WORLD TOUR Day 3 - somewhere in California ??
BEFORE: We're leaving San Francisco, finally getting this road trip on the move. Please be sure to keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times, for your own safety. We should end up somewhere in the farmlands of California - I know the film starts in Oklahoma or something, but I'm not counting the mileage traveled in the film, I'm only interested in the destination. TCM counted this as a film set in California, so I will too.
Linking from "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", Katherine Hepburn was in "On Golden Pond" with Henry Fonda (last seen in "12 Angry Men") - Spencer Tracy links to him too, through the film "How the West Was Won". So, whichever you prefer.
THE PLOT: A poor Midwest family is forced off of their land. They travel to California, suffering the misfortunes of the homeless in the Great Depression.
AFTER: A history lesson tonight, as the story follows the Joads, a family of sharecroppers who lost everything in the "Dust Bowl" of the 1930's Midwest as they struck out for what they hoped would be more fertile lands. How poor were they? Apparently they could only afford one song as background music, and that song was "Red River Valley", which the film plays over and over again. So the family headed West to California, where the songwriters lived, hoping to get some better incidental music - something upbeat, like "She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain". Maybe someday they could even scrape together enough to afford the royalties on "Turkey in the Straw".
Seriously, though, this is a harsh look at an economic downturn - and the sharecroppers blame the foremen, and the foremen blame the corporations, and the corporations blame the banks, and gee, where have I heard this before? Oh, yeah, two years ago, when a couple people bundled some funky mortgages and the whole U.S. economy fell like a house of cards. The people blamed the banks, and the banks blamed the guvmint, and the guvmint blamed Wall Street, and so on. And people loaded up their Model T's and drove to Mexico looking for work (I think). Hey, at least we solved that immigration problem, because without any jobs in America, there's no reason for people to want to come here, right?
So there's some unintended relevance here. Cross-reference with the New Deal and the start of the labor movement. That's right, I meant to watch this film on Labor Day, for added impact - but then I watched "ParaNorman" and added "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" to the list, and it got pushed back. So, yeah, Labor Day. The American farmworker, the salt of the earth, the tired, the poor and the downtrodden. The little guy never gets ahead, and the Man's always trying to keep him down. But you can never break his spirit. Damn it, where did I put that 8th grade book report? I can finally finish it now, and my English teacher will just HAVE to revise my grade.
Very relevant, yes. But entertaining? Well, I didn't fall asleep, and that's saying something. The story at least kept me guessing, and wondering if the Joads would ever catch a break. Who benefits most from this movie airing, Democrats or Republicans? Because it seems kind of favoring unions and lower-class workers, but it's also a bit anti-government, which suggests the Tea Party. But then again, the nicest camp is the one funded by the Dept. of Agriculture, and that's a handout, and the radical left hates that. I don't know, maybe I should be watching political-based films instead, what with the election coming up and all. I think maybe I missed the boat and should have saved the World Tour for next year...
Especially since I can't really pinpoint where this film ends - where on the map, I mean. Wikipedia says that the Okies followed the path of Route 66, which means that if they followed it all the way, they would have ended up in Santa Monica. But the last city I heard mentioned in the film was Barstow, so maybe they never made it that far - maybe the Joads headed north after Barstow. I thought I might have heard them say at the end they were headed up to Fresno, but it was hard to hear them clearly.
This is bad - 3 days into the tour, and already I don't have a good estimate on the mileage so far. Ah, screw it, I'm calling it for Fresno. Thanks a lot, John Steinbeck and John Ford, for not clarifying things, and throwing me off. Way to ruin the trip. Next question - do I count the driving distance, or mark it as the crow flies?
DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR: 158 miles / 255 km (San Francisco to Fresno)
Also starring Jane Darwell, John Carradine (last seen in "The Patsy"), Russell Simpson, Dorris Bowdon, Charley Grapewin, John Qualen, Eddie Quillen.
RATING: 5 out of 10 stripey candies
No comments:
Post a Comment