HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (1941)

This is the movie that won the Oscar for Best Picture instead of CITIZEN KANE. KANE was certainly robbed, but this is a fine movie in the sentimental family saga genre. Set around the turn of the century, it's about the childhood of Huw Morgan, played by 12-year-old Roddy McDowell, the youngest child in a family of Welsh coal miners. The episodic narrative (told in voiceover by Huw as an adult--Irving Pichel, whom we never see on camera) covers the gradual dispersal of the five other sons as the fortunes of the mines rise and fall. First, union agitation causes a rift between the boys and their father (Donald Crisp). Later, two sons leave for America when an economic downturn causes layoffs. Ivor (Patric Knowles, who is seen quite a bit but has almost no dialogue) marries Bronwyn (Anna Lee) and later dies in a mining accident on the very day his wife gives birth. Huw's sister (Maureen O'Hara) is in love with the local minister (Walter Pidgeon), but he thinks she would be unhappy having to sacrifice to share his impoverished state. She winds up in an unhappy marriage with the rich son of the mine owner. Later, when she returns to the town still married but alone, gossip flares up about she and Pidgeon. We also follow various other trials undergone by McDowell, Crisp, and Sara Allgood, the mother of the brood.

Basically, the arc of the story is downward; things get worse and worse, and then someone dies, and they get worse some more, although the tone of the movie is not as downbeat as that description implies. The episodes get shorter and choppier in the last half, giving the film a rushed feeling (probably due to the fact that it was based on a novel and was intended to be a 4-hour epic on the scale of GONE WITH THE WIND). Crisp and Allgood are excellent and the movie would be worth watching if only for the two of them--both were nominated for Supporting Actor Oscars and Crisp won. McDowell is fine, although he's not convincing as a growing boy; several years pass but he looks and acts the same age throughout. John Loder, usually a B-movie lead, is good as one of the sons; Barry Fitzgerald and Arthur Shields, real life brothers, pop up in small roles, with Shields memorable as an unpleasant church elder. The look of the film, though occasionally artificial, is generally quite good, with the sloping street of houses and mine chimneys providing a strong backdrop for much of the action. The luminous black and white cinematography is by Arthur Miller who won an Oscar. Overall, not an uplifiting movie, but an absorbing one which I imagine will stand up to multiple viewings.