The film that beat "Citizen Kane" to the Best Picture Oscar in 1941 even although Welles himself was a big fan of John Ford. A clear case of out with the new and in with the old by the Academy, this dramatisation of the popular contemporary novel by Richard Llewelyn was reportedly Ford's favourite of all his movies.
I have to confess though that while I often enjoy Ford's movies, this one I found too episodic and sentimental for my taste, especially given the subject matter. At the start I thought it was going to be a stark and realistic depiction of the struggle of trade unionism in a poor, hardworking but downtrodden mining community in turn of the century Wales. Centring on the household of strict patriarch Donald Crisp's Papa Morgan, he's shaken by the rebellion of his four adult sons to the union cause after the mine owners cut the workforce wages, but this ends with a whimper when they dutifully return home after their doting mother and infant brother have to recuperate from falling into a freezing cold stream on their way home after she has charged out on a winter's night to scold the justifiably agitated workforce. Ironically, Hollywood in 1941 was suffering a craftsman's strike at around this time with one of the main charges ranged at the strikers being that of socialism and it's noticeable that the subject barely raises its head again in the film.
From there in fact, melodrama, romance and sentimentality carry the day. The pretty Morgan daughter, Maureen O'Hara is smitten by the handsome and loquacious but poor parish priest Walter Pidgeon but ma and pa farm her off to the cold son of one of the rich mine owners in an arranged loveless marriage. Their young son, played by Roddy McDowall, has a Tom Brown's Schooldays episode his first day at school, there's the heartless expulsion of a fallen woman from the community, able scholar Huw turns down a life of academia to follow his family down the mine, the other sons emigrate to the four corners of the globe looking for work and there are not one but two mining disasters for the family to contend with. It's something of a soot-opera in other words.
Ford attempts to leaven the doom and gloom of life down t'pit with his usual insertions of broad humour particularly when two old family friends go to young Huw's school to literally teach his bullying teacher a lesson, while elsewhere it seems that the collierymen will raise their voices to sing at the drop of a hat in true Welsh stereotypical fashion and yet not one of the main cast was Welsh-born. Personally I rather suspect that miners and their families of the time had it a good deal harder than this and was disappointed that Ford didn't dig deeper, no pun intended, to make a grittier and more realistic film than the rather too obvious crowd-pleasing and multiple Oscar winning feature we have here.
I have to confess though that while I often enjoy Ford's movies, this one I found too episodic and sentimental for my taste, especially given the subject matter. At the start I thought it was going to be a stark and realistic depiction of the struggle of trade unionism in a poor, hardworking but downtrodden mining community in turn of the century Wales. Centring on the household of strict patriarch Donald Crisp's Papa Morgan, he's shaken by the rebellion of his four adult sons to the union cause after the mine owners cut the workforce wages, but this ends with a whimper when they dutifully return home after their doting mother and infant brother have to recuperate from falling into a freezing cold stream on their way home after she has charged out on a winter's night to scold the justifiably agitated workforce. Ironically, Hollywood in 1941 was suffering a craftsman's strike at around this time with one of the main charges ranged at the strikers being that of socialism and it's noticeable that the subject barely raises its head again in the film.
From there in fact, melodrama, romance and sentimentality carry the day. The pretty Morgan daughter, Maureen O'Hara is smitten by the handsome and loquacious but poor parish priest Walter Pidgeon but ma and pa farm her off to the cold son of one of the rich mine owners in an arranged loveless marriage. Their young son, played by Roddy McDowall, has a Tom Brown's Schooldays episode his first day at school, there's the heartless expulsion of a fallen woman from the community, able scholar Huw turns down a life of academia to follow his family down the mine, the other sons emigrate to the four corners of the globe looking for work and there are not one but two mining disasters for the family to contend with. It's something of a soot-opera in other words.
Ford attempts to leaven the doom and gloom of life down t'pit with his usual insertions of broad humour particularly when two old family friends go to young Huw's school to literally teach his bullying teacher a lesson, while elsewhere it seems that the collierymen will raise their voices to sing at the drop of a hat in true Welsh stereotypical fashion and yet not one of the main cast was Welsh-born. Personally I rather suspect that miners and their families of the time had it a good deal harder than this and was disappointed that Ford didn't dig deeper, no pun intended, to make a grittier and more realistic film than the rather too obvious crowd-pleasing and multiple Oscar winning feature we have here.