That said, the story did do one thing: it finally gave Citizen Kane <\/em>fans a new villain to rally against. For years, that slot has been filled by How Green Was My Valley<\/em>, which \u2013 as last week\u2019s Oscars reminded us \u2013 was the film that won the Academy Award for best picture of 1941, an award that one would think<\/em> the body would\u2019ve given to Kane<\/em>. Coincidentally enough, How Green Was My Valley<\/em> just landed on Hulu<\/a>, so this convergence of events is about all the excuse we need to give it a fresh look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like most prestige pictures of the era, How Green<\/em> was adapted from a popular novel \u2013 this one published in 1939 and written by Richard Llewellyn, who claimed it was based on his own childhood (discovered after his death to be false; he based the novel on good old-fashioned research). It tells the story of the Morgans, a close-knit coal mining family (\u201cand proud of their trade\u201d) who live and work in the South Wales Valleys. That story is told in reflective voice-over (by Irving Pichel), as the family\u2019s youngest son Huw, now an adult, looks back at (literally) the greener pastures of his youth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Director John Ford spends much of the early stretch in hangout mode, observing their daily routines \u2013 to the mine, to home where they wash and eat dinner, the distribution of spending money, etc. \u2013 and to their full-throttle celebrations of big events and milestones. As the current lingo goes, they work hard and play hard, and live lives of relative comfort and happiness. All of that changes with the announcement of reduced wages at the mine, its owners taking advantage of an abundance of available workers, and ones who\u2019ll work for lesser pay, to work at all. The elder Morgan boys propose strength of negotiation in numbers, to which their father (Donald Crisp) roars, \u201cUnion, is it? I never thought I\u2019d hear my own sons talking socialist nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s no surprise to learn that Ford directed How Green Was My Valley <\/em>the year after The Grapes of Wrath <\/em>(which Hulu also just added<\/a>), so cleanly does he carry over that picture\u2019s themes and concerns. The earlier film may have been set in the present, while this one stretched back to the late 1800s. But its questions of hard work for fair compensation, and what one is willing to risk for it, could not have felt more urgent \u2013 and they still don\u2019t. (\u201cEmpty bellies and desperation began to conquer reason,\u201d the older Huw recalls, and that line still stings.) The 22-week strike at the mine tears the community apart (\u201cSomething has gone out of this valley that may never be replaced\u201d), and the family as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet the film is not a polemic, nor a pamphlet. The focus remains squarely on the family \u2013 their tribulations and tragedies, as well as their occasional triumphs. And considerable emotion is found in the subplot of pretty daughter Angharad (Maureen O\u2019Hara, in the first of many collaborations with Ford), who loves the village\u2019s preacher (Walter Pidgeon), but knows that such a union is impossible, so she enters into a marriage of convenience with the mine owner\u2019s rich son. (Her misery during the wedding sequence is palpable, and heartbreaking.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mere synopsis can make How Green Was My Valley<\/em> sound like melodrama, or even soap opera, but it\u2019s not like that all. Like much of Ford\u2019s best work, it\u2019s unabashedly sentimental and unapologetically lyrical; Arthur C. Miller\u2019s camera holds on faces and landscapes during those reflective voice-overs, letting one feed off the other. But it\u2019s also quite funny and earthy, and even when the structure is episodic, it\u2019s going somewhere; by the time he\u2019s building to the emotional crescendo of the closing scenes, you may not realize how involved you\u2019ve become. (That sequence also includes one of his specialties: modest displays of great courage.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n In retrospect, it\u2019s hardly surprising that How Green Was My Valley<\/em> topped Citizen Kane \u2013 <\/em>or, for that matter, The Maltese Falcon<\/em> and Sergeant York<\/em> \u2013 for that elusive Best Picture Oscar, and for Best Director besides (Ford famously won two years in a row, after the aforementioned Grapes of Wrath<\/em>). It\u2019s quite a traditional and classical film, which has always been the Academy\u2019s preference over pictures as groundbreaking and offbeat as Kane<\/em>. But the degree to which the tide has retroactively turned on Ford\u2019s film isn\u2019t fair either. It\u2019s something akin to the current hostility towards Ordinary People<\/em>, which beat out Raging Bull<\/em> for Best Picture and Best Director in 1980 \u2013 but is, in fact, an excellent picture outside of that equation. How Green Was My Valley<\/em> is wonderful; it\u2019s just not as breathlessly great as Citizen Kane<\/em>. That\u2019s not its fault. Few films are. “How Green Was My Valley” is now streaming on Hulu<\/a> and the Criterion Channel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/how-green2-1024x551.jpg\")
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