Alicia I love this movie so much

Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

billcr12 I finally watched this film after hearing about it for many years. John Ford was well respected for "The Searchers", "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", and "The Grapes of Wrath" and several others. The black and white imagery is breathtaking, filled with shadows, reminding me of "Citizen Kane" by Orson Welles. Roddy Mcdowall is the narrator as an adult and he tells the story of his close knit Welsh family of his mother, father, and three brothers and sister. The men all work in the local coal mine and his sister, played by Maureen O'Hara, helps around the house. As happened here in America, the workers banded together to form a union in order to gain fair wages and work conditions. Along the way, there are love affairs and heart break involving the boys' sister and a local well meaning minister of the local church. Ford keeps it all moving as a compelling tale of family love and loyalty. A wise choice for best picture at the Academy Awards for 1941.

bigverybadtom Admittedly I watched this with the idea that this movie was such a classic and had great performers in it. It wasn't quite as good as I had expected.People have panned this for the performers not having proper Welsh accents or the scenario looking too much like California. But the truth is that even without World War Two going on, the Hollywood film industry was actually in bad financial shape during the Great Depression like everybody else, and it would have been too expensive and difficult to make everything properly look and sound like Wales, let alone go on location. The idea was to show essentially a poor mining town, even if the settings didn't match the interiors of actual Welsh houses.I have not seen the book, so I cannot say how well the movie follows it. Admittedly the major problem was that the script was rather disjointed. It starts off with the protagonist talking about leaving his village and describing how it was when he was growing up. The first part has the miners going on strike when their wages are cut, and the father denounces the idea of his sons joining a labor union (though not explaining why). Later on, the mine owner's son wants to marry the family's daughter, and she is in love with the local preacher but marries the son anyway. Huw, the son who tells the story, is sent to the local school, gets bullied by classmates and teacher, fights back, and eventually graduates with honors, but chooses to work in the mine. That is never explained either.The movie's fundamental problem is that things happen one after another, but without explanations about people's attitudes and why they are what they are, or why people make certain choices which seem illogical. In the end, we don't even know why the protagonist finally leaves the valley when he does, or what he plans to do.

SnoopyStyle Old Huw Morgan is leaving his Welsh mining village lamenting the state of his village and his family. He recalls his life starting as a child living in the lush green valley. His father and all of his older brothers work the coal mine. Huw (Roddy McDowall) is the youngest. He waits for the men with his mother and sister Angharad (Maureen O'Hara). The work is hard but honorable. Angharad is taken with the new preacher Mr. Gruffydd. The idyllic life is threatened with a new owner, lower wages and a tough strike.Master director John Ford films this beautifully. I don't usually like narration and this one isn't one of the exceptions. The story is an old fashion personal epic. The cast is strong. It does feel dated and not necessarily a classic that is in the top rank of cinema. This won Best Picture over 'Citizen Kane' and is still beloved by its fans. However they're not at the same level for cinephiles today.

atlasmb What can you say about a film that is known less for the fact that it won the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture than the fact that it beat out Citizen Kane? It also beat out The Maltese Falcon and Sergeant York--both of which, I would argue are more revered today than HGWMV.I will not assign a score to this film, because I did not watch all of it. This is not to say that it's a bad film, but I grew tired of the painfully precious tone at the beginning of the film, coupled with the very heavy-handed dramatization.John Ford directed many fine films (for example The Quiet Man),but in this film I felt at times that he thought he was directing a silent film, so overly dramatic was the action and the behavior of the actors.The story is primarily about a family of miners, the Morgans. They live in a valley with a one-industry economy. This is a prescription for economic instability. There may be a great story in the trials of the town and the Morgan family, but the film's slowness and it's reliance on overdramatization stopped me from watching its entirety. Perhaps one day I will watch it again, being prepared for it's style ahead of time.