Dewithon 2024: How Green Was My Valley

I remember watching this film as a child, and being captivated by the story of a world so different from my own in suburban London. I must have bought the DVD in a charity shop at some point, so Dewithon seemed the ideal time to revisit How Green Was My Valley, whose themes of family life and community resilience are tempered by the harsh facts of survival in the face of poverty, physical danger and social, political and industrial change.

The film was made in 1941. It's set in a small mining village in South Wales in the early 20th century, and based on the book of the same name by the author Richard Llewellyn. Schoolboy Huw (Roddy McDowall), the narrator, who is now looking back on his childhood, is the youngest son of Gwilym and Beth Morgan. His father and five older brothers all work in the colliery at the top of the hill; his sister Angharad (Maureen O'Hara) stays at home and helps her mother in the house.

Huw helps himself - before his father has said Grace....
(Image: Movie-Mine)

Huw has an idyllic childhood, secure in the knowledge that his parents and siblings love him, everyone in the village knows him, and there is always food on the table and a fire in the hearth. The village is still surrounded by beautiful countryside, the slag from the pit not yet having covered the green hills.

Huw's brother Ivor is engaged to be married to the beautiful Bronwen (Anna Lee), whom Huw secretly adores; the couple's wedding is a wonderful celebration, everybody in the community gathering after the ceremony to sing, dance and drink themselves silly in the Morgan house. 

Bronwen comes courting
Image: The Cinema Archives

Into the village comes a new pastor, Merddyn Gruffyd (Walter Pidgeon), a good man who takes young Huw under his wing, and with whom Angharad quickly falls in love. Unlike the fiercely judgmental Deacons of his Methodist chapel, who are seen cruelly casting out a young woman who has become pregnant (the father of this child is neither, of course, chastised nor even sought out), Mr Gruffyd preaches forgiveness and mercy, and spends his time ministering to those who need him. 

Angharad (Maureen O'Hara)
Image: International Photographer, 1941

The film charts everyday life in the village, the men trudging up the hill together to climb into the antiquated colliery lifts, and returning in the evenings, singing as they walk, to scrub the day's coal dust off under the yard taps (only their father is allowed the privilege of the tin bath.)  Mealtimes are presided over by Gwilym, who frequently reads a verse or two of the Bible before the hungry men can get their hands on the food. He is respected by his sons, and in turn he treats them well, if strictly. Huw relishes being part of this happy family. 

On pay day Beth sits on a stool at the garden gate, holding out her white apron, into which each of the men places his wages. 

But change is coming, and it begins when the mine owner announces that he must reduce the workers' wages. The basis for this is that men made redundant in another valley are willing to work for less. A strike is called, the family is divided, and near tragedy ensues when Beth takes things into her own hands. Many men lose their jobs, some emigrating to Canada to find work.

As the years pass plenty happens, births, marriages, deaths, mining accidents, school bullying - but although the plot is really engaging, the greatest pleasure for me is in the small details of life in the coalfield valleys over one hundred years ago - the dirt road, the bed in an alcove of the kitchen, the strict observation of the Sabbath, the huge family Bible that's as much a part of the Morgans' life as their daily dinner. Gwilym soaking his feet in a tin bowl on a Sunday afternoon, the sweet shop lady still dressed in traditional costume.

I'm sure conditions in the colliery shafts were much, much worse than shown here, but even so they look pretty grim. Safety provisions are almost non-existent, and it is just accepted (at least at first) that the owner, Mr Evans, is entitled to live in a huge house with servants while extorting every last penny from his workforce. Not all change is for the worse. When the Morgan sons decide to join the union, their father is outraged, but in union is indeed strength, and the younger Morgans know that.

How Green Was My Valley was in fact shot entirely on a specially built 80-acre site in Malibu,  California, as it was not possible to film in Wales in wartime. It was directed by John Ford, who is far better known for his Westerns (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Stagecoach, and many more.) It won five Academy Awards.

Shift change at the colliery
Image: industrycentral.net

While most of the cast manage to produce an at least reasonable approximation of a Welsh accent, both Maureen O'Hara and Anna Lee continue to speak in cut glass English. O'Hara, as Angharad, is supposed to have grown up in a house in which everyone else is Welsh. As the only daughter she hardly leaves the family home except to attend chapel, so how she developed her BBC accent is indeed a question. When Lee, as Bronwen, comes (apparently!) walking over the hills with her basket of shortbread, she sounds, and looks, more like Glinda, the good witch in The Wizard of Oz (actually played by Billy Burke) than a girl from the valleys.

Huw with Gwilym, Beth and Bronwen

Meanwhile, Walter Pidgeon's Mr Gruffyd appears to hail from somewhere between America and Ireland, such is his mid- Atlantic drawl. And although the film seems to present the story as Richard Llewellyn's real memoir, it was discovered after his death that he had simply made it all up (shades of Picnic at Hanging Rock here!), though he had based it on conversations with mining families in Gilfach Goch, where he spent many summers visiting his grandfather.

But despite all of that, How Green Was My Valley remains a wonderful film, and one I enjoyed very much. My 96 year old mother still remembers seeing it in a London cinema when it first came out; she loved it then and I love it now.

How Green Was My Valley is available on DVD from Music Magpie (current price £2.05) and other online retailers. You can also watch it on Prime Video for £3.49.