Review of How Green Was My Valley (1941) by Jim H — 26 Oct 2013
A boy comes of age in a Welsh village.
A sprawling, ambitious epic of a film, How Green Was My Valley wreaks of nostalgia, in the voice over, in the salt-of-the-earth characters, and the cursory treatment it gives its themes. While many of these nostalgia films achieve a universality, I found the characters ultimately unrealized and unexplored. For example, Angharad's love affair with the preacher, which is aborted by her marriage to an upper class man, is portrayed only slightly, and the next time we see her, she is miserable. But what about the interceding time? What about the preacher's life between then and now? Whereas a good epic like War and Peace leaves none of its main characters ignored, this one satisfies itself with episodic fragments.
Overall, epics like this one are tricky, and I think director John Ford bit off more that he could chew.
This review of How Green Was My Valley (1941) was written by Jim H on 26 Oct 2013.
How Green Was My Valley has generally received very positive reviews.
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