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How Green Was My Valley Movie Review

How Green Was My Valley is a 1941 historical drama film directed by John Ford and starring Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara and Donald Crisp. It’s a solid, but overly emotional movie.

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“Men like my father cannot die.

They are with me still,

real in memory as they were in flesh,

loving and beloved forever.

How green was my valley then“

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The Morgan family, settled in a Welsh mining village, raises the sons to be coal-miners, but hopes for the youngest son, Huw, to find a better life. This is one of those movies that are charming in their period piece trappings, but certainly never great at anything that it does, except for maybe some technicalities, but more on those later.

Getting a glimpse at Wales was very interesting and fresh as we rarely see this region even in today’s cinema. The community was wonderful here, the workers fighting for their rights and its socialist message was great, but overall the movie was too maudlin in its final act that was only meant to tug at audiences’ heartstrings and shamelessly so.

This is an unquestionably endearing movie fueled by a lovable sense of family and the importance of community. The movie has that nostalgic, romanticized view of the past, but it also emphasizes the numerous changes that happened during the Victorian Era and just how hard it hit some smaller communities in the countryside.

Again, there is nothing of particular worth here in terms of storytelling nor is it especially deep, but it’s engaging and charming enough that the plot mostly worked for me. The characterization, on the other hand, was troublesome. For a movie that is filled with so many personalities, most did not make any impact, which was not only unfortunate, but highly problematic for this type of flick.

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Walter Pidgeon and Maureen O’Hara were solid in fine, but far from memorable roles. Huw himself needed better development for being basically the central figure of the story and the one that frames it with his narration. The fact that he wasn’t better developed really hurt the movie.

But Donald Crisp was fantastic as the patriarch of the Morgan family. The conflict that arises between this stern man and his sons is very well explored and is the heart of the picture. The family dynamic steals the show. The acting highlight is Crisp as his performance is believable, confident and very complex, resulting in a much deserved Oscar win.

If there was any category that this movie deserved to win in, it was definitely Best Supporting Actor, but otherwise it did not deserve those numerous awards. It was nominated for the staggering amount of ten awards, winning five eventually. That was just too much in a year of ‘Citizen Kane’ and ‘The Maltese Falcon’, famously beating both in many categories.

John Ford’s direction on How Green Was My Valley was admittedly quite strong, but he did not deserve a back-to-back Oscar for this baity movie. Yes, this was an Oscar bait movie, one of the earliest ones, and that goal was evident in its every aspect. It’s neither all that well scripted nor edited, but at least it looks great.

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The cinematography is phenomenal. The production design is mesmerizing. And the score is also quite lovely. The village looks so cozy and lovely that I would honestly love to visit it as it was portrayed here. There is a lot of power to be mined from this imagery. I just wish that it was stronger in other areas.