How Green Was My Valley

Each month, one of our VIFF+ Premium members gets to select a movie to share with friends and strangers. This month, Mathew Englander takes us back to a landmark year in Hollywood history.

Routinely voted the greatest film ever made, Orson Welles’ 1941 début Citizen Kane garnered nine nominations, but only won one of them (original screenplay). The big winner that year was How Green Was My Valley.

History may have decided Oscar got it wrong, but it would also be a mistake to underestimate John Ford’s beautiful, bittersweet realization of Richard Llewellyn’s novel. Set in early twentieth century Wales, it’s the story of a coal-mining family struggling through as the very earth moves out from under them, the effects of industrialization and “progress”. The film is often caricatured as a wallow in nostalgia, but it’s hard to imagine Orson Welles wasn’t impressed by it, judging by the markedly similar tone of literary tristesse that infuses his next film, The Magnificent Ambersons. Ford’s downbeat elucidation of crippling domestic and social tradition and the film’s endorsement of unionism make this one of his least complacent and most moving films.