Weekend Video

Seven years ago I happened to be in Los Angeles to see the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts landmark show, "Made in California". A vast and ambitious look at California culture, the works in the exhibition ranged from Edenic painted landscapes to Rock and Roll posters. What affected me most, however, was a short film loop of Henry Fonda's end speech from the John Ford film of Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath". Combining Steinbeck's words with Ford's stunning FSA inspired cinematography it was film as verbal and visual poetry, and I always felt a loss at not being able to revisit it at will. Well, wish no more! Thanks to the miracle of You Tube, here it is. (If you're impatient skip to 02:15 minutes into the clip.)

To set the scene: it is late at night after a dance at the shanty-like workers' camp. Tom Joad (Fonda) and his mother stand in the moonlight on the edge of the wooden dance floor. Joad has been identified as the killer of the police vigilante who assassinated his friend the activist Preacher Casey. Now Joad must run away to take up Casey’s mission. As Joad leaves. Ford has an accordion playing his favorite tune “Red River Valley,” a song that in Ford movies is always associated with the fragility of community.



And here, for the record, are Fonda/Joad's words:

Well, maybe it's like Casey says. A fella ain't got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul out there that belongs to everybody. Then....(Ma Joad: "Then What, Tom?") Then... it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be everywhere…wherever you can look. Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beating up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready…And when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise, livin' in the houses they build, I'll be there too.