How Green Was My Valley

How Green Was My Valley a.k.a. The movie that beat Citizen Kane for Best Picture.
I tried watching this on a week I was working and that didn't work out so well. I kept falling asleep. I did get through the first hour of it before I stopped it and then finished it a couple of days later. And, I have to admit that by the end of it I stopped paying much attention to it.

The movie is about a boy Huw growing up in a valley in Wales. They had a coal mining plant and all his relatives worked there. The movie is narrated by the adult Huw as he relives his memories of his childhood. He watches the town transform from a happy little town to a town that is full of gossip and corruption. It starts as a nice place where people are happy and no one complains. Then the owners of the coal plant start lowering wages and firing people. So, the coal miners form a union with the help of Huw's older brothers much to the objection of their father. Then Hews Sister falls in love with the priest but marries the coal mines owner's son. Which then causes all the older women to start gossiping. We watch as Huw becomes the first of his family to go to a state school and deals with trying to fit in. Finally the movie ends with his father dieing in the coal mines.

The movie is just under 2 hours but it is one of the most boring movies. The narration is slow and just puts you to sleep. If anyone has trouble sleeping just watch this movie and it will knock you right out. Originally the producer Darryl F. Zanuk wanted to make this movie a four hour epic like Gone With the Wind. Thank God he didn't. It would have taken me a week to watch the whole thing. The one funny scene comes after Huw gets beaten at school by his teacher with a wooden ruler. Two guys from his valley come in and smack around the teacher in front of the class.

How green was his valley we will never know because it was shot in Black and White. The reason for that is because they shot it in California and flowers wouldn't match the Welsh landscape. The reason they had to shoot in California was because of World War 2 and the Nazi's continued bombing of England. Would it have made a difference I don't know but I think it still would have been boring.

One of the controversies with the movie was the pro-union message in the first part. While the father is against the union the union ultimately is formed and portrayed as a good thing. I wonder how the movie would be received today in our political landscape. I bet all the conservative pundits would trash the movie and call it anti-American.

The main question with this movie is how did it beat Citizen Kane a movie now called the best movie of all time, for Best Picture? I have no idea. While I think Citizen Kane is over rated an not even close to the best movie of all time I have to agree that it is way better then this movie. I haven't seen all the movies nominated for best picture that year but I know Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion, and The Maltese Falcon were both better then this one. John Ford was nominated for his 3rd Directing Oscar in a row and Won his Second in a row. He won the previous year for The Grapes of Wrath and was nominated the year before that for Stagecoach. As far as I am concerned this is the worst of the 3 and think he should have stuck to Westerns. A young Roddy McDowall does a good job at playing Huw but too bad its just a bad movie.