new world. The film will forever be remembered, however, as the film that beat out "Citizen Kane" for best picture. Its relevancy and simpleness with which it tells its story of a young boy resonated greatly with contemporary audiences. The coming to terms with the harshness and disillusionment of life was the social sentiment during a time when the entire world was at odds.