..."How Green Was My Valley", which won the Oscar for Best Picture at the 1942 Academy Awards ceremony. Directed by the legendary John Ford, it was my father's favorite, and it is a fine film. More interesting to me, however, is the fact that it beat "Citizen Kane," which was also nominated that year, winning 4 Oscars, including Best Actor for Orson Welles, and a screenplay award shared by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz.
"Citizen Kane" has aged very, very well. It is widely regarded as the finest film ever made. In the 2007 American Film Institute poll, it ranked first, with "The Godfather" and "Casablanca" among the short list of great films in consideration for the top spot. Some speculate that the power of William Randolph Hearst, his friends in Hollywood, and those who wanted to be his friend or feared his enmity, account for the failure of the motion picture industry to award the film that year. However, that theory is not easily reconcilable with the multiple nominations and the 4 Oscars awarded. It seems that such power would be more sweeping.
Perhaps the newsreel footage and sensationalism of the film hit too close to home. Europe and the Pacific were engulfed in World War II, Pearl Harbor had been attacked, and the worst fears of a nation were being realized. December 7, 1941, a date on which the lives of all Americans changed forever, was at the forefront that Oscar season. My father said that he and all the other draftees in my hometown of Gillespie, Illinois, got "their letter from Mr. Roosevelt" on Christmas Eve, 1941. I think the timing was not right that year The simple virtues of home and family, though timeless in their appeal, prevailed at a time when everything was falling apart. "How Green Was My Valley" exemplified them, while "Citizen Kane" depicted
their loss and the destructive forces of compensation.
"Citizen Kane" has aged very, very well. It is widely regarded as the finest film ever made. In the 2007 American Film Institute poll, it ranked first, with "The Godfather" and "Casablanca" among the short list of great films in consideration for the top spot. Some speculate that the power of William Randolph Hearst, his friends in Hollywood, and those who wanted to be his friend or feared his enmity, account for the failure of the motion picture industry to award the film that year. However, that theory is not easily reconcilable with the multiple nominations and the 4 Oscars awarded. It seems that such power would be more sweeping.
Perhaps the newsreel footage and sensationalism of the film hit too close to home. Europe and the Pacific were engulfed in World War II, Pearl Harbor had been attacked, and the worst fears of a nation were being realized. December 7, 1941, a date on which the lives of all Americans changed forever, was at the forefront that Oscar season. My father said that he and all the other draftees in my hometown of Gillespie, Illinois, got "their letter from Mr. Roosevelt" on Christmas Eve, 1941. I think the timing was not right that year The simple virtues of home and family, though timeless in their appeal, prevailed at a time when everything was falling apart. "How Green Was My Valley" exemplified them, while "Citizen Kane" depicted
their loss and the destructive forces of compensation.
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