FILM : John Ford’s ‘How Green Was My Valley’ Is a Miner Classic

“How Green Was My Valley” is admirable in many ways, but its accomplishment at the 1941 Academy Awards may be the most remarkable--John Ford’s movie about life in a Welsh coal mining town overcame what would soon become a legend, Orson Welles’ visionary “Citizen Kane.”

It’s really not surprising that the academy awarded the Oscars for best film and best direction to the more traditional “How Green Was My Valley.” Welles may have been ready to take cinematic risks, but the academy, as usual, wasn’t. “How Green Was My Valley” is all but forgotten (you can’t even get it on video), but “Citizen Kane” continues to reverberate.

Although a minor note when contrasted with Welles’ masterpiece, “How Green Was My Valley” (screening Sunday at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center) can’t be underestimated for pure storytelling, visual beauty and simple virtues. Its sentimentality is ragged at times, but the overall quilt of the film is well constructed.

Ford was a director who understood the art of plotting and knew how to bring a gentle humanity to his actors and the characters they embodied. “How Green Was My Valley,” which followed his “Stagecoach” (1939) and “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940), is quintessential Ford.

The film opens on a nostalgic reverie. Huw, an aging miner, reflects on his life as he prepares to leave the Welsh valley that has been his home. He introduces us, one by one, to himself as a boy (Roddy McDowall), his father (Donald Crisp), sister Angharad (Maureen O’Hara) and mother (Sara Allgood).

These remembrances of things past eventually center on accidents in the coal mine, the love a minister (Walter Pidgeon) has for Angharad, the inspiration that minister gives Huw as he tries to succeed in school and Angharad’s bad marriage to the son of the hated coal mine owner.

Philip Dunne’s screenplay, based on Richard Llewellyn’s novel of the same title, is most dynamic when the miners, upset over poor wages and working conditions, decide to strike. There’s much going on, and Dunne’s writing does ramble, but Ford is adept at combining the elements.

Although the acting is often powerful, “How Green Was My Valley” is most striking for the visual detail Ford and cinematographer Arthur Hill (who won an Oscar for his work) were able to create.

The movie wasn’t shot in Wales at all, but in the Ventura hills, where an entire mining village was built. The town not only looks authentic, but appears to have been lived in for centuries.

What: John Ford’s “How Green Was My Valley.”

When: Sunday, April 12, at 2 p.m.

Where: The Muckenthaler Cultural Center, 1201 W. Malvern Ave., Fullerton.

Whereabouts: Take the Riverside (91) Freeway to Euclid Street and head north to Malvern Avenue.

Wherewithal: $2 to $4.

Where to Call: (714) 738-6595.