How Green Was My Valley

Editor’s note : this review is a translation of one of the first reviews to ever appear on this blog back in 2009. Those were less than a 150 words long and were written immediately after the viewing of each film. This is as aforementioned a translation and a longer edit of this original film review.

How Green Was My Valley (John Ford, 1941)

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.

Oft maligned as the greatest steal of all time at the Academy Awards, wining Best Picture and Best Director over Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley, that was supposed to be William Wyler’s film, is part of one of the most prolific era of Ford’s career. Along Stagecoach, The Long Voyage Home, Young Mr. Lincoln, The Grapes of Wrath, Tobacco Road, and Drums Along the Mohawk were all made between the time span of 1939 and 1941. This is almost as many films as Stanley Kubrick did in his entire career. Joking aside, Ford’s How Green Was My Valley is quite unique and personal in his career.

The Shanghai Gesture

The Shanghai Gesture (Josef von Sternberg, 1941)

A young woman, Poppy, out for excitement in Shanghai, enters a gambling house owned by "Mother" Gin Sling, a dragon-lady who worked herself up from poverty to buy the casino. Sir Guy Charteris, wealthy entrepreneur, has purchased a large area of Shanghai, forcing Gin Sling to vacate by the coming Chinese New Year.

Getting into the works of director Josef von Sternberg is something engaging and for some viewers alittle bit exhausting. His visual prowess and richness has never been equalled even compared to a master like Max Ophüls. Sternberg’s films are like a huge snowstorm; it is beautiful to look at but very tiring to try to drive through it. His most distinct work was with star Marlene Dietrich during the 1930’s, most notably with The Blue Angel, Scarlet Empress, and Morocco. With The Shanghai Gesture, Sternberg makes one of his final notable films. Known as a difficult and stubborn director, he fought to keep his artistic vision intact and to stay the only master aboard. Clearly being successful at his craft, he is on the very select list of Pantheon Directors of the late film critic Andrew Sarris.

This extravagant fresco of peculiar characters depicts a young globetrotter called Poppy (Gene Tierney) and her father (Walter Huston) on a business trip in Shanghai. While Poppy wants to enjoy life and meet interesting people, her father purchased a great deal of land in Shanghai and forces its owner to vacate her casino for the Chinese New Year’s Eve. We slowly discover that Mother Gin Sling (Ona Munson), the casino owner, is linked with our two other characters. The story passes from Drama to Film noir and never sticks to one genre in particular. This gives a genuine pace to the film and a unique structure.

The Sternbergian signature is at every corner of every frame and every camera movement. The overcrowded frames of opulence and saturation of Sternberg’s touch can’t be denied. It is sometimes very hard to distinguish a film from a director or another when it comes to the films of this era. However, like Orson Welles or the aforementioned Ophüls, we don’t need the credits to recognize him.

As Jeffrey M. Anderson noted, Tierney captures the role Dietrich may have had in real life with Sternberg. The downfall of Poppy recalls how the director felt hard to recover from the split with his long time collaborator.

This being the third Sternberg film I’ve watched and I can say that it is my least favorite; this spot is still held by Scarlet Empress with The Blue Angel not far behind. The Shanghai Gesture is above a whole lot of other movies of its era, and lesser Sternberg is better than any film worth a look. 

Sullivan’s Travels

Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)

A director of escapist films goes on the road as a hobo to learn about Life...which gives him a rude awakening. – IMDb

This masterpiece by Preston Sturges is perhaps the finest movie-about-a-movie ever made. Hollywood director Joel McCrea, tired of churning out lightweight comedies, decides to make O Brother, Where Art Thou—a serious, socially responsible film about human suffering. After his producers point out that he knows nothing of hardship, he hits the road as a hobo. He finds the lovely Veronica Lake—and more trouble than he ever dreamed of. – Criterion Collection

Written and directed by Preston Sturges Sullivan’s Travels is a delight as a comedy and a very autobiographical view of the show business about Sturges himself. Sturges is one of the many talented but oft-overlooked comedy directors that gained respect later in his career like Howard Hawks. In the case of Sturges, his films were recognized for their quality much later after his death. One of the first directors to only direct his scripts written without any collaborator and working with a “troupe” of actors. Just like Todd McCarthy wrote in his film essay about Sullivan’s Travels, Sturges was the first director to fully embrace and deserve the authorial billing on the title card.

