Ten Best Great Depression Movies
Lobby card: The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
The Great Depression, precipitated by the stock market crash of Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, was one of the bleakest periods in world history. Here are ten Hollywood dramatic movies which best capture that era of breadlines, catastrophic unemployment and Hoovervilles. Brother, can you spare a dime?
The Grapes of Wrath (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1940)
Based on the 1939 best-selling novel of the same name by John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath debuted at New York City?s Rivoli Theater on January 24, 1940, attracting 12,917 patrons for its first day?s showing. The movie centers on Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) and family, who leave Dust Bowl Oklahoma to look for migrant work in California. Shot in stark black and white, The Grapes of Wrath is unarguably the granddaddy of Great Depression films, expertly capturing the plight of the desperate, dust-caked Okies as they journey west on U.S. 66 in the midst of the hardest of economic times. Made for 0,000, The Grapes of Wrath also features Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Dorris Bowden, Russell Simpson, O.Z. Whitehead, John Qualen and Eddie Quillan.
Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Fonda), Best Director (John Ford, won), Best Supporting Actress (Darwell, won), Best Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Sound
Director: John Ford
Review: "Bitter, authentic, honest, it marches straight to its tragic end with a reality that suggests a superb newsreel, with a courage that merits a badge of honor for the U.S. move industry." - Life magazine (1/22/40)
On DVD: The Grapes of Wrath (Twentieth Century-Fox, 2004)
Bound for Glory (United Artists, 1976)
David Carradine shines as Woody Guthrie (1912-1967), America?s premier folk singer who leaves his native Oklahoma in the 1930s to search for work. Guthrie rides the rails, composing his songs and discovering the triumph and tragedy of the American working class along the way. Ronny Cox, Melinda Dillon and Gail Strickland also appear, with David Carradine?s Guthrie delivering such Depression-era tunes as "Hard Travelin?," "This Train Is Bound for Glory," "Hobo?s Lullaby," "Talking Dust Bowl Blues" and "This Land Is Your Land." One of the movie?s highlights is the mammoth dust storm, which engulfs an entire town.
Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography (won), Best Film Editing, Best Original Music Score (won), Best Costume Design
Director: Hal Ashby
Review: "Ashby and [cinematographer Haskell] Wexler recreate the Depression years so well, see them so faithfully; that the movie actually becomes a historical document. If we want to know what that decade looked like, this is the film to come to." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (3/9/77)
On DVD: Bound for Glory (MGM/UA, 2000)
Emperor of the North Pole (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1973)
Lee Marvin stars as A No. 1, a rail-riding hobo in the Great Depression who shows the ropes to novice tramp Cigaret (Keith Carradine). Marvin?s A No. 1 plans to ride a train all the way into Eugene, Oregon, which is patrolled by the feared, sadistic railroad bull/conductor Shack (Ernest Borgnine). The climax comes when A No. 1 and Shack square off while en route on the big mechanical beast, battling it out with two-by-fours and an axe. Emperor of the North Pole captures two key components of Great Depression culture ? the railroads and the hobos who used them as "alternate transportation." Emperor of the North was filmed with the complete cooperation of the Oregon, Pacific and Eastern Railway, who provided the rolling stock for the picture.
Director: Robert Aldrich
Review: "Robert Aldrich?s ?Emperor of the North Pole? is a fine, elaborately staged action melodrama set mostly on the freight trains and in the hobo jungles of the American Northwest during the Great Depression?The suspense of the film (which is so hugely violent that its PG rating is a mystery), is unrelenting and the performances first-rate, including that of Keith Carradine, a son of John, as a loudmouth kid to whom Marvin tries to teach the rules of the road." - Vincent Canby, The New York Times (5/25/73)
On DVD: Emperor of the North (Twentieth Century-Fox, 2006)
Promotional still: Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin square off in�Emperor of the North (1973)
Ironweed (Columbia TriStar, 1987)
Jack Nicholson stars as Francis Phelan, an alcoholic ex-major league pitcher who returns to his native Albany, New York, around Halloween 1938. Meryl Streep plays Phelan?s girlfriend Helen Archer, a terminally ill woman who used to sing on the radio, with Carroll Baker, Diane Venora, Michael O?Keefe, Tom Waits and Fred Gwynne also in the fine cast. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by William Kennedy, Ironweed is steeped in the tough times of the era, complete with a harrowing scene in which a vigilante group tries to drive the homeless and destitute out of Albany with baseball bats.
