How Green Was My Valley (1941)

How Green Was My Valley is a 1941 drama film directed by John Ford. The film, based on the 1939 Richard Llewellyn novel, was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and scripted by Philip Dunne. The film features Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp, and Roddy McDowall. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning five, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography and Best Supporting Actor. Winning the Best Picture Oscar was, and still is, despite the film's merit and popularity, highly controversial, as it was preferred to Citizen Kane, widely regarded as the best film of all time. How Green Was My Valley was made into a Broadway musical in 1966, re-titled A Time for Singing.

The film tells of the Morgans, a close, hard-working Welsh mining family living in the heart of the South Wales Valleys in the 19th century. The story chronicles the destruction of the environment in South Wales coalfields, and the loss of a way of life and its effects on the family. The fictional village in the film is based on Gilfach Goch; Llewellyn spent many summers there visiting his grandfather, and it served as the inspiration for the novel.

Synopsis

The film opens with a monologue by an older Huw Morgan (voice by Irving Pichel): "I am packing my belongings in the shawl my mother used to wear when she went to the market. And I'm going from my valley. And this time, I shall never return." The valley and its villages are now blackened by the coal mines that fill the area.

Actors