SECOND HELPINGS: How Green Was My Valley** (1941)

Does anyone really believe that this film deserved Best Picture anymore? The Academy needed a fallback film because they were too scared to recognize the masterpiece that was Citizen Kane. What gets the award instead? An emotional tale of poor Welsh coal miners that band together to fight for the right to work for a decent wage.

I must admit that this film is well made if you look at the technical aspects. It is also a very emotional film, as we watch a young boy named Huw grow up in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. The coal mines change his town and his family forever. There is also a subplot involving a new pastor in town who takes a liking to Huw’s sister and speaks controversially in support of unionizing the town’s coal miners.

How Green Was My Valley is far from pro-union propaganda, but it certainly wears its liberal-leaning heart on it sleeve. The Industrial Revolution was a time when unions were actually desperately needed to help laborers get fair wages but this sentiment is laid on thick enough to the point where it is obvious that the story also advocates for the urgency for unionization in the present. Through this and other early films, it seems clear to me that it took decades for much of Hollywood to master subtlety as a filmmaking tool.

Maybe I am jaded, having grown up thinking films like this are cliché-ridden. It’s got emotional manipulation through focusing on a child, advocacy for social change, a David v. Goliath tale, and a largely negative portrayal of Christianity. Pretty standard old-school Hollywood stuff, really. Maybe in some circles How Green Was My Valley was considered important. You’ll have a hard time justifying it as great though.

Through re-watching some of these old films, some of which I was overly harsh on as an 18 and 19-year old, I have had a kind of epiphany. There are great films, there are important films, and then there are those rare few that are both great and important. These categories are still largely subjective but, for the most part, consensus builds and opinions are collected.

Maybe the vote was split widely in the Academy. Maybe this film rode the wave of being a safe and uncontroversial pick. How Green Was My Valley may not be the weakest Best Picture winner in Oscar History but it certainly doesn’t make much of an impression. If nothing else, watch it for the curiosity that it is- a mostly harmless, well-made film that beat one of the greatest American films ever made on Oscar night.

Original Rating: 3.5 out of 5

New Rating: 3.5 out of 5