“How Green Was My Valley” is indisputably, one of the greatest films ever made. The caveat to this bold and provocative statement is that it is intended for sentimentalists who believe in the struggles of the hard-working poor around the world. If you love your ancestry (whatever it is), if your “people” have suffered hardships, and, most importantly, if you love your family above all else -- this is the film for you.

“How Green Was My Valley” works on so many different levels that to truly analyze it would require an article of much more depth than I have the time to devote. It’s enough to give you a general idea of why I like the film, than to write about the cinematography (lovely black and white, with effective shadow and light and no gratuitous close-ups), the music (spectacular), the acting (sublimely real). John Ford directed this masterpiece, and out of ten nominations, the film won five Academy Awards (Picture, Director, Cinematography, Art Direction, and Best Supporting Actor for Donald Crisp). Considering that “How Green Was My Valley,” beat “Citizen Kane,’ for Best Picture, the latter considered by most to be the greatest film ever made, you should get an idea of what type film we’re talking about. This film also bested “The Maltese Falcon.”

What is most astounding is that so authentic a film could have been manufactured on the dream factory lot of a Hollywood set in California. There, director John Ford transported us to aspects of his own childhood experiences in an interpretation of a novel by Richard Llewellyn. He takes us from a make-believe place to a truly realistic Welsh village all the way across the Atlantic, to a village of coal-stained and hard-working coal-miners, where everybody knows each other because they all do the same thing

[Rather than recount the numerous plot points of the film that make it noteworthy (because the film should be your experience upon viewing it, not yours lived through my recount of it), I will only capitalize on general areas that I believe should be given due attention when viewing the film. A very lengthy recount of the film, with much more detail can be found at http://www.filmsite.org/howg.html, but I don’t know if you want to read the narration of each scene, which I tired of after one or two pages. But there it is. Get the blow by blow from that lengthy review. I’m just sharing my personal insights, for whatever they are worth.]

“How Green Was My Valley,” is an extremely sentimental film that has some of the most profoundly moving moments in it, because of Ford’s reticence to “overdo it.” In this film we have numerous episodes of scenes that inspire tears but the tears surface because what your eyes see on screen seems and feels so real. A child learning to overcome the beatings of his schoolmates, dealing with the frustration of illness, handling the problem of being the youngest of several much older siblings – all these are heartfelt issues that anyone with a heart and tear ducts might have had to grapple with experientially him or herself.

“How Green Was My Valley,” is sentimental because it is told through the eyes of a child, namely, “Huw” the young and gifted Roddy McDowell. Huw is a feeble child, weak of limb, and a gentle one, to boot. He is a youngster in awe of his family, headed by his strong-willed father, played brilliantly by Donald Crisp. He is the youngest of a family of strong, handsome men, kind of a “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”— a brotherly lot of coal miners who are fiercely loyal to their family and to hard work. “Huw” is too young to really toil in the mines although he fancies that it is his fate to carry the family tradition. It so happens that he’s too mentally astute to toil in the mines, he’s told, which makes him very much the outsider in his own family. Hence, we’re able to see him as the narrator, the virtual narrator-camera-lens of his own life in the green valleys of Wales. Huw is everywhere and no where. He overhears conversations, even one’s he doesn’t quite understand, and because everyone is busy getting on with the life of living, they don’t have much time for him. As a result, there aren’t too many people who can explain too many things to him, except Mr. Gruffydd, the Village Preacher, who happens to visit him often – because he’s in love with Huw’s sister, Angharad Morgan, played splendidly by Maureen O’Hara.

I am no fan of voice-over narration. In fact, I see it as a lazy screenwriters attempt at storytelling shortcut. But narration works excellently here, unlike most other films. It might be the mellifluous tones of the narrator (Irving Pinchel) who recounts Roddy McDowell’s past, in his adult years as his adult character tells us about his valley. Mr. Pinchel’s voice is soothing to the ears, and sets the pace for the whole film, rich and full of deeply restrained love and nostalgia for times that can never be experienced again. He takes us to his past and we experience the coalmines, the soot, the meager earnings, and the hardships experienced by a religious family that believes in earning an honest buck.

The film is very episodic in nature, as we turn Huw’s pages to experience the things that impacted him the most in his young life. There is no real plot per se, except that of a family trying to survive the difficulties of trying to tame nature. The civilization surrounding that feat of coalmining is brought to life with much character, beautifully orchestrated, literally by the hymns of a Welsh choir that sang songs in the beginning and throughout the film.

Anyone who has read any of my reviews should have caught on by now that I believe that the music score plays a powerful role in inciting emotions from the viewer, which implicitly impacts one’s appreciation of the film in general. [The Great] Alfred Newman’s score is no exception. It is a romantically haunting score, with beautiful melodies that take you through the countryside of the Welsh town, the happier times of drinking in the pubs, of coming home from work, depositing money in a woman’s apron. The measured score also takes you through the quiet of unrequited love, as is brilliantly portrayed in the characterization of the relationship between Walter Pidgeon and Maureen O’Hara. But it would not work without the slow development of the film, the characterizations and the fact that by the end of the film, you actually know the characters extremely well (or you wish that you could see more of the ones that actually leave the film early on).

Today’s supposed great films take you through the most bizarre of sufferings (“Silence of the Lambs,” – a man-eating psychopath, “Life is Beautiful” – a child abandoned during Nazi occupation). What doesn’t work for me in most contemporary Hollywood films, however, is that the films intentionally play mind-games, for the sake of the mind-game, falsely, trying to conjure up sentiment rather than tell a story. However, nowadays, what results more often than not is a viewers' conflicted emotions, mainly because the heart is a tender piece of machinery that can feel real pain, but, also, the heart is cynical toward Hollywood hyperbole because we’ve seen “it” all by now anyway. Unlike Roberto Benigni’s “Life is Beautiful,” which practically tears your heart out with its shameful and manipulative sentimentality, also told through the eyes of a once-child now grown up, “How Green is My Valley” truly is beautiful – because of its understatement.

Life is really beautiful in the latter film because we experience a child’s difficult life without the abject sentimentality. The sentimentality is of the sort that anyone would feel of seeing a family struggle with poverty with dignity. In this case, as is the case of the Morgans, there is the added discomfort of having a beautiful daughter from the wrong social class.

I refuse to tell any details about the movie. I would never want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen the film. All I can say is that it is a resonant film that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

Interestingly, the other aspect of the film that works is that it could not really take place in most of America, except maybe a century ago, when the towns were still small, and housed by people mostly related to each other. Wales is small. America is large. It is that sameness of the people on the screen that works. They have the same accents, they’re of the same social class, for the most part, they go to the same pubs and worship together in the same place of worship. It is perhaps a bit too romanticized, but being that I don’t come from that historical experience, I know not how realistic it portrays village life. This film gives you a taste of that “same worldliness” that we don’t have in this country (and which also makes the diversity of this country truly great). For those who have Welsh backgrounds it is a lovely paean to your forefathers. For those who don’t have Welsh backgrounds, it is a lovely paean to family. For those without family, it is a lovely homage to life, and the simple living of it. Because there is much beauty in life, of merely being alive. This film so eloquently says as much. Nostalgia of any sort is a beautiful thing, because the mind always seems to color the experience a beautiful green.

“How Green Was My Valley,” is multi-layered, textured, and much more complex than it would seem upon watching it. The camera work, the acting, the ensemble nature of the film is all so well done. There is so little that one can actually criticize about this film. I would watch it, with open eyes and an open heart, and see if it doesn’t make you ponder your own childhood experiences, whether you were ever in Wales or not.



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older