"THE GRAPES OF WRATH."

Taranaki Daily News, 21 September 1940, Page 12

"THE GRAPES OF WRATH."

POWERFUL STORY ON SCREEN. After generations of Americans had farmed the "Dust Bowl" lands of Oklahoma the winds began to beat them and, when they could not maintain mortgage payments, finance companies started ruthless land aggregation. Tractors ploughed the land, and labour was dispiaced and buildings destroyed, and without homes or food or prospects the people started a long migration across the continent to California. _ Their hopes lay in illusory reports of high wages in fruit picking. It was on that grim transfer of a population that John Steinbeck based his fearless novel, "The Grapes of Wrath." The film of the same name that commenced a season at the State Theatre, N»w Plymouth, last night shows the trials of the persevering Joad family. Its members are crude. sincere toilcrs who have absorbed the dullness of the land they live on, but all their prolonged struggles with hard _ nature have failed to stamp out basic finer qualities. With such actors as Jane Darwell, Hcnrv Fonda, John Carradine and Charley Grapewin the picture is an achievement in both production and _acting. It is not a pretty story, but it is powerful in its realistic portrayal of human beings struggling with poverty and htlnger and gangster business methods that do not hesitate to sacrifice the lives of men, women and children for the sake of profit. Among the supporting films is one showing New Zealand soldiers in England.