One Paragraph Movie Review: How Green Was My Valley

Two hundred and fortieth film: How Green Was My Valley, a family epic set in Wales, so you know the vowels are good. Also good is pretty much everything else, and this is definitely my kind of saga — trials that must be overcome, love affairs that cannot be realised, black-and-blue-collar workers sticking it to the man, great chunks of beef carved at the dinner table, and a big family that includes five tall, handsome brothers who come home from the coal mine every evening and get straight into the bath. Even though this thing is from 1941, it has some extremely familiar and contemporary threads — the coal industry exploiting its workers and ruining the environment, people turning to socialism to survive capitalism, and religion being full of judgemental hypocrites. You can just chuck yourself into this movie and sit down at the Morgan family dinner table, listening to their yarns and eating their delicious-looking bread. Good acting, good scenery, good story-telling, good love story, good punch-ups. Good. Three and a half spending-box shillings out of five.