:How Green Was My Valley:
I came to this movie prepared to hate it and with the battle cry: Bronwen Morgan is not a blonde!!!!! (At least not in my mental image.) what’s more Angharad and Mr. Gruffyd are not the main characters of the story yet the actors get top billing!
If “favorite” is a tier then this book is one of my most very favorites. My father brought it home from the library for me to read one summer when I was a teen and I’ve loved it ever since, re-reading it every few years.
In fact, although hubby and I have chosen not to have children, we did agree on baby names at one point and our first daughter would have been Bronwen Elaine after this book.
With all that said, Betsie and I sat down to watch this together one Tuesday evening after a meal of barbecue. She remembered the book fondly and was looking forward to seeing the movie.
She hated it. She was utterly bored and thought there wasn’t much of a plot.
I was archly critical of every minuscule way that the movie deviated from the book, including the opening monologue. I had no patience for a story point not slavishly true to the book, from Bronwen’s hair color to the way in which I felt the relationship between the parents wasn’t accurately portrayed.
All that said I DID like the movie, finding it poignant and afecting and very human. I can see me watching it again but when I really want to experience the story I am going to be a lot more likely to read the book.
This was a Darryl Zanuk and John Ford production, two huge names in movie development during this time.
Filmsite.org:
The film was nominated for a total of ten awards and walked away with five Oscars: Best Picture (Darryl F. Zanuck for 20th Century Fox), Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Donald Crisp), Best Cinematography (Arthur Miller), and Best Art Direction. Its other nominations were for Best Supporting Actress (Sara Allgood), Best Screenplay (Philip Dunne), Best Editing, Best Score and Best Sound. The most controversial aspect of its Best Picture/Director win was that it defeated two of the greatest pictures ever made: Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) and John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941).
:Citizen Kane:
The American Film Institute (AFI) ranks Citizen Kane as the number one movie of all time yet it didn’t win for best picture the year it was released. When being compared to How Green Was My Valley the special that I saw said Valley came from the heart and Kane came from the head.
Kane is a cinematic masterpiece, from the use of what I learned was called “deep focus” photography to its carefully constructed narrative method that has us shuffling among the flashbacks of a variety of characters, to the makeup used to age Orson Welles from a 25 year old to a person in his 70s. This was one of those rare films given over in it’s entirety to the artistic control of one man: Orson Welles. RKO pictures offered to allow him to direct, star in and have final cut rights over a story of his own creation. He was from the radio world so he employed some very good and creative people who were in turn drawn to him because of his fresh eyes on the medium.
I had to watch (a part of) of review by Roger Ebert to understand what was so special about the movie magic behind Kane. The story itself is intriguing and “worthy” of the movie around it, but I didn’t find the storyline as compelling as How Green Was My Valley.
I know I come prejudiced to this debate, being a fiercely devoted fan of the book behind Valley but I’d be just as happy to say I hated it than that I liked it. And it’s not that I didn’t like Kane, I just found Valley more touching, and I preferred it.
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