Review of The Grapes of Wrath (1940) by Jj M — 28 Jun 2011

The Ghost of Tom Joad will always exist when there's poverty in the world...the first time I seen this the other day and yes, it is a marvelous film. Beautifully shot and impressively adapted from Steinbeck, it plays out as a heart-rendering, realist, on-the-road tale of misfortune, that gets your goat going as much as Fonda gets his, in his sterling performance as the recently-out-of-prison, chip-on his-shoulder son from a down-on-their-luck farming family.

It could have been flawlessly poetic, only for State propaganda to raise it's ugly head in the production - the paradise-like camp they reach is run by the Dept. of Agriculture.