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Ben's Top Pick for November
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THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940) - November 3
First of all, a confession. I’m 36 years old and I’ve
never read John Steinbeck’s Depression-era epic, The
Grapes of Wrath. Now I’d like to make another confession.
I’m 42 years old. There—I feel better. And to
compound my problem, I probably hadn’t seen John
Ford’s emotionally draining and politically charged
adaptation of Steinbeck’s novel in 20 years, but my
goodness, does it ever hold up.
This is an intensely visceral film, for the characters
and the audience. Tom Joad—that’s Henry Fonda—
takes things personally. There are the big indignities
like a faceless company forcing his family off the land
they’ve worked for generations. But it’s the little ones
that most enrage Tom, such as private cops asking
his name three times in three minutes just for the
“opportunity” to work. Fonda’s response, reserved
but seething—“Still Joad,” he says—gets a response
from us, too.
Jane Darwell picks up an Oscar® nomination as Ma
and John Carridine excels as a disillusioned preacher
who becomes a union organizer, but this is Fonda’s
film. Few actors can emote empathy, compassion and
rage without saying a word, but Fonda is one of them.
In Roger Ebert’s wonderful review, he offers one
criticism, that Fonda’s famous final monologue
sounds preachy, not spontaneous. Roger is probably
right, but I can’t help but think of the Bruce Springsteen
lyrics in “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” inspired by
Fonda’s speech: “Ma, wherever there’s a cop beatin’ a
guy. Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries. Where
there’s a fight against the blood and hatred in the air.
Look for me Ma, I’ll be there.”
To me, that turns preachiness into poetry.
by Ben Mankiewicz
 
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Deals With the Devil - 11/28
People who make pacts with Satan is the theme and we've got five cinematic case histories including Richard Burton as Doctor Faustus (1967), Dudley Moore in Bedazzled (1967) and Hurd Hatfield in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945).
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