How Green Was My Valley (1941)

Directed by John Ford. Starring Roddy McDowall, Donald Crisp, Maureen O’Hara, Walter Pidgeon, Sara Allgood, John Loder, Anna Lee, Arthur Shields, Patric Knowles, Barry Fitzgerald, Morton Lowry, Frederick Worlock, (voice) Irving Pichel.

Sensitive, nostalgia-hued melodrama of a Welsh mining family during the late 19th century, focusing primarily on young Huw Morgan (Macdowell, who looks eerily similar to Anna Paquin here); though the film takes place over the course of ten or fifteen years, his character inexplicably never ages much, as if he witnessed some manner of horror out of The Tin Drum! The narrative, based on Richard Llewellyn’s 1939 novel, lacks coming-of-age cohesion, gets scattered during the middle chapters, and is overly gentle in its approach, tackling tough subjects of labor unions, corporal punishment, divorce, etc. with a hand so delicate and discreet that there’s no urgent sense that anyone should feel for these affected characters. Despite its myriad failings, the technical craft is superior, particularly James B. Clark’s editing and Arthur C. Miller’s Oscar-winning photography, and many of the supporting performances are touching—as the stern but loving father, Crisp also won an Academy Award. Pichel’s narration, heard mostly at the beginning, is as grating as the alarm whistle during the mine collapse scene (for its release in the UK, the narration was done by Rhys Williams, who also plays a boxer onscreen). Ford won his third of four Best Director Oscars for his work here, though this was the only time that his movie also won Best Picture. That Best Picture victory has almost become this movie’s cursed legacy, since most people only remember it for defeating the far more famous and acclaimed Citizen Kane.

63/100