Adapted from John Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes Of Wrath is easily John Ford's best non-Western - in fact, you could even make a case that it's his best film, full stop. Henry Fonda plays Tom Joad, eldest son of a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers forced by callous landowners to uproot from their farm and search for work in Depression-ridden California.
Cinematographer Gregg Toland perfectly captures the wide open spaces and big skies of rural America, while the normally conservative Ford puts forward a sympathetic but radical plea for workers' rights and freedom for the common people.
