During a voyage to South America, a British naval captain is cast adrift...
This highly appealing comedy drama stars James Stewart and Carole Lombard as a young couple battling illness lack of money inept servants and interfering in-laws...
John Ford's memorable screen version of John Steinbeck's epic novel of the Great Depression--often regarded as the director's best film--stars Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. After having served a brief prison sentence for manslaughter Joad arrives at his family's Oklahoma farm only to find it abandoned. Muley (John Qualen) a neighbor now nearly mad with grief tells Tom of the drought that has transformed the farmland of Oklahoma into a desert and of the preying land agents who have plowe
Revered director John Ford's fictionalized account of the early life of the American president as a young lawyer facing his greatest court case...
This highly appealing comedy drama stars James Stewart and Carole Lombard as a young couple battling illness lack of money inept servants and interfering in-laws...
Produced in a time when films were both literally and figuratively black and white, Made for Each Other was unique in its effective blending of the comedic, the dramatic and, as perhaps some would insensitively say, the melodramatic. Beautiful Carole Lombard and likeable James Stewart are Jane and John Mason, a couple who meet, fall madly in love, marry and quickly have a baby. But while they--and the audience--are confident that they are meant for each other, life intercedes and the couple must meet with disapproving in-laws, job stress, financial challenges and, finally, a devastating illness.Lombard and Stewart--and the genuinely good people they portray--are utterly compelling and charming. Say yawningly what you will about tradition but the Masons' path is one that many, if not most, go down. And unlike the wonderful but wholly fantasy world of peer Preston Sturges, director John Cromwell's universe is, like real life, full of ups and downs. It's an accessible, sensitive portrayal. He gives the audience characters they want to see succeed, and to see stay together in the process. It may be a tale of triumph of the human spirit but its ultimate sentiment--one that celebrates the kindness of strangers--is thoroughly sweet, though in no way saccharine. Look for a great supporting cast, including a blustery Charles Coburn as John Mason's boss and Lucile Watson as Mason's interfering mother. --N F Mendoza
John Ford's memorable screen version of John Steinbeck's epic novel of the Great Depression--often regarded as the director's best film--stars Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. After having served a brief prison sentence for manslaughter Joad arrives at his family's Oklahoma farm only to find it abandoned. Muley (John Qualen) a neighbor now nearly mad with grief tells Tom of the drought that has transformed the farmland of Oklahoma into a desert and of the preying land agents who have plowed under the shacks of the sharecroppers. Joined by former hellfire preacher Casy (John Carradine) Tom finds his extended family including Pa (Charles Grapewin) and his indomitable Ma (Jane Darwell) packing their ramshackle truck to seek work in the fields of California. As the family treks across the country their dissolution begins with the deaths of Tom's grandparents at close intervals. When they arrive in California the Joads find only an abundance of poverty-stricken migrants like themselves and little in the way of potential work. Yet ever resilient they maintain their dignity hoping for the best. Among the talented cast Fonda does perhaps the best work of his career as does Qualen in the film's most haunting sequence. Director of photography Gregg Toland captures the suffering and the weathered luminous nobility of the Joads and the other uprooted drifting families creating striking images equal to the best work of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. In a stirring film that stands as a microcosm of the depression experience of millions Ford gives poverty a human face in a way that was rare then and even rarer in the decades to follow as Hollywood films with a sense of class consciousness dwindled like a species nearing extinction.
Please wait. Loading...
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy