| Twentieth Century Fox | Release Date: March 15, 1940 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
15
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
One of the great American social films: strong, ribald, deeply compassionate. [30 Sep 2005, p.C6]
As son Tom Joad, Henry Fonda gave the screen performance of his career. [09 Apr 2004, p.10E]
Too many films these days trivialize poverty as an ironically, tastelessly over-produced pageant to earn kudos. The Grapes of Wrath is flawed, but it captures that shiver of panic that grips anyone for whom the money for the next meal is unknown. The film remains a vital document of the perversion and torment of the fantasy most commonly known as the American Dream.
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In the vast library where the celluloid literature of the screen is stored there is one small, uncrowded shelf devoted to the cinema's masterworks, to those films which by dignity of theme and excellence of treatment seem to be of enduring artistry, seem destined to be recalled not merely at the end of their particular year but whenever great motion pictures are mentioned. To that shelf of screen classics Twentieth Century-Fox yesterday added its version of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
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The word that comes in most handily for The Grapes of Wrath is magnificent. Movies will probably go on improving and broadening themselves; but in any event, The Grapes of Wrath is the most mature picture story that has ever been made, in feeling, in purpose, and in the use of the medium. You can drag out classics (it is often safer not to go back and see them) and you can roll off names in different tongues and times. But this is a best that has no very near comparison to date.
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Unlike the book, the movie slides into idealistic Hollywood convenience (the state-run labour camps, for example, are paradise compared to the privately owned versions), but the story is driven by gritty realism and remarkable acting. [31 July 2009, p.R20]
This famous film, high on most lists of the greatest films of all time, seems all wrong - phony when it should ring true. Yet, because of the material, it is often moving in spite of the acting, the directing, and the pseudo-Biblical pore-people talk.
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