In what would historically prove to be one of the most controversial decisions on the Academy’s history, How Green Was My Valley took home the award for Outstanding Motion Picture of 1941. John Ford, one of American cinema’s great directors, helmed this film about a Welsh mining town and one of the families that called its valley home, and chronicled that family’s disintegration as the world became more modern and the old ways of doing things no longer applied.

When most people think of John Ford, they think of the amazing Westerns that he made, like Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Searchers. He would prove over the course of his career, however to be quite adept at handling all types of genres, and How Green Was My Valley was about as straight ahead a drama as you can possibly imagine. It starts off with an unseen man packing up his belongings. A narrator tells us that he’s leaving the valley after 50 years and that he shall never return. The town is now old and decrepid and everything and every one that made such a wonderful place to live in the past is now gone. We then see the narrator as a young boy walking up a trail that overlooks the valley with his father. He tells us how much he admired his father and how his father never said anything that was untrue or turned out to be false.

We then see that valley as it was in its prime. All of the men of the town return home from the coal mines to the open doors of their loving families. Mr. Morgan and his five older sons arrive from the mine, and young Huw (the narrator) helps them get cleaned up along with his sister Angharad (Maureen O’Hara). Two new people show up to town that day. The first is a young woman named Bronwyn, who is betrothed to one of the Morgan brothers. The second is Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon), the town’s new preacher, and Angharad is immediately smitten with the young preacher.

Things start to go awry in the town when a notice is posted that all of the wages will be cut. It’s not a large cut, but it’s enough to notice. Mr. Morgan is elected to be a spokesman for the workers, and he delivers the news to his sons that the price of coal has come down and they all need to take the cut. The sons, however, want to unionize. Mr. Morgan tells them that he’ll have no such socialist talk in his house. The next day, however, Mr. Morgan is made an example of, and has to stand out in the rain as all of the other workers pass him by. That is the last straw for the sons, and they tell their father that they’re going to join a union. Being the traditionalist that he is, Mr. Morgan tells his sons to leave the house rather than talk union at the dinner table. A union is formed, and the workers go on strike. Mr. Morgan  is against the strike and some throw bricks at his house and Mrs. Morgan stands up for him at a meeting reminding everyone who her husband is and what he means to them as workers and as a town. She has Huw with her and they fall in a frozen lake and need to be rescued by the very people she was just chastising. They both nearly die and the doctor tells Mr. Morgan that he’s not sure if Huw will ever be able to walk again. But Mr. Gruffydd tells Huw that with faith in God anything is possible and he’s walking again by the spring.

The strike ends as well, and the workers are guaranteed better wages, however they aren’t guaranteed jobs. Since the wages are higher, the jobs are fewer, and so two of the sons decide that they want to seek out better opportunity in America. The family continues to splinter when Cafartha, the boss of the mine arrives at the door and tells Mr. Morgan that his son Ivor would like to seek his permission to court Angharad, even though she’s in love with Gruffydd. Angharad doesn’t want to marry Ivor but Guffydd convinces her to do so because as a preacher he could never provide for her. He’s prepared to live a life of sacrifice and poverty for himself, but it would kill him to put Angharad and any potential children through a life like that. Gruffydd sets up an opportunity for Huw to attend school in the next valley. After some initial conflicts with other boys and with the instructor, Huw gets very good grades and Mr. Morgan rightly calls him a scholar. However, Huw wants to work in the mines. Mr. Morgan tells him that he can be a doctor or a lawyer, but Huw wants to follow in the footsteps of his father, which makes his mother very happy. She says that it would make her proud if Huw turns out to be as fine a man as his father or his brothers. Mr. Morgan is not convinced, however, and would like him to make more of himself, but tells him that the choice is his and the blame will be his as well if it turns out to be the wrong decision.

