How Green Was My Valley

John Ford’s 1941 drama How Green Was My Valley was nominated for 10 awards, winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Black and White Cinematography, and Best Black and White Art Direction-Interior Decoration. The film is a coming of age story, featuring the Morgans, a close, hard working Welsh mining family in 19^th century South Wales Valleys as the environment is destroyed and a way of life is lost.

The film opens as an older Huw (pronounced Hugh) Morgan (voice of Irving Pichel) delivers a monologue about how he is packing his belongings and leaving his valley, never to return. By now, the valley and its villages are blackened by the area’s coal mines.

It then goes back in time to a young Huw (Roddy McDowall), the youngest child of Gwilym Morgan, walks home with his father. His older brothers, Ianto (John Loder), Ivor (Patric Knowles), Davy (Richard Fraser), Gwilym Jr and Owen work in the coal mines with their father and his sister Angharad (Maureen O’Hara) keeps the house with their mother, Beth (Sara Allgood). Huw has an idyllic childhood. The town is beautiful, has yet to be overrun with mining spoil, and his home is warm and loving. Huw is smitten when he meets Bronwn (Ana Lee), but she is engaged to be parried to Ivor. At the wedding party, Angharad meets the new preacher, Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon). There is mutual attraction.

Trouble soon comes with the mine owner lowers the wages and the miners strike in protest. Gwilym tries to mediate by not supporting a strike, but it estranges him from the other miners and his older sons, who leave the house. At a meeting of the strikers, Beth threatens to kill anyone who harms her husband. However, while returning home, she crosses the fields in a snowstorm in the dark and falls into the river. Huw dives in to save her with the townspeople’s help. He temporarily loses the use of his legs, but recovers with the help of Mr. Gruffydd, which further endears him to Angharad.

The strike is settled and Gwilym and his sons reconcile. However, many miners have lost their jobs and the town is pooer. Angharad is courted by the mine owner’s son Iestyn Evans, but her heart belongs to Gruffydd. He loves her too, but cannot bear to subject her to an impoverished churchman’s life. Angharad submits to a loveless marriage to Evans and they leave the country.

Huw begins school at a nearby village, but he is picked on by other boys. He is taught to fight by the town boxer Dai Bando (Rhys Williams) and his crony, Cyfartha (Barry Fitzgerald). After being beaten by the teacher, Mr. Jonas (Morton Lowry), Dai Bando and Cyfartha avenge Huw with an impromptu boxing display on Mr. Jonas.

When Bronwyn gives birth to their child, Ivor is killed in a mining accident and the four other sons are fired in favor of less experienced, cheaper laborers. With no other prospects, they leave to seek their fortunes abroad. Huw is awarded scholarship to university, but declines to work in the mines. He moves in with Bronwyn to provide for her and her child.

When Angharad returns without her husband, vicious gossip spreads through the town of divorce and where her love truly lies. Gruffydd is denounced by the deacons and after delivering a condemnation of the town’s small-mindedness, leaves.

Just then, the alarm whistle sounds. Several men are injured and Gwilym and others are trapped in a roof fall. Huw, Gruffydd and Dai Bando descend with others in a rescue attempt. However, when Gwilym is found, he succumbs to his injuries. Huw rides the lift to the surface, cradling his father’s body. His face is devoid of innocence.

The film ends as an older Huw recalls that men like his father cannot die and are still real in memory while a montage of family vignettes play.

The best thing this film has going for it is its cinematography. It’s quite beautiful. But the funny thing is that the studio couldn’t film in the UK like they wanted, due to WWII. So they settled for the 20^th Century Fox backlot. This was the reason it was filmed in black and white as the colors of flowers and other vegetation would have been different than those in Wales. This actually does the film good as it makes the events seem more like recollected memories.

And while the acting isn’t terrible, it’s not really all that great, with Pidgeon’s Gruffydd the best acted character. For a film set in a Welsh village with Welsh characters, they certainly have a lot of Irish accents. Rhys Williams was the only Welsh actor in the cast.

Reason why this got Best Picture? Maybe because of Huw losing his innocence and coming of age?

Final Call: This is the film that won Best Picture over Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, Suspicion, and Sergeant York. It’s a good film, but not that good. It replaces All Quiet on the Western Front as #7.