How Green Was My Valley Movie Review

Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley was made into an Oscar-winning film, becoming a screen classic it was reportedly the infamous academy winner against which the mighty CITIZEN KANE fell. The movie tells of the Morgans, a hard-working Welsh mining family living in the heart of the South Wales Valleys during the 19th century. The story chronicles life in the South Wales coalfields, the loss of that way of life and its effects on the family. The fictional village in the movie is based on GilfachGoch. Llewellyn spent many summers there visiting his grandfather, and it served as the inspiration for the novel.

The movie chronicles the loss of vitality and humanity from the social conscience, it longed for an incomprehensible loss which we never got back. There is a staggering nostalgia in each of its nook and corner. It was retold from a memory of old HWHMorgan when he was preparing for leaving his home. He recounted the finer days and simpler lives which manifested masterfully with john ford’s directing. 

It was hoisted with elegance by a stellar cast and an enchanting Maureen O'Hara. Though it perhaps strays into an overly maudlin territory, this working-class drama is saved by a solid cast and director John Ford's unmistakable style.it was  lauded the film as "one of John Ford's masterpieces of sentimental human drama."

In a nutshell, it enumerated the changing times during the eighteenth century after the industrial revolution; it showcased the breaking up of a large family into smaller ones, the migration of able-bodied young men to foreign shores searching for livelihood. This wales epitaph lamented the spiritual and social distortion of and degradation humane value, which was marvelously depicted in the chapel sequence where the pastor condemned the populace for their hypocrisy and scrutinized their motive for attending church. 

Above all its longing that we all felt and which all our heart seeks, but it remains secluded and distant in every day pushing and chaos for more money and much power and mightier ego. In 1990, the movie was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The Academy Film Archive preserved How Green Was My Valley during 1998.

I am going with 8.3/10 for this john ford’s master class with a knack of sentiments and pinch of emotions, like a harmonious poetry.