How Green Was My Valley Reviews
Christopher Lloyd The Film Yap
Unfairly derided as one of the most undeserving Best Picture winners, John Ford's gorgeous, heartbreaking portrait of a Welsh coal-mining community represents the best sort of cinema.
Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 18, 2023
Mark Johnson Awards Daily
Core values, faith in God, and the importance of doing a good job well are at the center of this dreary and determined drama.
Full Review | Jun 27, 2023
Dilys Powell Sunday Times (UK)
You cannot translate something you do not know in your bones. Ford has made a sincere and, as I say, moving film of How Green Was My Valley; but something of the salt and wildness of the people about whom Richard Llewellyn wrote is gone.
Full Review | Aug 8, 2022
Pauline Kael New Yorker
John Ford's much-honored movie about the decline of a Welsh mining family is moving and impressive in a big-Hollywood-picture way.
Full Review | Jul 28, 2022
Marjory Adams Boston Globe
The drama is no "made up" tale, but a panoramic glimpse of the small joys, the unmeasurable needs, the many griefs of a whole countryside. It is a story of life that is no more, but it is also a drama of people in every community.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
Katherine Howard Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
It is a cinema masterpiece of rare beauty. It brings the same thrilling experience as reading a fine piece of poetry or looking at an exquisite painting. You feel that they have come from the heart.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
Ruth Lewis Austin American-Statesman
Young Roddy McDowall is a lad of inestimable charm as Huw. Wide-eyed, sensitive, he is just the boy for the part. The cast is an altogether worthy one.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
Kevin Wallace San Francisco Examiner
How Green Was My Valley is a work of remarkable earnestness, wide sweep and considerable dramatic courage.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
Mae Tinee Chicago Tribune
This adaptation of Richard Llewellyn's best-selling novel is rare and lovely, rugged and true. Seeing it is an experience no lover of fine films should miss.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
Ardis Smith Buffalo News
How Green Was My Valley isn't John Ford's most exciting movie, but it is his most beautiful, far and away. It really should be called a musical.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
Donald Kirkley Baltimore Sun
As the head of the Morgan clan, Mr. Crisp gives one of the best performances of this or any other year.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
Harold V. Cohen Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
There has come along a great picture, a photoplay so monumental and so moving that it belongs high in the Hollywood aristocracy of all time. How Green Was My Valley is its name, and it is a thing of faith and beauty and enduring loveliness.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
Times (UK) Staff Times (UK)
Mr. Donald Crisp, as the head of the Morgans, mining family, a patriarch with a touch of the Old Testament about him, does much to keep the film steady, and Miss Allgood, as his wife, gives it warmth and feeling.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
Lillian Blackstone Tampa Bay Times
How Green Was My Valley is as poignantly beautiful as any picture you ever will see.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
Edwin Schallert Los Angeles Times
One cannot but become enthusiastic over such a sincere rendition of life as this picture essays and it is astonishing how replete it is with popular appeal.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
Paul Koury Kansas City Star
The picture is vastly entertaining, in the sense of tears, humanity and humor. It has moments of sheer beauty in the provincial music, coupled with the singing rhythm of the Welsh language that Llewellyn caught so magnificently in his novel.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
Colvin McPherson St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Now you're not a Welsh coal miner and I'm not either, and neither is that guy over there, but I daresay all of us will feel we have lived the experiences of How Green Was My Valley.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
Bob Fredericks Miami Herald
It amounts to an epochal cinema achievement, a masterpiece of direction and brilliant acting. But withal that it is a picture in which the elements are so mixed that its praises can hardly be sung without reservations.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
Frank P. Gill Detroit Free Press
In How Green Was My Valley, the emotional and melodramatic impact hits with terrific force because it is so real and so completely credible. The characters in the picture appear to be living their parts rather than acting them.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
Herbert Cohn Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Make no mistake about it: How Green Was My Valley, weaknesses and all, is a grand screen production. Its acting is magnificent and its direction is compelling without being pretentious.
Full Review | Jul 26, 2022
