How Green Was My Valley has a particular infamy for being the movie to beat Citizen Kane (and The Maltese Falcon) for Best Picture. That's an all-time miss right there. And I say that as someone who legitimately loves Citizen Kane, not someone who reflexively calls it a great movie because it topped the AFI list. It's unfair to judge any Best Picture winner by what it beat. By that measure, most winners are imposters.
I get why this movie won instead. It's an earnest movie. It's political only in the most surface-level way*. The word I kept coming across for this movie is "maudlin", and that's very accurate. As I like to point out, Best Picture winners are a reflection of what an era values. And this certainly reflects a population who very willingly enlisted and helped in WWII that same year. In fact, Oscar voting would've taken place after the bombing of Pearl Harbor that year. I can easily see how this movie about the human spirit captured audiences more than some of the darker nominees from that year. If anything, the big surprise is that it beat Sergeant York.
*Hard working people should be able to earn a living. That's a pretty universal stance.
Personally, I found the movie easy to ignore. I got distracted by basically everything while I watched it. I suppose it's well made. The style just isn't one that I find engaging.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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