Metrograph

Adapted from Richard Llewellyn’s then-new novel of the same name, Ford’s film is marked by an abiding air of hindsight, one that is betrayed by its very title. This nostalgia tinctured with pragmatism haunts the voiceover narration by Irving Pichel, which introduces us to the Morgan family, the mining village in the South Wales Valleys in the late Victorian era in which the film’s action takes place, and a way of life, both hard and tender, long ago disappeared. Starring Roddy McDowall as the youngest of the Morgans, Donald Crisp as his straight-backed father, and Maureen O’Hara as his spirited elder sister, Ford’s exquisite ensemble piece is among the most beautiful and elegiac of Golden Age Hollywood films, a portrait of working-class life at the turn of the last century as politically provocative in its own, understated way as his The Grapes of Wrath the previous year.

Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures / 20th Century Fox