This film is part of my small John Ford Marathon. 
This is my fourth film in the John Ford marathon, and if there’s one thing I can say in praise of How Green Was My Valley in comparison to the rest of the films involved thusfar is that it is one of the best filmed movies of the lot. While I hold nothing against the films previously discussed, it seems that a level of detail and production went into this film that surpasses anything previously handed to me and it’s much appreciated.
It’s hard to watch a film like this and not see how it possibly influenced a favourite of mine, There Will Be Blood, to show the passage of time through the eyes of a boy as well as the discussion of religion and business and how it affects a man’s soul to be pulled between the two. We see the story — as told by Huw (Roddy McDowall) — of the Morgan family over the years in a small Welsh mining community.
The opening fifteen minutes is a period of time in the film where we as an audience are uncertain what we’re about to get. We’re introduced to an unseen narrator — later discovered to be an older Huw — and he begins to tell us this story; however the film seems to be entering a visual feast that is unlike what we’ve come to expect from Ford. We see the hoard of men coming home from a day’s labour in the mine filling the street and singing their songs which creates a moment that while we’re privy to a few more times before the film is over, is so striking it’s difficult to run out of your mind.
The film, when you think of it’s beginning and end, almost feels as if we’re watching the writers play out what would be torture cinema on the Morgans as we watch them — the happy family — be taken through the ringer of life, but somehow I’m left wondering what it all meant. Is the film one in a long line of movies that prove that education is the only way up in life seeing Huw refuse the opportunity for a ‘dignified’ profession only to be drawn into this pitiful life which seems to only end in family turmoil and death. Or if you look at the life that a lot of the Morgans’ live — from the opening scene to the end — it’s a life of many pleasures which is simple but rewards one in ways that no ‘dignified’ profession would seem to.
Even the title of the film How Green Was My Valley is one that brings on nostalgia. As the film opens with a narration which cues us into the fact that we, along with Huw, are reminiscing. We even see in that opening scene — before we are transported back — Huw packing his things to leave his home as if to say that after all is said and done there’s nothing left to keep him here. All those pleasures and simple things have dried up, like the valley that was once so very green.