How Green Was My Valley (1941)

 How Green Was My Valley (1941)

A perfectly fine, nostalgic story of childhood growing up in a Welsh mining town highlighting elements both positives and negatives of small, tightly knit communities, and partially ruined (for me) only because the Marx Brother’s Room Service (1938) play-within-a-play kept popping into my mind.

Never put these two on a double bill!

A family of colliery workers which include several grown up men, an attractive young lady and a young boy find their employment disrupted when men willing to work for less wages come into town.

Interfamilial conflicts arise from both a desire and a resistance to unionize and strike.

Other story elements are a forbidden romance between the daughter and the preacher who refuses her; bullying and teacher abuse at the school; and ultimately tragedy at the coal mines.

Despite much too much romance about a life of virtual poverty, (a never-ending male chorus makes the film appear to almost be a musical and nearly recalls spiritual-singing cotton field workers featured in other, more controversial, movies,) there is nevertheless still relevant underlying social commentary with issues of Socialism and migration to America.

With Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Donald Crisp, Anna Lee, and Roddy McDowall.

A classic.