7.9 | / 10 |
Users | 4.6 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.6 |
Sixty year-old Huw Morgan looks back on his life as a boy in a small Welsh mining town. His reminiscences reveal the disintegration of the closely knit Morgan's, and his devoted parents, while capturing the sentiments and issues of their time.
Starring: Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee (I), Donald Crisp, Roddy McDowallDrama | 100% |
Melodrama | 18% |
Period | 10% |
Family | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono
French: DTS 5.1
Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
German: DTS 5.1
Italian: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 5.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
It's now seen as one of the biggest retrospective upsets in Academy Awards history; in 1942, John Ford's How Green Was My Valley beat out both Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon for Best Picture, with Ford also taking the Best Director prize out from under Orson Welles. The film won three additional awards, including Best Cinematography (Black and White), which almost certainly should've gone to Gregg Toland for his innovative deep focus photography on Kane. Of course, this was not the first nor the last time The Academy would choose poorly, but it is one that everyone remembers. After all, Citizen Kane is still widely considered the best American film of 20th century, while How Green Was My Valley feels quaintly outdated now, an expansive but too-loosely told melodrama that's practically weepy with nostalgia. But let's not sell it short. If it's not a great film—and it's not, next to Citizen Kane anyway—it's at least a good one when taken on its own significant merits. A year earlier, John Ford had made his gorgeous adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, and How Green Was My Valley, based on a 1939 novel by Richard Llewelyn, resonates with many of the same themes—rural poverty, socio-economic upheaval, and a pro-union subtext that made 20th Century Fox execs uneasy.
20th Century Fox's Blu-ray presentation of How Green Was My Valley is simply stunning, with a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer of a 35mm print— or perhaps the original negative, I haven't gotten any details yet—that's been carefully, lovingly restored. You'll notice a few fleeting white specks across the duration of the 2-hour film, but that's it—no scratches, no hairs, no debris, not even any sustained brightness or contrast fluctuations. Better yet, even with the digital cleanup, the film's grain structure has been left fully intact, for an image that's natural, filmic, and unmarred by digital noise reduction or edge enhancement. Clarity is exceptional, so much so that when my wife walked by and saw the picture, she asked if the film was shot on 70mm. (I love that she knows the difference.) Every detail of the characters' craggy, filthy, or otherwise weatherbeaten faces is easily discernible, and clothing textures—there's a lot of wool in this one—are almost palpable. The black and white balance of Arthur C. Miller's cinematography is handled beautifully too, with deep blacks and crisp but never overblown highlights. For a film of this vintage, it's hard to imagine a better transfer.
Knowing the film was originally in mono, purists may cringe when they spot "DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1" on the back of the case. Let me assure you, however, this is a multi-channel mix in name only. There are a few instances where the rear speakers are used as quiet bleeding room for ambience and music—I'm thinking the scene of Ivor and Bronwyn's wedding, where you can hear singing in the surrounds—but most of the track is firmly anchored up front, with no out-of-place effects or ham-fisted attempts at "immersion." Some of the Welsh sing-a-longs get a bit crackly in the upper registers, but otherwise, the mix is wonderfully clear, clean, and dynamically grounded. Most importantly, dialogue is always balanced and easy to understand. The disc includes several dub and subtitle options; see the top of the page for details.
How Green Was My Valley is forever known as "the one that unjustly beat Citizen Kane at the Oscars," but this does a disservice to the film, a gorgeous mid-century melodrama that may not have the gall or brains of Orson Welles' classic, but does have plenty of heart. While director John Ford is best known for his westerns, How Green is a fantastic reminder that he could handle sweeping, multi-generational family dramas too. He even claimed it was one of his favorites among his own films, and there are a cult of fans who certainly agree. They'll be awed by 20th Century Fox's new Blu-ray release, which features a stunningly restored high definition transfer, a faithful lossless audio track, and some informative extras. Highly recommended!
80th Anniversary / Fox Studio Classics
1933
1948
2012
2009
2011
Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
2009
1940
2007
2008
2011
2016
1950
2019
2012
2009
1956
Europa '51 / The Greatest Love
1952
2018
1983
2015