While a tad too sentimental and not always accurate historically, it's a very impressive and heart-rending film

Rating: 8/10 (15 May 2007)

This is an extremely sentimental and worthwhile film that fans of Hollywood's Golden Age should see at least once. While I don't think it's director John Ford's best film (I preferred HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, THE QUIET MAN and FORT APACHE), it is superb and well-crafted. Some of the acting (in particular Jane Darwell as "Ma") was terrific and very realistic, while occasionally it was a bit over the top (John Carradine as "the Preacher"). And the story itself was excellent and well-constructed--making an emotional and heart-felt appeal for justice and a more Socialist nation in response to the poverty of the Great Depression. You can't help but be sucked into the pitiful yet somehow hopeful lives of the Joad family. While some of the facts were definitely exaggerated in order to make this point (making it a one-dimensional fight between good and evil), the overall message of upheaval and loss was important and potent.
I am a history teacher and so naturally I gravitate to films like THE GRAPES OF WRATH. It is an amazingly powerful film that is extremely touching and lovingly made--though historically, some of the film is pretty much fiction. While most web sites I checked praised the book, one presents a thoughtful and documented analysis of the actual Okie experience and compares it to the book and movie--coming up with many ways in which THE GRAPES OF WRATH isn't a totally accurate portrait of the times. Some examples cited were the general success the "Okies" had when they arrived in California, that the exodus to California from most of America PRE-DATED the Dust Bowl years and the Dust Bowl itself had very little actual impact on Oklahoma (though it DID affect Kansas and some other states considerably). This isn't to say that the film is completely fiction or it was a bad book or that Steinbeck was a Communist, but that Steinbeck wasn't always careful in his research and seemed to stretch facts to make his social and political statement. See for yourself--it makes interesting reading at: http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/jun02/steinbeck.htm