The satirical comments towards Hollywood and the filmmaking business are some of the most personal elements Sturges has included in his movie. Making Sullivan (Joel McCrea), the director, more opaque than himself, he achieve to take his successful comedy director and plunge him into the lower depths just like Charles Chaplin put his little tramp. The obvious admiration of Joel & Ethan Coen towards Sullivan’s Travels brought them to make a film named after the film Sullivan was researching about with his travels: O’Brother Where Art thou?.

Sullivan’s Travels starts as a comedy but slowly merges into drama. It brought a degree of sophistication that few comedies have ever reached. It is self-conscious of itself, while playing on the unlucky and unwealthy consciousness of people who lived a difficult life, Sturges sees and defines comedy. He demonstrates how this Art is essential to everyone’s lives. It might not be his most hilarious film but it is a very thoughtful and keen film.

One of the most inviting elements of Sullivan’s Travels is the pleasant presence of Veronica Lake. This beautiful blonde was nineteen years old at the time she starred in Sullivan’s Travels. She was that young and that sexy but one thing people don’t know was the fact that she was six months pregnant during the shooting. But it was all covered up with brilliant costumes and camera trickery. Lake also brings the right counter balance to Joel McCrea’s earnest performance. Plus, her presence lifts the beauty of the film.

This masterpiece is a must see especially for any fans of comedies. I highly recommend it.

Citizen Kane

 Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

Since this is one of the films that has been analyzed and dissected the most in Cinema history, this review will try to be original, fresh, with a new look on this monument in filmmaking. Orson Welles’ first film, technically avant-gardist, with a structure in flash backs, telling the different aspects of the story of Charles Foster Kane and his different personas and the way the people around him perceived him. Well, Welles was not alone in this adventure, on the script he was working with Herman J. Mankiewicz who brought many of the ideas of the story. There was also cinematographer Gregg Toland who worked before with the great John Ford. Robert Wise soon to be the director of classics like West Side Story, The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Set-up and many more was the editor of Citizen Kane. Without forgiving the wonderful cast of Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warrick, Everett Sloane, and Orson Welles himself.

He was already a huge star in America with his legendary broadcast of War of the World. Also the director of many Theatre plays, Welles wasn’t a simple man put in the director’s chair.

The story opens with the death of Charles Foster Kane, head of a huge corporate media in the USA. The films opens with many shots of his vast domain, Xanadu, where decadence is just a simple word. On his dying bed his last word will be Rosebud. A journalist is charged to find what that word meant to discover the mystery of that intriguing man. The first meaning of the whole film is that we cannot resume someone’s life with a simple word. We have to take the many angles and how the man was perceived by his peers to be able to learn a little about him. Kane’s public life, from his adoption to his fall after his failed Presidential campaign was resumed by the News on the March following his death. This facet of the film is amazing when put back in context, because the news seem real and the paparazzi (this term was invented with Fellini’s La Dolce Vita in 1961) feeling of them is unsettling, the shots with the greats of the time are particularly effective. A parallel with the life of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst has always been made with the life of Kane. The story was widely inspired by the Art collector misanthrope especially when you compare Xanadu with Hearst castle in San Simeon in California, which I had the luck to visit in May 2010. The decadence and saturation of luxury of the place demonstrate how fortunate and disconnected to the “proletarian” Hearst was.

However, the story of Charles Foster Kane isn’t only about Hearst’s empire, it’s also about Orson Welles himself and how to create a myth about a public figure. Welles was a man of myths and a man who told anecdotes and stories about his life that some may be true and some aren’t. The way Citizen Kane is constructed is a lot like when someone has to live with his own lies and work around them, every character has his own vision of Kane and how he really was. The perception of everyone is unique and Kane shows that.

