TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Tyreece Hulme One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

JohnHowardReid Producer: Darryl F. Zanuck Copyright 26 December 1941 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Rivoli: 28 October 1941. U.S. release: 26 December 1941. Australian release: 9 April 1942. U.S. length: 10,730 feet. 119 minutes. Australian length: 10,902 feet. 121 minutes.SYNOPSIS: A Welsh mining family copes with the Depression.NOTES: Nominated for the following Academy Awards: Best Picture (won); Best Supporting Actor, Donald Crisp (won); Best Supporting Actress, Sara Allgood (the voters preferred Mary Astor in The Great Lie); Best Directing (won); Best Screenplay (incredibly passed over in favor of Sidney Buchman and Seton I. Miller's Here Comes Mr Jordan), Best Black-and-white Photography (won); Best Sets (won); Best Sound Recording (in another amazing aberration, the Academy preferred That Hamilton Woman); Best Film Editing (William Holmes received the ultimate honor for Sergeant York); Best Music Scoring (Bernard Herrmann carried off the statue for All That Money Can Buy).How Green Was My Valley figures on many Ten Best Pictures of the Year lists, including The New York Times, The Film Daily (with 500 votes - nearly twice as many as the third place-getter - it was second to Mrs Miniver), and The National Board of Review (second to Citizen Kane). John Ford won The New York Film Critics' Award for Best Direction.COMMENT: Today's brain-washed kids may find it slow-moving and too remote from their own having-it-so-easy experience, but it would be supremely difficult to find anyone over forty who is not touched and moved by How Green Was My Valley. One of the cinema's great emotional experiences - doesn't matter how many times you see it - the film is so involving, its characters so sympathetically real and so superlatively played by a well-nigh faultless group of players: Even dull old Walter Pidgeon is brilliantly cast!Maureen O'Hara was never more convincing, while Roddy MacDowall contributes a performance so intensely luminous it actually lights up the screen. Rarely have writing and acting been brought so powerfully close to perfection not only by the direction but by the incredibly skilful narration delivered with such insight and beauty by Irving Pichel.Zanuck's vision as producer, Ford's adroit staging and dramatic sense of composition, Miller's appealingly atmospheric photography, Day and Juran's impressive sets, and Newman's deft use of Welsh song and chorus contrib¬ute mightily to the heart and soul of How Green Was My Valley. With such a powerful story and such forceful acting, the film would undoubtedly have made its impact on a less generous budget and less inspired craftsmanship. But with unlimited funds at its disposal and unlimited technical expertise lovingly poured into every aspect of its production, How Green Was My Valley comes across with such stunning power as to lift it to the rarest heights of motion picture achievement.

pompey meowth My Father was born in 1931 and grew up in South Wales, he said that virtually everything about this film is complete fantasy. They lived in the worst possible conditions imaginable in those days, he didn't have proper shoes, only wooden clogs, till he was old enough to wear an old pair of his fathers boots.The worst parts has to be the ridiculous singing and Irish accents of some of the actors. A small but interesting pointer to how the film cares little for reality or any sort of British audience, on the notice at the coal mine it says how the wages for all labor will be cut. Labour is not spelt labor in any part of the Uk then or now.A really good film could be made about this story but only by the British or indeed, maybe only by the Welsh.

gavin6942 At the turn of the century in a Welsh mining village, the Morgans (he stern, she gentle) raise coal-mining sons and hope their youngest will find a better life.William Wyler, the original director, saw the screen test of McDowall and chose him for the part. Wyler was then replaced by John Ford, who thankfully kept McDowall. Fox wanted to shoot the movie in Wales in Technicolor, but events in Europe during World War II made this impossible. Instead, Ford built a replica of the mining town at the nearly 3,000-acre Fox Ranch in Malibu Canyon. Can you tell the difference? Of course, the cast had only one Welsh actor: Rhys Williams, and he was only in a minor role.At the Academy Awards, the film won Best Picture, Best Director (John Ford), Best Actor (Donald Crisp) and Best Cinematography. Today we complain that the Best Picture did not go to "Citizen Kane". For me, the bigger insult is the Cinematography award. Gregg Toland is among the best who ever lived.

Tad Pole . . . than GONE WITH THE WIND, REBECCA, and HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY. This trio of films won the "best picture" Oscar for 1939, 1940, and 1941, respectively, as the deadliest war in world history was picking up steam. In 1941, Academy voters COULD have given their most coveted golden statue to such Top Ten Movies of All Time as CITIZEN KANE or THE MALTESE FALCON, but the supporters of dictator appeasement (who made up the bulk of the Tinsel Town electorate) was hell-bent on ignoring present realities and instead immortalized this early model for "Ralphie's" 1983 starring vehicle, A CHR!STMAS STORY. Yep, this studio back-lot John Ford-directed piece also is mostly fluff, also narrated by an unseen adult version of the young boy seen on screen. HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY more or less glosses over such potential themes as the greediness of the "One Percenters" (always at the expense of normal people), the rape of the Public's homeland by out-of-control industrial bullies, or the notion that the rich should be encouraged to swoop in and snatch the fairest blossoms of common folks womanhood to lives of cold heart-breaking artificiality.Instead, the main focus of HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY is on a men's chorus constantly singing pieces in Welsh. Well, my dad was a card-carrying UAW member, 90% of whom have disappeared since his heyday at "The Plant." Similarly, I'd wager that the number of Welsh-speaking people in the world is at least 90% less now than the 1941 tally. Yet, whenever ANYTHING happens in HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, a hundred men immediately start singing in this dying language. Bronwyn gets married? Let's sing. Miners strike? Sing again. Meillyn has an out-of-season baby? Sing to drown out their cries. Huw flogged at school? Sing sing sing. Ivor killed in the colliery? Sing a little softer. You get the idea. This songfest was the last gasp of Pre-War escapism for awhile. MRS. MINIVER and CASABLANCA brought the war home in 1942 and 1943 as "Best Picture" Oscar winners. But, as the WIZARD OF OZ taught us that all Munchkin-sized folks love to sing, HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY similarly enlightens us regarding the wicked Welsh. But you should NOT title your flick HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, and then turn around and shoot the picture in black & white!