Main Cast: Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Donald Crisp, Roddy McDowall, Barry Fitzgerald, Anna Lee
Release Year: 1941
Country: US
Run Time: 125 minutes
Plot
Spanning 50 years, director John Ford's How Green Was My Valley revolves around the life of the Morgans, a Welsh mining family, as told through the eyes of its youngest child Huw (Roddy McDowall). Over the years, the family struggles to survive through unionization, strikes, and child abuse. As they do so, their hometown and its culture begins to slowly decline. Donald Crisp portrays Gwilym, the patriarch of the Morgan household, who dreams of a better life for young Huw. Based on the novel of the same name by Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley won five Academy Awards in 1941, including Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Crisp), Best Art Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Picture (beating Citizen Kane). The book was later adapted into a 1975 BBC miniseries. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
Review
How Green Was My Valley is fondly remembered by fans of director John Ford for its loving recreation of a Welsh coal mining village. Spanning some fifty years in the life of its protagonist, the film presents an often poignant portrait of the good and bad of small town life. At the center of the story is the dehumanization brought by increasing technology; the scenes in which more efficient machinery makes some of the mines' best workers unneeded and unemployed remain relevant to today's audiences and our environment of shifting corporations and uncertain security. Ford scholars differ on where to rank How Green Was My Valley -- indeed there is no clear consensus on what film critics and historians consider to be Ford's greatest -- but it was a popular choice as the best film of 1941, winning five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. ~ Richard Gilliam, All Movie Guide
The film tells the story of the Morgans, a close, hard-working Welsh family at the turn of the twentieth century in the South Wales coalfield at the heart of the South Wales Valleys. It chronicles a socio-economic way of life passing and the family unit disintegrating.
In 1990, How Green Was My Valley was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
The story is told through the eyes, and with the voice-over narration of Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall), now a middle-aged man leaving the mining town of Cwm Rhondda, recalling the events that most impressed his younger self. The boy Huw is played by Roddy, but the voice-over is that of actor Irving Pichel, who is never seen in the film.
His first memories are of the marriage of his brother, Ivor (Patric Knowles), and the burgeoning, unspoken, and ill-fated romance of his sister, Angharad (Maureen O'Hara) with the new preacher, Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon). Because of the forbidden nature of the romance, Angharad marries another man, whom she later divorces, and Mr. Gruffydd leaves his church in disgust after being subjected to untrue town gossip - his romance with Angharad is never consummated, nor do they ever marry. Still too young to work in the local coal mine like his father, Gwilym (Donald Crisp), and his five older brothers, Huw senses the seriousness of an imminent strike by the rift it creates between his father and the other boys when three of them move out of the family abode.
During the tensions of the strike, Huw saves his mother (Sara Allgood) from drowning and in so doing temporarily loses the use of his legs. As Gruffydd aids in Huw's recovery, insisting on a positive attitude, he suggests that it is only the first of many trials the boy will have to face. Other subplots are featured in the film. The film concludes with the death of the father in a mining accident.
Background
William Wyler, the original director, saw the screen-test of McDowall and chose him for the part. Wyler was replaced later by director John Ford. Ford wanted to shoot the movie in Wales, but events in Europe during World War II made this impossible. Instead, he built a replica of the mining town at the nearly 3,000-acre (12 km2) Fox Ranch in Malibu Canyon.[2]
The cast had only one genuinely Welsh actor in a minor role, Rhys Williams.
How Green Was My Valley was adapted as a radio play on the March 22, 1942 broadcast of the Ford Theatre, with Sara Allgood, Donald Crisp, Roddy McDowell, Maureen O'Hara and Walter Pidgeon. It was also adapted on three broadcasts of Lux Radio Theater (September 21, 1942, March 31, 1947 & September 28, 1954) the first with Allgood, Crisp, O'Hara, McDowell and Pidgeon, the second with Crisp and David Niven, the third with Crisp and Donna Reed.
