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The old people die on the march. There are great simple moments like the burial of Grandpa (Charley Grapewin). Wisely Nunnally Johnson has retained only the bare bones of dialogue from the novel. So the burial scene is terser, more moving in picture than in book. High point is still Tom Joad's quiet rebuke when the irreligious Preacher (John Carradine) does not want to speak at the grave: "Ain't none of our folks ever been buried without a few words." There is the note Tom Joad writes to bury with the body: "This here is William James Joad, dyed of a stroke, old, old man. His fokes buried him becaws they got no money to pay for funerls. Nobody kilt him. Jus a stroke an he dyed." John Ford's touch is everywhere. It is in Tom Joad's laboriously adding an s to funerl in the burial note. It is in the marvelous pantomime as Ma Joad burns her box of letters and keepsakes before starting west—a silent scene that is broken by two meaningful words: "I'm ready." It is in the three tense worried faces reflected in the windshield of the jaloppy as the family crosses the weird desert at night. Above all, it is in the ironically recurring song of the mockingbird, heard in the distance as the family first sights California's orchards.
It is no more important that California deputies kill strikers than that Tom Joad is a killer before the picture begins, kills again before it ends. It is equally unimportant that the Preacher, who has never understood religion, becomes an agitator, or that Tom Joad becomes a fugitive from justice. Ma is the important thing in The Grapes of Wrath, for Ma begins as one thing, ends as another. A bewildered, homeless, heartbroken woman when the picture opens, at its close she is an immovable force, holding the crumbling family together against things she does not even understand, against agitators as well as deputies.
As played by Jane Darwell, Ma is a great tragic character of the screen, even her victory is tragic. She can win it only by losing everything. But faced with hunger, homelessness, death, she sees that none of these was important. Ma is the incarnation of the dignity of human being, and the courage to assert it against odds.
The Fighting 69th (Warner Bros.), a fictionized account of the intimate life and exploits of Manhattan's famed World War regiment continues, in slightly modified form, Warners' long time efforts to refine through suffering the character of their ace triggerman, James Cagney. Sometimes the effort has resulted in Mr. Cagney's death (The Roaring Twenties). Sometimes he survives (Here Comes the Navy). In either case his reward has usually been the love of a pure, high minded girl. As Jerry Plunkett, a Brooklyn braggart, James Cagney is not only a disgrace to his semisavage comrades, but he turns coward under fire. Reclaimed by a well-placed shot and the ministrations of Father Duffy (Pat O'Brien), Jerry dies in battle. But this time valor is its only reward. There is not a girl in The Fighting 69th, luscious Priscilla Lane having been withdrawn at zero hour from the stag cast by what seems a prudent studio decision.
Aficionados who know a first class carnage when they see and hear one ought to like this picture. There is seldom a dull moment.