The moment I have decided to dissect from John Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” is the one we discussed in class. It is when the Joad’s slowly drive into the migrant camp. By placing the camera on top of the Joad’s truck, Ford was able to capture the faces of disgruntled migrant workers from the point-of-view of the Joads. The decision to position the camera at that angle was, I believe, intended to give the viewers the same perspective as the Joad’s, in order to empathize with their family and not with the people going through very similar situations.
I chose this moment because in class we spoke about the differences between John Steinbeck’s novel and John Ford’s adaptation of Steinbeck’s novel and about how maybe some of the spirit in Steinbeck’s book was lost in Ford’s translation. Now, although I have never read the novel, from the class discussion I am under the impression that John Steinbeck’s intent for this book was for readers to empathize with migrant workers in general, as a unit. And on the other hand, using this migrant camp scene as an example, Ford is allowing the audience to empathize with the Joads and only the Joads.
I think there is a little too much assumption involved in this theory however. I am willing to argue that John Ford’s decision to have us follow the Joads from beginning to end was purely a cinematic one. I think it is possible that Ford thought, in order to get viewers to believe in a story and empathize with a situation, they need to be able to truly care about the characters in the story.
To further emphsize this point the I use modern day broadcast news as an analogy; people only tend to care about news when there is a face attached to it. For instance, if an anchor on CNN announced that John Smith had died, a very few amount people would pay much attention. Now if later in the day, the same anchor reported they had made a mistake and the deceased was actually Oprah or Obama, it would catch the attention of a massive amount of people, all over the world. There would be shrines on sidewalks with groups of crying people huddled together, holding candles. It is much easier to be empathetic toward things you care about, things that are tangible.
Also, it seems true to the nature of “survival of the fittest” for the other migrant workers to not welcome the Joads with open arms. These people are hungry and tired.
Validity of Auteur Theory
Yes, I think auteur theory is a valid area of film studies, if not only because it exists and was very prominent in recent history.
I agree with your argument that the choice of focusing on the Joads is a good decision for making this film, however I’d like to add some more proposals for the Ford and Toland’s decision.
ReplyDeleteLike you mentioned, the scene of entering the first camp in California is where the Joads separate themselves from the rest of the migrant workers. As the truck enters the campground, other campers look at them with dismay, even some hostility. Later Ma Joad makes a stew and leaves some for the thin children, although she tells her family to go inside so they would not become too affected and give away their own food. This is where I think the self-survival is prominent, in the way that the leader of the family shelters the rest from the hunger and needs of others that they can’t help. The scene has been altered from the novel; a woman approaches Ma Joad and reprimands her for giving out stew to her children. Ford and Toland skips the response of the other campers to their charity; and I interpret the message of Steinbeck for this scene is to denounce this perverse dignity to refuse aid, to believe that one should be responsible for one’s own outcomes , precisely because he wrote of a mother letting her innocent children stay starved. This is further exemplified in another scene in the novel, where the business owners and farms burn their extra supplies of food to drive up the price of the food, believing that the migrant workers and other poor people are poor due to their own faults. I think novel preserves a message that it is not good for either the individual level or the corporate level to have the mentality that the one deserves only what one works for, but that people need to work together. This idea is downplayed in the film because, after all, we are always following the Joad family and they hardly interact with other families!
If Ford and Toland stayed true to the spirit of the novel, I believe they would have made a documentary instead of capturing the dynamics and partial disintegration of one family going through this migration. I think Ford and Toland are auteurs in that the movie successfully portrayed one story about the miserable migration, and for those who have never read the novel, there is an adequate amount of plot and storyline. The inexorable determination of Ma Joad is especially successful in giving us a character who trudges, day by day, to fight against powers one cannot see. I don’t think the stew scene I mentioned is simply cinematic, though. Based on my knowledge of the novel, the director has changed the message of the novelist and his activism. I believe that changes are inherent in adaption, and Ford and Toland extracted the core of the story. Auteur theory provides insights as to why directors would film one written script differently, since film and all media should present themselves to interpretations, auteur theory is definitely valid.
Hailun Zhu
I agree with your opinion of the scene with them driving into the camp, and the camera looking like the spectators view, was the right choice on John Ford. I have also never read John Steinbeck’s novel but John Ford went the right route when producing this into a movie. Truffaut argues about the unfaithfulness to the spirit of the letter, when doing novels into film. But what if the director gets a different spirit after reading a novel and feels that the author’s message was spoken to them in their own special understanding. We all have different imaginations, when I read a Harry Potter novel and you go ahead and read the same novel we will both imagine scenes different ways. So for Truffaut to say that some directors are unfaithful to the spirit of a novel, I feel is untrue. Now if the author takes out a scene that was in the novel but not in their film, maybe their spirit told them it was the right thing to do, to get their vision across. Everything in life, art, whatever medium is transformed from something someone sees or hears. Nothing is new everything is just reinvented to fit whatever time period. Ford probably felt that sticking with one family as his main character would pull at the heart strings of the right people. His point can be put across in many ways, but he picked the one right for his spirit. When we listen to that inner voice which we all have, we do what is right for us. I believe Ford picked the right cinematic material for his spirit. This can be said as the “auteur” that each director may have in their films. - S.W
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