Moreover, Citizen Kane is a critic of the American Dream, in the early 1940’s being financially successful, popular, powerful, and beautiful was and still is the main occupation of capitalists in America. Charlie Kane was those things and he represented the rise of a man starting as someone who would be a poor worker before being adopted by a successful man and starting from a simple newspaper he made it to become a respected wealthy magnate trying to get to the White House. Juxtaposed, you have his fall and his descent, the attempted suicide of his wife, and his recluse final days. Like Howard Hugues who stayed in his Hotel room for years afraid of everything and everyone. Citizen Kane demonstrate that in some ways wealth and popularity are vile values that can turn a man into his misery.

The technical aspects of Citizen Kane, often praised for the invention of the deep focus and the presence of ceilings in the frames but cinematographer Gregg Toland was indeed invented by Toland on The Long Voyage Home directed by John Ford. This director is one of the major influences of Welles along with Jean Renoir. Welles told Peter Bogdanovich that every day during the preparation of Citizen Kane him and Toland were watching Ford’s Stagecoach and Welles was asking how to shoot this and that. They both dissected every frame and every scenes of the film because for Welles it was a strong film. Perhaps, even if Citizen Kane didn’t invented those technical effects, it shows a great mastery of them.

As stated in the first lines of this review, this is not an attempt to analyze and describe Citizen Kane in its whole but more something like my interpretations of its meanings and the understanding of the theories about it. It’s difficult to be negative about a classic that’s been sitting on the top of the world of filmmaking for so long, with few other films Citizen Kane is the kind of oeuvre that can’t be judged amongst men but amongst gods, if you permit the comparison...

To Be or Not to Be (1941)

To Be or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1941)
The more we discover about Ernst Lubitsch’s films the more we can understand the Hollywood Cinema of today. His films of the 1930’s and 1940’s are the cornerstone of filmmaking. His comedies of the pre and post Code are hilarious and intelligent. Just watch his very efficient Ninotchka, Design For Living, The Shop on the Corner, and Trouble in Paradise to discover his range of work. The quality of the scripts and the sober “mise en scène” of his films are particularly noticeable. François Truffaut, in his book Les films de ma vie, made a great homage to this master from Vienna.

To Be or Not to Be tells the story of a theatre troop in Warsaw who escapes from the Nazis by portraying Generals, Professors, and the Fuhrer of the Third Reich. This comedy plays on many levels, first there is the main couple of the troop. Him, , thinks that he is the greatest Warsaw Theatre actor and her, Carole Lombard in her final role before her tragic death, has a secret lover while her husband is on the stage doing his monologue. Slowly the story gets mixed up and every character is asked to perform in a way to distract the Nazis and escape from what could be a horrible denouement. Even if some elements of the script are unlikely the moments of laughter are memorable as for some performances and lines.

Plus, it clearly influenced Quentin Tarantino on the writing of his Inglourious Basterds script especially the setting of the story and how a little group of individuals could resist and trick the Nazis. But, don’t forget the other influences from Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen, Sergio Leone, the original Inglorious Bastards, and many other films.

What’s strongly important to remember about Lubitsch’s film is how his comedies are strongly structured and how they play on many levels of stories and humour. Like Chaplin’s Great Dictator, To Be or Not to Be is a comedy mocking Adolf Hitler and his party, but the two films take this persona and make it a subject of laughter and derision. They happen before the discovery of the Holocaust and the seriousness of the situation excluded any pretext to make comedies about it. Those films witness how Hitler was perceived outside of Germany, in To Be or Not to Be the menace it represented is easily passed by to help the course of the story. Even today films like these couldn’t be done because the subject is still sensible and comedies turned to lighter subject and aren’t as politicized as they were at the time of these two great masters.

It is refreshing to watch To Be or Not to Be because it brings a different light on the perception of Nazi Germany. As horrible as this era was, the fictional treatment of these events is intelligent and appealing. I highly recommend this dashing film.

Meet Average Joe

Meet John Doe (Frank Capra, 1941)


Forged like many Frank Capra's films, Meet John Doe is an efficient feelgood entertainment. Beginning with the fraud of the invention of the character John Doe (Gary Cooper) itself, Ann (Barbara Stanwyck) is an opportunist daughter of a great thinker. The values carried by John Doe are American conformism at its best, sometimes the film cheers them up and other times it feels more like a critic of their overuse to manipulate the average Joe that John Doe represents.

