Review of How Green Was My Valley (1941) by Ivan D — 07 May 2010
John Ford was known then and today as a delicate director of films in the western genre, but "How Green Was My Valley", his Oscar Best Picture winner, tackles not the mythical facade of the west, but the everyday lives of a Welsh family, chronicled on an epic scope but with its emotions still on the ground, still reachable and affecting.
Lavish pictures made at the time contains melodrama performed by A list larger than life movie stars just to show how towering the emotions contained in such films(e.g. Family Chronicle), a recycle formula John Ford never bothered to include in this film.
"How Green Was My Valley" was about Huw's(great juvenile performance by Roddy Mcdowell) coming to terms with his consciousness of his place in the family as much as the film is about the family itself and its trials.
The unexpected familial tragedies that has occured in the picture was common plot devices today, but the way these turbulent events was turned from present anguish to Huw's melancholic longing of the valley, a narration not as a plot mover, but fragments of memories, of how green the valley used to be, and how blue it is to go, and leave it all to pass away.
This review of How Green Was My Valley (1941) was written by Ivan D on 07 May 2010.
How Green Was My Valley has generally received very positive reviews.
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