Timeless Cinematic Beauty

I watched "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940) a few weeks back and the movie still hits a soulful chord as I type.

The film, of course, is an adaption of John Steinbeck's classic novel. The novel was hotly debated among Americans at the time.

From wiki, (the book) "...was a phenomenon on the scale of a national event. It was publicly banned and burned by citizens, it was debated on national radio hook-ups; but above all, it was read." Steinbeck scholar John Timmerman sums up the book's impact: "The Grapes of Wrath may well be the most thoroughly discussed novel - in criticism, reviews, and college classrooms - of twentieth century American literature." Part of its impact stemmed from its passionate depiction of the plight of the poor, and in fact, many of Steinbeck's contemporaries attacked his social and political views. Bryan Cordyack writes, "Steinbeck was attacked as a propagandist and a socialist from both the left and the right of the political spectrum."

The film, in fact, was more guilty of socialist overtones than Steinbeck. I wonder what were the prevailing contemporary attitudes for people to hold the novel with skepticism.

Watching Tom Joad walk off after a poignant point of realization with his mother was a scene that simply will never die in cinema history. The scene also provided the memorable populist quote from Ma: "Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good an' they die out. But we keep a'comin'. We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out; they can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people."

Again from wiki: "In 1989, this film was one of the first 25 films to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

All this to say, these days, I feel like Tom Joad in that final scene.