How Green Was My Valley 1941

The Film:

Interesting how Sarah Allgood's name isn't
on this poster, yet she was nominated for
an Oscar. And Angharad's right up there at
the top despite doing at lot less than her parents
and younger brother! Marketing.........

This is the film that will be forever remembered as the one that beat Citizen Kane to the award. Citizen Kane is not a personal favourite of mine but, objectively it is brilliant, ground-breaking and has endured on or near the top of "all time" lists for years. I've seen it a couple of times and will watch it again.

I hadn't, however, seen How Green Was My Valley (which I will now shorten to HGWMV) until today. Most of the things I'd read about it said that it's been unfairly derided over the years and that it's actually a very good film. It gets a lot of 10/10s on IMDB and it's still out there getting watched today (we found it on NowTV - although I did discover that I had it on DVD already as part of a 10 film "classics" set.

It's notable for being Roddy McDowell's first film (he looked very different than he does in Planet of the Apes!) and he's great in it. The only other thing I knew about the film before watching it was that it was set in Wales, filmed in California and didn't star very many Welsh people at all. One of the less favourable reviews on IMDB is titled "How Bad Were Our Accents" - read on, I'll let you know!

The Ceremony:

The Awards took place on February 26th 1942 at the Biltmore and was hosted (again) by Bob Hope.

Donald Crisp receiving his award from James Stewart - both in
uniform, on leave from their military duties.

It's most remembered now for the being the awards that snubbed Citizen Kane, with establishment Hollywood sticking it firmly to young upstart Orson Welles. However, the buzz on the night, apparently, was all about sibling rivals Joan and Olivia who were both considered strong contenders for Best Actress.

It was also the first time that there was an award for Best Documentary (one that has since been won by some of my favourite films!) - it was won by Churchill's Island, 20 minutes of pro-allies propaganda charting the ongoing heroism of WW2 (which the US had joined only a couple of months earlier). This in itself puts everything - including the Best Picture win - into a context that might explain some of the voting choices of Academy members this year.....

Out of historical curiosity, here's Churchill's Island:

Other Notable Winners That Night:

Joan and Gary with their Oscars

John Ford also took Best Director for HGWMV - his second win in as many years. He would eventually win four times making him the most awarded Director. 
Joan Fontaine won the battle against her sister, receiving the award for her part in Hitchcock's Suspicion (the only time Hitch directed someone to an Oscar!). Many people reckoned that, as with James Stewart the year before, some of her votes were cast as compensation for her losing out the year before. Either way, forget Grace, Tippi, Kim etc - Joan was the most successful Hitch heroine, at least according to the Academy.
Gary Cooper took Best Actor for his role in Sergeant York, a film about an American war hero (can you see an interesting trend happening here....). Thankfully Sgt York didn't do figure eights before chow so his part was far more substantial than when we last saw him in this challenge!

Best Song:

"The Last Time I Saw Paris" - a song from a classic 40s musical (Lady Be Good) written by Hammerstein and Kern:

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

I think this one is a bit obvious. We really should have been watching Citizen Kane.

I blame the sled.....

With no disrespect to anything else on the list (which includes Suspicion and The Maltese Falcon - both fine films!) objectively, Citizen Kane should have won Best Picture and Best Director. It's generally considered to be a combination of the Academy not wanting to upset William Randolph Hearst (and him possibly bribing them) and of them not liking Orson Welles (because he was young, cocky, anti-establishment etc). It was also wartime, which tends to move people towards heroism and/or sentiment (neither of which you'll find in Citizen Kane!) Whatever the reasons, we really should have been watching Citizen Kane.....

Our Verdict:

I'm going to sit firmly on the fence with this one - not on whether it should have won or not (it shouldn't!), but on whether it's a great classic film or not. The answer is - I really don't know. I'm not entirely sure if I like it that much, but there are things about it that I really like and some things that just baffled me. I'm probably best splitting this review up into three parts - the Good, the Bad and the Meh.

Three of the best things in the film (although they still
represent three very different accents...)

The Good. There are some great characters in this film and they are played well. Donald Crisp is great as the Dad (with a passable Welsh accent) and Sarah Allgood matches him well as the Mum (despite sounding Irish). They bring strength, heart and humour to the whole thing.

I'm not going to recommend this as a behaviour management
technique at work - but it does the job here!

I also grew to love young Roddy McDowell as Huw. My favourite part of the film was the sequence in the middle where he goes to school and faces bullies and a sadistic pompous teacher (I'm nothing if not predictable! Set something in a school and I'll watch it...). I liked Walter Pidgeon (who I'd never seen in anything before, except fleetingly in Funny Girl) and respected his complete lack of an attempt at any accent other than his own. His character was able to take an outside view on what was going on and dispense good chunks of wisdom, compassion and common sense.

There were some great comic moments, many provided by Dai Bando and Cyfartha, the boxers - including the great line "Tis a coward I am, but I'll hold your coat!" The film as a whole was beautifully shot and very well made and I (eventually) got drawn in to the story. The second half was by far the better half!

Despite what the promoters would have you believe,
the film is not about these two!