Huw goes to see Angharad when she returns from New Zealand, and he can see that she doesn’t love her husband, but still loves Gruffydd. In fact, the housekeeper can see that as well, and starts spreading the rumor that they’re having an affair. The rumor spreads like wildfire and  Gruffydd finally has to give up his congregation under the pressure, but not before telling the congregation that they’ve learned nothing from him. The come to church out of fear of eternal damnation but don’t see that Jesus was about love. Huw goes to see him and then the bell rings signifying an accident at the mine. All of the people run to the mine but Mr. Morgan doesn’t emerge. Huw, Gruffydd, and some others go down into the mine to find him and Huw discovers him under a slab of stone and Mr. Morgan dies in Huw’s arms. As we watch them bring Mr. Morgan’s body up from the mine the narrator tells us that his father never died, as all of the things he taught him have lived on.

How Green Was My Valley is about a lot of things and it’s a deep story thematically speaking. It’s about the old ways giving ground to the new, but that the new ways aren’t always better for everyone. The film seems to lament the disappearance of a simpler way of life, but doesn’t always spell out what that simpler way is. It’s a deep film. In the beginning Mr. Morgan chastises his sons for wanting to unionize. He doesn’t want to rock the boat and is willing to accept that the bosses will treat them well because they’re human beings. He feels this way because it’s always been this way and it always will be this way. But then, by the end when Huw passes up an opportunity to get an education and become something more than a miner, Mr. Morgan is upset and wants his son to try and do something different in order to have a better life. Mr. Morgan has grown as a character and realizes that the future is coming fast. Huw, however, wants the world to stay the same even as he’s been watching it change all around him. Only Mr. Morgan’s death shows Huw that the old ways are dying and neither the valley or the rest of the world that hey live in will ever be the same. Ultimately the spine of this story is progress. However it makes no statement at all on whether progress in and of itself is a good or a bad thing. The workers unionize and get higher wages, but there are fewer positions. The coal mine is continues to be the main source of income for the valley, but it’s slowly polluting the valley so that it is no longer green by the end of the film. Huw is given an opportunity to get an education in order to better himself, but ends up wanting nothing to do with that and would prefer that the world remain as it is, or once was but will never be again.

Clearly this film reflected its time. Even though it was set during the Victorian era, there are many parallels between it and America of the early 40’s. Having lived through World War I and the Great Depression, and now with World War II at the doorstep, Americans were living in a very tumultuous time. Many people could remember simpler times within their own lifetimes, but things were much more complicated now. Many people had probably lived at a time when everything made sense and you could count on one day being the same as the day that came before it. Now, no one knew what kind of world we would be in a year or two later. Was progress this great thing that would always lead to positive outcomes. How Green Was My Valley challenged that notion. Just because you’re moving forward doesn’t mean your moving in the right direction and there are always unintended  consequences to even the best intentioned deeds.

Did the Academy get it right?

No they did not. I have two words for you: Citizen Kane. Here are three more: The Maltese Falcon. And one more for good measure: Suspicion. All of those films were better than How Green Was My Valley. Many film historians and scholars, as well as the AFI list of the top 100 films will tell you that Citizen Kane was the best film ever made. Indeed, Citizen Kane is like an entire year of film school rolled up into one film. I don’t mean to gush over it, but the writing, the acting and the cinematography of Citizen Kane were all superior to How Green Was My Valley. Just as I said about Gone With the Wind, there isn’t a lot that I can say about Citizen Kane that hasn’t already been said or written about by film historians and scholars over the past 73 years. All I will say is this. How Green Was My Valley is a fine film. It’s expertly crafted and has a deep message that is woven seamlessly into the story to build a compelling drama. But there is a reason that Citizen Kane is so highly regarded. It tells a compelling story of starting with nothing, gaining everything and then losing it. It also has a main character harkening back to a simpler time, but does it in a way that is subtler and more heartbreaking when the crux of the story is revealed. Indeed, any aspiring screenwriter could learn a thing or two about story and character development by studying Citizen Kane. Finally, Gregg Toland’s cinematography in that film and their use of deep space, which was incredibly innovative at the time, should have all by itself gotten Citizen Kane recognized as the best picture of the year. This wouldn’t be the last time that the Academy got it wrong, but this was certainly one of the largest Best Picture blunders in the history of the Academy.