Apr. 21, 2002 - 4:30 pm
i imagine How Green Was My Valley will always be looked on as the movie that beat Citizen Kane (1941) for Best Picture. should it have? flatly, no. all of the awards that went to this film should have gone to Citizen Kane in my opinion.
now that we're past that, i'm gonna take a look at the film just in itself. this is the story of a family and its hardships in a small Welsh mining village around the turn of the century. the film had some nice cinematography, but mostly it was done in a very conventional manner. just a few good shots. the majority of the actors were rather unconvincing, except for Roddy McDowall as young Huw Morgan. he was quite good as our primary protagonist. i went into it thinking this had the potential to be a great film. that's got to be one of the prettiest titles for a film i've ever heard, aside from A Place In The Sun (1951). but it turned out that that was about all the film was....pretty. i'll give it a 6/10. my advice is watch Citizen Kane instead.