The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

"How Green Was My Valley" has the personal distinction of being the very last Best Picture Oscar winner I watched in order to be able to claim that I've seen them all. From the stinkeroos to the masterpieces (and there have been both), I can now claim that I know which way the Academy wind blew in any given year. Where does "How Green Was My Valley" fall on the list, you might ask. Somewhere between "there were better films that year" and "are you kidding me?"I mean come on. The 1941 Academy Awards, which would have been held in early 1942, took place soon after the U.S. had just been bombed at Pearl Harbor and pulled into WWII. Ok, so the Academy was never going to give the award to the rightful recipient of it, "Citizen Kane." But if they weren't going to give it to "Kane," why on earth didn't they give it to "Sergeant York," a film I don't even like but that would have at least had the stamp of relevancy. Instead, they vote for this turn-of-the-century yarn about a young man coming of age in a Welsh mining town. I mean, it's an ok film, but it has virtually nothing to say to me now, and I can't imagine it had much to say to audiences back then. The stars of the film are Richard Day and Nathan Juran, the art directors who admirably recreate a mining village. I also liked Sara Allgood, as a feisty matron who practically bitch slaps the entire town when they step out of line. As for the rest, I had some trouble keeping my eyes open.Along with Best Picture, John Ford won his third of record four awards for Best Director; Donald Crisp won the Best Supporting Actor award for playing one of the most recognized character types in this category, that of the world-wise dad; Arthur Miller took home the Best Cinematography award for his black and white compositions; and Richard Day and Nathan Juran won for Best B&W Art Direction. Allgood was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, as was the film's screenplay by Phillip Dunne, and its editing, score, and sound recording.Grade: B-

How Green Was My Valley is a bit like one of those books you have to read at school, but don't really want to and don't enjoy as much as you should. Altogether too twee, and whereas things like Lassie Come Home and Mrs Miniver tug the heartstrings to breaking point this seems a deal, clumsier? (That's not the right word, perhaps reckless might be a better term) The thing is, it pertains to being right-on, it could have been an incredible ecological pioneer, and begins as if it is going to be, but falters from the get go. It could be a tribute to the working man, but it is unconvincing. It could be an homage to Wales but it is a load of Yanks in a studio with California backgrounds*. It could have been a counterpoint to Goodbye Mr Chips, but it ended up just with a short but total indictment of teachers whilst forgetting the system. Most of all it could be an epic on rational economics but it never actually makes its mind up enough to get started. Its loudest clarion is for that oxymoron 'sensible religion', so all in all, I was happy to watch it from the point of cinema history, but I enjoyed my sweet potato fries with coconut and mushroom sauce a deal more. (The food got a 7.7). The Hayes code has got a lot to answer for. I wonder if William Wyler would have done it better?* Called that before I read it "Fox wanted to shoot the movie in Wales in Technicolor, but events in Europe during World War II made this impossible. Instead, Ford had the studio build an 80 acre authentic replica of a Welsh mining town at Brent's Crags (subsequently Crags Country Club) in the Santa Monica Mountains near Malibu, California. The cast had one Welsh actor, Rhys Williams, in a minor role." (Wikipedia)If you do watch this listen for the cast all conjugating sentences like Yoda! "How green was my Valley that day, too, green and bright in the sun."

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.

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.