The Bad. Oh dear God those accents! There was only one Welsh person (in a minor part) among the whole cast - the rest of them tried with varying degrees of success to sound like they were born and bred in the Rhonnda, but most of them failed dismally. For such a close nit community, there were more accents on display than Aiden Gillen can manage in a whole episode of Game of Thrones!

Out of the lead actors Donald Crisp gives it the best shot and Walter Pidgeon gets bonus points for not even trying. But (and Andy may disagree with me here) by far the worst is Maureen O'Hara as Angharad. Her natural accent is American with Irish slippage. Here she's trying to mask that by squeaking and going up at the end of every sentence. And I found it really difficult to get past that.

Sticking with Angharad - for someone so feisty she gave up on the preacher to marry someone for all the wrong reasons with blink-and-you'll-miss-it speed. It was paced all wrong and must have been very disappointing for cinema-goers who saw all the posters and publicity stills that sold the film as a Walter and Maureen romance.

Also going in the Bad category is the first half hour or so of the film (up to the point where Beth and Huw nearly freeze to death) which is slow, disjointed, sappy and sentimental and a bit nonsensical (as Andy pointed out, they all look rather happy and well fed for miners who've been on strike for months....). The opening voice over goes on far too long and regularly gets drowned out by sweeping orchestral versions of Welsh hymns and folk songs and it takes ages to get going.

You would be forgiven for thinking that you had to pass
a singing audition to be allowed down the mines!

And so to the Meh. I think a lot of this is down to either the passage of time (and a lot of hindsight) or being underwhelmed by the aspects of the film that other commentators have raved about.

There was a lot of sentimental singing going on. I've no objections to a Male Voice Choir. My own Welshness (a geographical accident of birth, but one that I exploit happily!) swells with pride at the sound of Cwm Rhondda. But after the dozenth or so time I was ready for a bit of Catatonia or even Goldie Looking Chain to stir things up a bit.

Mainly though, overall, I found that the story meandered all over the place and didn't really go anywhere. It was a family saga so it was bound to, but it felt as though it never really got to grips with any of the storylines properly before moving on to something else. There could have been a great narrative about pay cuts and Unions but that just sort of got mentioned a bit and disappeared. There are bigots and gossips in the village but none of the things they bigot and gossip about ever get resolved (even Angharad and the preacher). And speaking of Angharad and Mr Gruffydd - there's a whole possible story there that just isn't. The only section that really works in this respect is Huw at school - and yet 50 year old narrator Huw who is leaving the valley never says why or where he is going, so we don't get any closure there either.

Overall - it was ok. It had some good bits. And I have to remember that we were watching it in 2017 with the hindsight of many more things that have happened in the Welsh mining towns since 1941, and many more films and TV programmes that have been made about them. I was left with the feeling that the film would have been vastly improved by the arrival of either an Indian doctor or a bunch of flamboyant gay men from London!

Rebecca 1940

The Film:

Out of the early winners, this is one of the most familiar to me. I've probably seen it more times than any of them until we get to the 60s musicals (at least two of which I can practically recite....). In my eyes it's an absolute classic - and yet I'm still not entirely sure why it won!

It has the distinction of being the only Hitchcock film to win Best Picture. Hitch himself never won a competitive Director Oscar which seems more than slightly absurd in some ways - but the nature of most of his Hollywood films made them not quite mainstream enough, a bit edgy, a bit controversial etc.

Rebecca is quite different to most of those (it has more in common with Hitch's later British films, like The Lady Vanishes or 39 Steps, although much darker than either of them). Part of this may be because it isn't just a Hitchcock product. It's a Selznick production (as was Gone With The Wind the year before) - and Selznick was known for playing a very active role as producer in his films! Apparently he and Hitch didn't get on particularly well - Selznick liked to interfere, Hitch wouldn't let him get his own way.

I think that's one of the many tensions that lead to this being such a great film - along with the uneasy working relationship between Olivier and Fontaine. He wanted Vivien Leigh to play the part - which just goes to show how far love can cloud the judgement of even the greatest in pursuit of their art. At a push Leigh would have made a good Rebecca (though thank God they didn't depict her!), she couldn't have pulled off the second Mrs de Winter, especially just one year after being Scarlett in filmgoers eyes.

Also, apparently, Selznick was all set for the film to be in Technicolor - but the budget ran short. Thank God for that! The cinematography just adds to the sense of paranoia and uneasiness that's going on throughout the film.

As you can tell, I could waffle on about this for a while - I'll save the rest of my waffle until later!

An actual poster for this year - things
are getting serious

The Ceremony:

The Ceremony took place on February 27th 1941 at the Bilmore Hotel. It was the first time that the
results were in sealed envelopes, with Price Waterhouse counting the ballots - and continuing to do so right up to today (although they had a narrow escape this year!).

These awards mark the first and only time that Dalton Trumbo was officially nominated for an award (for Kitty Foyle). He was blacklisted a few years later but still wrote scripts for Hollywood and submitted them under other people's names. He won two Oscars that were credited (and handed) to different people - he got one of them back during his lifetime, but the second was only awarded posthumously.


