How Green Was My Valley

If you want to trace the history of Hollywood kitsch and sentiment, there's no way you can pass up the films of John Ford. This quintessential classics director revels in cheese and exaggerated drama, How Green Was My Valley is another perfect example. To each their own I guess.

Ford leaves America for a small miner's town in Wales. The film focuses on a big miner family in the early 1900s, as the young boys have their own ideas of what the world should look like, the father is stern and strict, and social turmoil plagues the country. And in true Hollywood fashion, there's also a bit of action at the end.

The finale isn't all that bad and would've made for a good thriller, but the drama that comes before is hard to watch and really drags the film down. The performances are poor, the soundtrack is bad, it's only the cinematography that manages to stand out when the plot gets a bit more exciting.