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By
WAYNE KLEIN
Emerging out of the dust
bowl that obscured previous home video editions of
"The Grapes of Wrath," John Ford's classic film
finally looks as if it's been dressed in its
Sunday best. Tom Joad (Fonda)returns home after 4
years in prison for manslaughter to discover his
family home abandoned. He discovers that his
family has taken to the road to leave behind the
desiccated landscape of Oklahoma. The farms,
ravaged by weather seemingly from Hell itself,
have failed to produce enough crops to keep the
banks at bay. As a result, the banks have
foreclosed on many of the homesteads and farmers,
now homeless, have moved on in search of the
promised land in California. Joad catches up with
his family and joins them on their difficult
journey west meeting tragedy along the way.
John Steinbeck's classic novel brings a sense of
40's gritty reality to the screen intact under
Ford's excellent direction and Nunnally Johnson's
fine screenplay. "Wrath" holds up amazingly well
considering the way Hollywood tended to gloss over
tragedy with sticky sentimentality. Fonda was
never better than his portrayal of Joad. Made post
code, it's amazing that director Ford and producer
Zannuck got away with such a dark adaptation of
Steinbeck's novel.
"Wrath" never looked so good on home video before.
Fox has done a painstaking restoration of the
film. While the film occasionally looks a bit
grainy and the digital process used to clean up
and transfer for the film has left some scars on
the film, this version of "Wrath" captures Gregg
Toland's evocative black and white cinematography
with all the rich grays and deep blacks intended.
Compare other films from the same time frame that
have had similar restorations, and you'll begin to
appreciate the difficult feat that was
accomplished. With a nitrate negative that
disintegrated ages ago (all films shot prior to
the 1950's were shot on nitrate film stock. It's
combustible nature and potential for
deterioration, shrinkage with age and other issues
made it extremely unstable. Hundreds of films that
were never transferred to more stable celluloid
film have been lost forever).
The source material for this version of "Wrath"
includes a partial nitrate print of the original
film which had sharp picture resolution. To fill
in the gap in that incomplete version of the film
Fox collaborated with the Museum of Arts and
Sciences using their inferior print. Combing the
two into a nearly seamless new High Definition
transfer and using a digital program to clean up
all the nicks and spots on the film, Fox has
nearly restored the classic film to its former
glory.
Fox has also done quite a bit with the sound
cleaning up the resolution where possible on the
mono soundtrack. They've also used these elements
to create a "stereo" soundtrack. The transfer to
stereo doesn't really add anything to the impact
of the soundtrack. The stereo soundtrack has uses
a delay to create the impression of stereo but,
other than that, doesn't provide a huge, distinct
advantage over the mono soundtrack. Still, given
the age of the film and other issues, the
impressive sound makes a good impact.
Once again, Fox has done a superlative job of
packaging a number of terrific extras with a
classic film. The vintage 1934 Movietone newsreel
included provides a context for Steinbeck's novel
and Ford's film. For those unfamiliar with the
history of the time, the Movietone documentary
footage provides a context to understand the
desperation of the characters in "Wrath." Also
included is a marvelous bit of vintage footage
with President Roosevelt recognizing the
importance of motion pictures as both
entertainment and social commentary at an Academy
fete. Again, it takes you back to roughly the same
time frame when "Wrath" was made and shown in
theaters acting as a time capsule from the past
thrust into the 21st Century.
Also included are two extras of particular
interest to fans of old Hollywood movies. The A&E
biography of Darryl Zannuck provides a glimpse as
to the power of studio heads and how they
influenced their stable of film directors and
writers. There were very few true auteurs during
the Golden Age of Hollywood. Hitchcock, Ford,
Whale, Welles and a small handful of other
directors demonstrated that they were the
"authors" of their films. The bulk of authorship
for other films produced by Fox could be
attributed, at least partially, to studio moguls
like Zannuck. The original vintage theatrical
trailer also provides a glimpse into how Hollywood
presold movies to audiences. While outtakes are
also mentioned on the box, there are none. We also
get the brief UK prologue used to give British
audiences a better understanding of the challenges
facing America during the migration of people from
the Midwest. Fox also provides a nice stills
gallery which includes vintage original production
stills along with the original posters for the
film.
With everyone associated with the production long
dead, Fox relies on two well known film scholars
to provide commentary on both the production of
the film and providing a historical context for
the film & Steinbeck's source novel. Joseph
McBride provides the film background while well
known Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw provides
the information on Steinbeck's novel as well as
making interesting observations on the changes for
the screenplay by Nunnally Johnson. Shillinglaw
provides the background on Steinbeck's inspiration
for the novel. Evidently, after the success
Steinbeck experienced with "Of Mice and Men," a
San Francisco newspaper contacted the California
writer to document the dust bowl migrant workers
and their experience in the government work camps.
Director Ford was a New Deal liberal and Roosevelt
supporter who found the story of the migrant
workers particularly moving and expressed interest
in making a film of Steinbeck's novel when Darryl
Zannuck acquired it for production. While many
historical and scholar commentary tracks can be
drier than the winds swirling around the dust bowl
of the 30's, both McBride and Shillinglaw provide
captivating comments that also act as passive
history lessons full of intimate details of the
time.
A beautifully realized restoration for DVD means
this version of "Wrath" can be held up as a
standard for restoration of vintage classics. The
soft picture, frequently blurry images and muddy
grays of previous versions of the film have been
replaced by a sharp picture with amazing
resolution given the source nitrate copy of the
original negative. The use of a computer program
to "sample" areas of the picture and help
eliminate picture flaws means that "Wrath" looks
almost like what a pristine print of the time. |
