Movie Stats:
Released 1941 (USA)
American, in English
Director – John Ford
Stars – Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara, Donald Crisp, Roddy
McDowell
Plot Summary:
Some fifty years after the fact, Huw Morgan recalls his
childhood in a small Welsh coalmining village in the late 1800s. McDowell stars
as the young Huw; Crisp plays his father (he won Best Supporting Actor); O’Hara
plays his sister Angharad; and Pidgeon plays the new preacher in town, Mr.
Gruffydd.
Bad Stuff:
The sentimentality, especially at the beginning of the film,
is really cloying. I rolled my eyes a lot.
It drove me crazy that no one spoke with a Welsh accent (or
in Welsh, for that matter). I guess a lot of people have a hard time
understanding the Welsh accent, but I happen to love it and the absence of it
was noticeable.
I like Maureen O’Hara, but I thought her performance here
was terrible. It was like she spent
the whole film performing with a head injury. It was distracting.
Good Stuff:
Honestly, I don’t have a lot to say about this movie that’s
“good.” I mostly feel “meh” about it.
The one thing I really liked was that the film discussed
some issues that are difficult to talk about to this day, issues such as
unionization, children born out of wedlock, and the hypocrisy of some
churchgoers. For the time this came out, I consider that a bit on the edgy
side. Of course, a lot of these issues weren’t really tackled head-on, but I
appreciate that the film had the guts to bring them up.
The Verdict:
As I said, a big, fat “meh.” I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t
like it either. This is one of those films where, even though a lot happens
(several deaths, a life-altering injury, perceived infidelity, etc.), it feels
like nothing happened at all. And what was up with all the random singing? In
the end, it felt like a waste of two hours. I can’t imagine that I’ll ever
think to myself, “Hey, I haven’t watched ‘How Green Was My Valley’ in a while,
let’s pop it in.”
2 comments:
Oh the random singing! It's so fun to watch a movie and suddenly singing breaks out. I think people used to randomly sing more, but I also think it was the movie's way of selling songs. Early cross marketing.
I was just going to write a comment that had me confusing Maureen O'Hara with Vivian Leigh (b/c she was Scarlett O'Hara.) Thank goodness I caught that.
You know me, I'm usually all for random singing, but I didn't connect with it here.
At one point [SPOILER] Huw and his mother meet with an accident due to some shenanigans going on in the village. Both are bedridden for months & Huw is in danger of being permanently paralyzed. Once his mother can finally get out of bed, all the villagers come out to sing her a "So glad you're out of bed, sorry we nearly killed you" song. I was WTFing all over the place. Just weird.
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