Academy Award nominations: Best Actor (Nicholson), Best Actress (Streep)
Director: Hector Babenco
Review: "Unrelentingly bleak, Ironweed is a film without an audience and no reason for being except its own self-importance. It?s an event picture without the event. Whatever joy or redemption William Kennedy offered in his Pulitzer prize-winning novel is nowhere to be found, surprising since he wrote the screenplay." - Variety (1986)
On DVD: Ironweed (Lions Gate, 2009)
Hard Times (Columbia, 1975)
Set in New Orleans of 1933, Hard Times stars Charles Bronson as a bare-knuckle fighter named Chaney who hooks up with Speed (James Coburn), a smooth, fast-talking promoter who arranges his street bouts. Bronson, who was nearly 54-years-old at the time of the picture?s release, ably carries the role as the tough, gritty pugilist who fights for money in the depths of the Great Depression. Jill Ireland (Bronson?s wife since 1968), Strother Martin and Maggie Blye also appear in the film, which paints a bleak, atmospheric portrait of hard times in the Big Easy.
Director: Walter Hill
Review: "?Hard Times? is a powerful, brutal film containing a definitive Charles Bronson performance. He plays Chaney, a man of few words and no past, who rides the rails to New Orleans for the winter and tries to win some money by fist fighting. It?s in the middle of the Depression. The fights are all-out and bare-knuckle, held in warehouses and open by invitation to men with cash to wager." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (10/14/75)
On DVD: Hard Times (Columbia TriStar, 1999)
Of Mice and Men (United Artists, 1939)
Based on the 1937 novel of the same name by John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men came to movie theaters on December 30, 1939. The film stars Burgess Meredith (George Milton) and Lon Chaney Jr. (Lennie Small), two migrant workers during the Great Depression who find employment on a ranch near Soledad, California. Lennie is a man of great physical strength but of limited mental capacity, with the cynical George serving as his guardian. Things turn nasty when Lennie accidentally kills young Mae (Betty Field), the wife of the owner?s son (Bob Steele), with a lynch mob clamoring for his life.
Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Original Music Score, Best Sound, Best Music Scoring
Director: Lewis Milestone
Review: "Lewis Milestone, who directed it; Eugene Solow, who adapted it, and Burgess Meredith, Lon Chaney Jr., Betty Field and the others who have performed it, have done more than well in simply realizing the drama?s established values. ?Of Mice and Men? need not have been better as a play than it was as a novelette; it need not be better as a picture, so long as it is just as good." - Frank S. Nugent, The New York Times (2/17/40)
On DVD: Of Mice and Men (Image, 1998)
Paper Moon (Paramount, 1973)
Ryan O?Neal stars as Moses Pray, an aptly named con man who preys on his victims during the Great Depression. Saddled with a young girl named Addie Loggins (Tatum O?Neal), Moses traverses the back roads of America, peddling his "pre-ordered" bibles to widows and running his games on unsuspecting store owners and other easy marks. Madeline Kahn plays Trixie Delight, with John Hillerman and P.J. Johnson also in the mix. "I want my two hundred dollars!" Addie screams at Moze in one scene. "But I don?t have it," he replies. "Then get it!" she answers. Shot in black and white, Paper Moon is loaded with the sights and sounds of the Great Depression, right down to the tinny old songs, radio programs and folksy quotes from "Frank Roosevelt," as Addie calls FDR.
Academy Award nominations: Best Supporting Actress (Tatum O?Neal, won), Best Supporting Actress (Kahn), Best Sound, Best Screenplay
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Review: "Bogdanovich and his screenwriter, Alvin Sargent, who adapted Joe David Brown?s novel, have set out to make a bittersweet comedy that is both in the style of thirties movies and about the thirties. They evoke the time (1936) and the place (rural Kansas and Missouri) so convincingly that their rather sweet formula story seems completely inadequate, even fraudulent." - Vincent Canby, The New York Times (5/17/73)
On DVD: Paper Moon (Paramount, 2003)
They Shoot Horses, Don?t They? (Cimerama, 1969)
The Great Depression-era craze of marathon dancing comes alive in They Shoot Horses, Don?t They?, which premiered in New York City on December 10, 1969. Jane Fonda (Grace), Michael Sarrazin (Robert), Susannah York (Alice), Gig Young (Rocky), Red Buttons (Sailor), Bonnie Bedelia (Ruby) and Michael Conrad (Rollo) head the strong cast. The setting is a rundown dance emporium on the Pacific pier in Los Angeles, where a disparate, motley group of contestants vie for the big cash prize in a grueling marathon dance contest run by a sadistic master of ceremonies named Rocky. Well, desperate times breed desperate actions, as the competing couples prance around the dance floor like cattle. But yowza, yowza, yowza! Look at those young people dance!
