Better dead than red?
Plot summary (with spoilers): Tom Joad got out of prison. He was put in there for manslaughter. Got seven years, but paroled in four. He hitches a ride home to his family's farm in Oklahoma. He walks the last few miles, and first encounters an old family-friend, a preacher named Jim Casy. Casy has renounced his religion and thinks that labeling actions as "sinful" and "virtuous" are outdated concepts. There's only "nice" and "not-so nice", which sounds kind of weird and vapid, but not when Casy says it.
Casy says he's broke and homeless. Joad invites him with him to the family's farm, where at least he'll get a nice meal and a roof over his head for one night. They arrive at Joad's house and discover it in a pile on the ground. They find a guy there named Muley, who is hiding out in the hay. He tells the story of how the deed holders of the land came into the fields one day and told everyone to clear out and then promptly bulldozed over everyone's homes. We see the giant Caterpillars from crazy low angles and in shadows as Muley tells his story in flashback, like they're evil monsters in a scary movie.
Joad, Muley, and Casy continue onward to Joad's uncle's house, where the rest of the family is waiting. Everyone's thrilled to see Joad's out of jail, all 11 of them, especially Ma, who tells him that the bulldozers are coming tomorrow to level Uncle John's house too. The plan is for everyone to go to California and get jobs there. Random Joad family member found a flier that advertised for 800 orange pickers in Southern California, and that's where they can find their footing and start over.
Why do other people own the deeds to their farms, anyway? Is this an Oklahoma thing?
Anyway, the next morning, they all pack up their big truck and drive onto Route 66, despite getting a marked lack of kicks. Grandpa Joad dies nearly immediately while on the road, so they bury him and press onward, kind of like in the first Chevy Chase vacation movie and just as unfunny.
On the way, they encounter a campsite where a man tells them he just came from California, and it's just a shitty there as it is anyplace else, and he's heading back to Arkansas where he came from. The Joads don't believe him, and Tom shows him the flier. The man scoffs and says that everyone has that flier. Tens of thousands of men applied for the job that only needed 800. The Joads are in full-on "kill the messenger" mode, and tell the man to get lost, but they're privately terrified he's right.
After much trials and tribulations, including Grandma Joad's death as well, the remaining Joad's arrive in California, where they are promptly told there is no work for them and are directed to the "camps", which are basically slums. When they arrive, they're swamped by children begging them for food, but the Joads insist they only have enough for themselves. After they cook their food, the children fight each other for sips of the broth water while the Joads look on this pathetic display, fearing they're witnessing their future.
Then Tex Richman comes driving up, offering anyone who wants it a job picking fruit. A man asks for how much. Tex Richman says he doesn't know for sure, but around thirty cents a day. The man wants a contract before he'll agree to work. He says he's been burned in the past, and that the Fat Cats hire too many men for the job and wind up paying them far less than promised. Tex says take it or leave it. He calls the man an "agitator" and motions for the sheriff riding with him to arrest the guy. The guy punches out the sheriff, and then runs away. The sheriff shoots at him, and winds up killing a random woman. Joad jumps in and beats the shit out of the sheriff, and the Joads decide they need to leave before more cops show up.
Eventually, they travel north to another camp. They're offered five cents an hour and lodging in some tiny shack shithole. The Joad men eagerly take the job. After a few days though, the former preacher Casy takes Joad aside late at night and tells him he's met with some other men and they've decided to strike. The men have said the five cent an hour offer is temporary, and as soon as they get more guys, they'll drop it down to 2.5 cents. He says they need to strike and form some sort of united front, like they're all, I dunno, merging or joining together in a more perfect...accord, or agreement or amalgamation of similar goals. And maybe those "unions" let's say, will start out good and pure and save the working man, but then ultimately become just as corrupt as those who came before, leaving no easy answers in the future. Joad says they're nuts. Last week he had nothing and this week he has a dollar. He's not going to mess with that. But then the cops descend on them and Casy struggles with them and one of them beats Casy with his nightstick to death and then Joad grapples with him and winds up beating and killing the cop.
He runs back to the camp. Ma Joad helps him hide. The family decide to leave that night, knowing that the cops will be looking for Joad. They barely get away.
On the road again, the truck overheats and they stall out and roll down a hill and into another camp. While there, they're offered work as well as a decent place to stay with indoor plumbing. They're told Friday nights are when everyone gathers and has a party and dances after a long week of picking fruit. The Joads are awestruck. How is such a thing possible? Who runs this camp? Why, the government does.
That bitter laughter you hear is the sound of hundreds of thousands of future citizens of New Orleans, pay it no mind.
The Joads make some sort of home for themselves on the government property. but eventually the cops come sniffing around the place, looking for the man who killed one of their own. They're not allowed to search the camps without a warrant, so they plant interlopers to start a brawl during the Friday night dances. The campers are onto them though, and quietly quell the interlopers without causing any outward signs of fighting. Joad knows that the jig will soon be up, though. He takes Ma aside, and tells her he must go on his own. But he'll be there in spirit, wherever there are injustices in the world. He'll be there. Wherever there's a kitten up a tree, he'll be there. Wherever there's a House of Unamerican Activity Committee, he'll be investigated. And he leaves.
Later, the rest of the Joad men learn of 22 days worth of work up in Fresno, so off the Joads go on their truck once again. Ma Joad says they were almost beat, but she's hopeful now that one day they'll be able to stop scraping and starving and have a real life. And that the rich folks will all die one day because they're no good and their kids are no good but folks like them, the real people, are the people who will endure.
It's more than a little ironic that she pretty much looks like Rush Limbaugh.
Review: Taken just as a story with a strong plot and mood, this is a pretty great flick. They acting is uniformly wonderful, and cinematic shots John Ford takes are haunting and memorable. There's plenty of artsy stuff going on here, from the decision to have almost no score, to the choice to have many of the scenes take place in the shadows, it's all very grim and hypnotic. And most of the actors are, to put it kindly, total uggos, which is also depressing. The black and white helps set the mood, too. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this is the first black and white movie I've seen on this list that I'd prefer to not see in color.
But it's also a message movie, which I was not expecting at all. (No, I never read it in school, College Boy, I had no idea what it was about except poor people). Specifically, it's a Pro-Union, Pro-Communist, Pro-Class Warfare, Anti-Religion, Anti-God message movie, that came out just two short years before the start of our nation's most morally pure and rah rah fun time Capitalist War. There's simply no way this movie would be made today, unless it was some indie thing on a shoestring budget that played for one week at the shitty theatre in the big city next to the Gay Adult bookstore.
I'm really quite surprised it was made even back then, frankly, and the movie certainly doesn't even pretend to be balanced in its Far Left Agenda, to the point of being a bit off-putting, and I say that as a lefty myself. I have to say, more than any other movie so far, it's made me reevaluate some of my assumptions about the Olden Times and the movies they made and the values they had back then.
This movie reminds me of Requiem for a Dream in the sense that I can't say I really enjoyed it, as it was so unrelentingly brutal, but I feel better for having endured it. Not all art should be pleasurable, I guess.
Stars: Four out of five.
Next, the comedy inherent in dudes looking like ladies in "Some Like It Hot", and then it's "Chinatown", Jake.
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