The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

 The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Classic adaptation of the Steinbeck novel featuring an ex-con (‘kilt him a man’) who goes back home to find his foreclosed, but already dust-bowl ravaged Oklahoma farm and his family ready to move to California looking for a new life despite a warning that the wanted ads they’ve all seen is false advertising.

The story is the simple one of a trip West, but it’s a good example of the 'road movie' genre, with the miserable family encountering all sorts of folks and all sorts of responses to them and their Okie appearance, most of them beneficent, (they get bread and candy at a discount, a fellow ex-patriate cop treats them kindly,) but those small acts do little to relieve their ever-present misery.

Once in California, they find it is not quite the land of milk and honey they hoped.

Their first attempt at settling down where there are work opportunities ends tragically, but their second go at it is a learning experience. Not only is it made obvious that Capitalism can't go unchecked (by the government, natch... Who else?) but also, that the people can only obtain power by organizing.

This is another of those old-time, surprisingly progressive films which divide commentary among those refusing to see or understand its obvious, but somehow still invisible, message.

Even superficially, its influence might extend to as odd-duck features as National Lampoon’s Vacation (with its own road trip and traveling dead aunt,) to The Hills Have Eyes (with its family suffering desert hardships,) and even possibly to sitcoms like The Beverly Hillbillies (with visuals of an overcrowded, outdated vehicle traveling West,) but its importance is obviously much more than that.

The film utilizes its road movie structure to explore not only different treatment by people met on the way, (some of whom welcome them because they are fellow Okies, and some of whom reject them for the exact same reason,) but also the distinctly different ways of life offered by a) an economic system designed solely to exploit them (virtually enslaving them or murdering them without conscience,) and, just for contrast, b) a socially supportive system.

The film is widely considered to be one of the greatest films of all time.

With Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Shirley Mills, John Qualen, and Eddie Quillan.