Even with all its feelgood/conformism for the masses, Meet John Doe has something particularly interesting about: the film was made at a time where America stood by itself without entering into World War II. The approach adopted by Capra is a little cynicism coming from the mouth of John's bum friend. He actually gives the chance to the film to express some anti-conformism speech about society, wealth, materialism, love, etc.

But like any Capra picture the speech never felt into philosophical questions or intense debates on society. They are films that give you hope on humans by showing average men that accomplish little things that symbolizes greater ones. One last thing, is it me or Frank Capra likes to have endings on Chrsitmas day?


A review by Michaël Parent

Sullivan's Travels - Mini-Review

TSPDT Greatest Films #128 Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)

After having seen Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve that he made the same year, 1941, I was charmed by his slapstick comedy, his style, his dialogues, and the accessibility of his films. In Sullivan's Travels Joel McCrea plays a director who's tired of making the same old films and he wants to make the story of a hobo. So he tries to live like a hobo and in his journey he finds what the real people like to see in the theater. He also finds a girl, "There's always a girl in the story!".

Well, compared to The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels is a little bit inferior, but still very good and it takes a spot on my Top 10 of the year 1941.

Michaël Parent

How Green Was My Valley de John Ford Retrospective

TSPDT Greatest Films #307 How Green Was My Valley (John Ford, 1941)

Continuant mon projet de critique amateur de classiques du Cinéma ou comme certains peuvent dire "vieux films". J'ai décidé cette semaine de présenter un film que je viens tout juste de découvrir; How Green Was My Valley de John Ford réalisé en 1941 et gagnant de l'Oscar du meilleur film la même année, rien de moins!
John Ford est probablement le réalisateur le plus prolifique du Cinéma, tant du côté de la quantité de films qu'il réalisés, pas moins que 144 films oui vous avez bien lu, que du nombre d'Oscars gagnés pour meilleur réalisateur, 4 dont 6 nominations! De ses plus grands films il ne faut pas oublier The Searchers, Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, The Quiet Man, Young Mr. Lincoln, The Informer, Drums Along The Mohawk, The Long Voyage Home, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, My Darling Clementine, They Were Expendable, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande, The Wings of Eagles et bien plus!
Reconnu en majeure partie pour sa narrative du Western et du Film de Guerre, Ford est cependant un réalisateur qui traite autant du drame historique que du drame familial. Ses collaborations avec John Wayne et Henry Fonda sont très notables et font partie intégrante du folklore cinématographique.
Par contre, le film How Green Was My Valley qui lui valu l'Oscar du meilleur réalisateur se démarque de ses autres films. Dans un premier lieu, il se passe en Irlande pays des ancêtres de Ford et aurait été tourné dans un village non loin d'où ces derniers étaient établis avant de se diriger vers l'Amérique.
La touche macho de Ford se ressent très fortement et le fait que les enfants de la famille Morgan, soit 6 garçons contre 1 fille est pour quelque chose. Il traite souvent de la fraternité entre hommes et des relations de rapprochement et ici de déchirement au sein d'une famille traditionnelle.
Ford est un des cinéastes qui se contredit le plus souvent tant par sa sensibilité que par sa brusquerie par moments. Dans son How Green Was My Valley il traite des syndicats qui tenteront de sauver le peu de fierté qu'un village de mineurs de charbon peuvent conserver. Étant un fervent Républicain dans ses dires il se rapproche souvent d'idées socialistes dans ses œuvres sans pour autant y militer pour ou contre. Il fait preuve d'un humaniste et d'une compréhension des problèmes de l'homme de la classe moyenne sans avoir à passer par des chemins prévisibles.
Sur le plan de la forme, ce film est photographié magistralement et doit absolument faire partie du parcours de tout cinéphile qui se respecte. Son récit est livré de manière classique sans autant être dépourvu d'intérêt pour le spectateur.
La grande force de John Ford est de livrer des œuvres denses peuplées de personnages forts et attachants et de leur donner une interaction propre à chacun.