The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Directed by

John Ford

Genre

drama film

Country

United States

Runtime

2h 08m

Rated

NR

Rating

7.8 of 10 from 1,116 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A family of Oklahoma sharecroppers loses their farm during the Great Depression. They travel to California hoping for a better life, but find hardship and exploitation along the way.

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What happens

The Grapes of Wrath is a 1940 American drama film directed by John Ford. It was based on John Steinbeck's 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Nunnally Johnson and the executive producer was Darryl F. Zanuck. The film tells the story of the Joads, an Oklahoma family of sharecroppers, who, after losing their farm to increased mechanization during the Great Depression in the 1930s, become migrant workers, and end up in California. The motion picture details their arduous journey across the United States as they travel to California in search of work and opportunities for the family members, and features cinematography by Gregg Toland, who was on loan from Samuel Goldwyn Productions. The film is widely considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. In 1989, it was one of the first 25 films selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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