IMDb #190 Review: The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Source: Wikipedia

A destitute farming family moves to keep from starving and getting pushed around by rich jerks in Dust Bowl Oklahoma--so they can starve and get pushed around around by rich jerks in California.

They travel Route 66 in their crappy truck packed with everything they own. The grandparents drop off. With grim determination and rustic wisdom, the family chases vague promises of shitty jobs. (Spoiler: the jobs are even shittier than advertised. The living conditions are worse. And it only gets shittier from there.)

Along the road, store proprietors take pity on the weary rustics and their hungry children, who resemble grubby refugees from a Dickens novel. The small business owners dispense underpriced candy and brusque charity.

The truck gurgles and lurches into California, the promised land of milk and honey. But the honey's thin soup and the milk is filthy water, and the only promise left unbroken is the ever-deflating wages for picking fruit. Okie transient camps pop up, terrorized by overzealous militia police on the corporate payroll. But the little people stick together.

A grim pallor of "God is dead" hangs over the whole shebang, not just because a major character is a lapsed preacher. Like the dust choking the crops, tangible desperation strangles any hope of lasting happiness or relief from suffering. But the people soldier on--because they must.

As a lucky sap who never read the book in high school, I liked the adaptation. John Ford's black-and-white contributes to mood, aided by subtly ingenious lighting. The titular trampled grapes ferment into a  fine wine of bittersweet existentialism. Which means it tastes awful but sits nicely and aids bowel movements.

129 minutes.