Academy Award nominations: Best Actress (Fonda), Best Supporting Actor (Young, won), Best Supporting Actress (York), Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Screenplay, Best Music Score, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design
Director: Sydney Pollack
Review: "?The movie is by far the best thing that Pollack has ever directed (with the possible exception of The Scalphunters). While the cameras remain, as if they had been sentenced, within the ballroom, picking up the details of the increasing despair of the dancers, the movie becomes an epic of exhaustion and futility. The circular patterns of the dancers, the movement that leads nowhere, are the metaphors of the movie." - Vincent Canby, The New York Times (12/11/69)
On DVD: They Shoot Horses, Don?t They? (MGM, 2004)
Bonnie and Clyde (Warner Bros./Seven Arts, 1967)
Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway play the gun happy gangsters who shoot their way to infamy during the Great Depression in this highly fictionalized movie version of the unhappy ballad of Bonnie and Clyde. Gene Hackman appears as Buck Barrow, with Michael J. Pollard (C.W. Moss), Estelle Parsons (Blanche Barrow), Denver Pyle (Texas Ranger Frank Hamer) and Dub Taylor (Ivan Moss) also along for the ride. And a bloody, violent one it is, as the Barrow gang ? brandishing pistols, Thompson submachine guns and Browning automatic rifles ? shoot up the already bleak Depression-era landscape like no other cinematic gangsters before them. Gene Wilder has a small, hilarious role as Eugene Grizzard, an angry little geek who pursues the heavily-armed Barrow gang who had stolen his wheels. "We rob banks," Dunaway?s Bonnie Parker declares. And so they do.
Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Beatty), Best Actress (Dunaway), Best Supporting Actress (Parsons, won), Best Supporting Actors (Hackman, Pollard), Best Story and Screenplay, Best Costume Design, Best Cinematography (won)
Director: Arthur Penn
Review: "?Bonnie and Clyde? is a milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance. It is also pitilessly cruel, filled with sympathy, nauseating, funny, heartbreaking, and astonishingly beautiful." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (9/25/67)
On DVD: Bonnie and Clyde (Warner, 1999)
Promotional still: Gene Hackman and Warren Beatty as Buck and Clyde Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Honkytonk Man (Warner Bros., 1982)
Clint Eastwood stars as Red Stovall, a fledgling, tuberculosis-ridden country-western singer who leaves his sister?s dust-choked Oklahoma farm during the Depression and heads to Nashville for a tryout on WSM?s fabled Grand Ole Opry. Driving Red to the big dance is 14-year-old Whit (Kyle Eastwood), Red?s nephew, who sees this as his big chance to get out of the Dust Bowl and make something of his young life. "Uncle Red, don?t you think you have a problem with your drinking?" the kid asks. "Only when I can?t get it," Red answers. A sleeper in both Depression-era themed movies and Clint Eastwood?s own filmography, Honkytonk Man also features John McIntire, Alexa Kenin, Verna Bloom, several Eastwood tunes and Marty Robbins performing the title song.
Director: Clint Eastwood
Review: "Only charm and sentimentality could have brought the requisite magic to Clint Eastwood?s ?Honkytonk Man?; unfortunately, this well-intentioned but weak film hasn?t nearly enough of either. Set in the Depression, opening in the Dust Bowl and heading east to Nashville, the story tracks a man and a boy, played by Mr. Eastwood and his son Kyle, through various rites of passage." - Janet Maslin, The New York Times (12/15/82)
On DVD: Honkytonk Man (Warner, 2010)
Twelve More Great Depression Film Favorites
Meet John Doe (1941) All the King?s Men (1949) Sullivan's Travels (1941)Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) Boxcar Bertha (1972) Chinatown (1974) Billy Bathgate (1991) The Green Mile (1999) Cinderella Man (2005) O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000) Pennies from Heaven (1981)I�Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)
Promotional still: Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Thomas Mitchell in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Image Credits
All images courtesy Heritage Auction Galleries, Dallas, Texas
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