Other Notable Winners That Night:

I love this photo!! I'd like to think they did a
little foxtrot together after it was taken!

Rebecca didn't win any of the other major awards (nothing for Hitchcock, some say Joan Fontaine was robbed, and George Sanders wasn't even nominated as Supporting Actor, which baffles me!). 

Best Director went to John Ford for Grapes of Wrath, Best Actor was James Stewart for The Philadelphia Story (and, possibly, belatedly for Mr Smith the previous year...) and Ginger Rogers won Best Actress for Kitty Foyle.

I'm a fan of both of them (particularly James Stewart) - Jimmy deserved his award, especially if you think of it as being for playing Jefferson Smith AND Mike Connor. An acting masterclass right there! Whether Ginger deserved hers is more debatable, although I need to watch Kitty Foyle before I can give my own verdict on that. I would have happily given her an Oscar for all the dancing she did in 30s - but many people felt that one or other of the heavy hitters nominated alongside her - Joan F, Bette and Kate among them - should have taken the award. Never mind - the other three have got seven between them!


Best Song:

An absolute classic again this year - like last year, a song that most children today (nearly 80 years on) can still sing along to:

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

Isn't this photo maaarvelous? Isn't this film maaarvelous?
Isn't Katharine Hepburn aaabsolutely maaarvelous!!

There are at least three other biggies on the Best Picture list this year - The Great Dictator (Chaplin's first full sound film), The Grapes of Wrath (epic US drama) and The Philadelphia Story (comedy with a stunning cast).

Chaplin's controversial film was never going to win given the political climate at the time - but either of the other two could just as easily (and justifiably) have won the award. I'm a big fan of Rebecca and I'm very glad it won - but I've also got a soft spot for The Philadelphia Story. And, although I'm still recovering from studying the (incredibly tedious and long-winded) book for A Level, objectively The Grapes of Wrath probably should have won.

Our Verdict:

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again......

I think it's already pretty clear that I know this film rather well, and that I like it rather a lot. There's probably not a great deal else to say after this most recent (possibly tenth? or more?) viewing. Except that - slightly embarrassingly - I was really tired on the afternoon that I watched it and I drifted a bit in the middle..... Knowing the plot so well meant that it didn't matter (although I didn't pay quite as much attention to "Cousin" Jack as I usually like to) and, actually, it means that the not-so-dark first half hour of the film has stuck with me more this time.

Larry and Joan - both acting their socks off!

For completeness sake - the plot. Our unnamed heroine is playing chaperone to a rather over-bearing older woman holidaying in Monte (Carlo, that is) where she meets widower Maxim de Winter and they fall in love and get married. 

This bit takes about half an hour and is brightly lit, and lightly played - and has very strong comedic elements through the wonderful character of Mrs Van Hopper. Throughout it all Maxim remains brooding and his new bride stays timid and overwhelmed by everything - though both clearly relish getting one over on Mrs VH.

Mrs Danvers in a particularly evilly unhinged moment.
One of Hitchcock's greatest characters!

They head back to Maxim's enormous estate, Manderley (another character in its own right) and things start to get very dark and gothic.
The second Mrs de Winter begins to find out more about her husband and his first wife, Rebecca - some of this from the housekeeper Mrs Danvers and Rebecca's "cousin" Jack Favell, both of whom were clearly in her thrall in one way or another.

This is where Joan Fontaine would have been a worthy Oscar winner - the way her demeanor changes from wide eyed and innocent and trying (with difficulty) to fit in, gradually to uneasiness, paranoia and downright terror, then leading to resolve and determination, is quite brilliant.

I also think Olivier does a good job of not over playing Maxim. It would have been easy to make him too big and in charge (which he really isn't) or either too heroic and sympathetic, or too flawed and unlikeable. I think he pitches it just right.

The superb Mr Sanders - delectably vile....

Mrs Danvers is superbly creepy. She doesn't walk, she glides as though she's on wheels. There is at least one scene that you could put down to bad editing if you didn't suspect that Hitch meant it - where she's moved far further across the room during a quick cutaway shot than is humanly possible!

And George Sanders is wonderful as the charmingly snake-like Favell. Apparently Sanders was pretty awful as a person (and he admitted as much himself), but he works so well as an actor of a certain kind of character. In many ways Favell is a bit a warm up for when we see him again in ten films' time doing something rather similar only better (arguably) and with far more screen time!)

Saying too much more about the plotline would give away the ending. But one of the best things about the way the story is portrayed here is that it all comes across as being like a ghost story or even a horror film. And yet there is nothing supernatural going on at all. Everything is about how people are treating other people, how they perceive themselves and each other. And it's clever, and suspenseful, and entertaining - with a pretty satisfying ending (slightly modified from the book, thanks to the Hays Code). 

So, yes, I love this film. It's probably my favourite Hitchcock (and there are many contenders for that, even though we aren't going to get to watch any more of them for this challenge!) and it really does bear repeated viewing.

And it's in the public domain and all up there on Youtube, so here you go: