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!