No home, no job, no peace, no rest

Rating: 7/10 (23 May 2016)

Nunnally Johnson's adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath added a visual imagery and a more upbeat ending to the more grim and downbeat novel.
When Bruce Springsteen released the album The Ghost of Tom Joad the inspiration was the cinematic view of the movie and not the book.
Henry Fonda is Tom Joad released from prison and discovers that his family have lost their farm along with all the others. The farmers have been hit by the dust bowl and the Joad family pack their old jalopy and head from Oklahoma for California for a better life thinking their is plentiful work as crop pickers. In an arduous journey they see the America of the Depression era 1930s, whole families displaced and getting exploited by landowners exploiting cheap labour and the police protecting them and violently breaking up any dissent by the labourers.
The subject matter is certainly forbidding for the time and raw. The references to socialism were toned down by director John Ford but he certainly tackled the exploitation of migrant workers. This is a story of a family trying to stay together against the odds.
Henry Fonda gives a sterling performance as Tom Joad a man who realises that he is destined to fight for social justice after his experiences on the road. He is supported by Jane Darwell as Ma Joad, the glue which keeps the family together in the dark days and John Carradine the fallen preacher Jim Casy, a man who lost his faith but as he headed out along Route 66 with the Joads he discovered socialism.