Films based on works by John Steinbeck - Wikipedia

Category:Films based on works by John Steinbeck - Wikipedia

Category:Films based on works by John Steinbeck
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Pages in category "Films based on works by John Steinbeck"

The following 18 pages are in this category, out of 18 total. This list may not reflect recent changes.

BBest Laid Plans (2012 film)

CCannery Row (film)

EEast of Eden (film)

FThe Forgotten Village

GThe Grapes of Wrath (film)

The Grapes of Wrath is a 1940 American drama film directed by John Ford. It was based on John Steinbeck's 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Nunnally Johnson and the executive producer was Darryl F. Zanuck.^[3]

The film tells the story of the Joads, an Oklahoma family of sharecroppers, who, after losing their farm to increased mechanization during the Great Depression in the 1930s, become migrant workers, and end up in California. The motion picture details their arduous journey across the United States as they travel to California in search of work and opportunities for the family members, and features cinematography by Gregg Toland.

The film is widely considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. In 1989, it was one of the first 25 films selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".^[4][5]

Plot[edit]

After being released from prison, Tom Joad hitchhikes his way to his share-cropper parents' farm in Oklahoma. He comes upon Jim Casy, an itinerant man sitting under a tree by the roadside. Tom remembers Casy as the preacher who baptized him, but Casy has "lost the spirit" and his faith. Casy goes with Tom to the Joad property. It is deserted but they find neighbor Muley Graves, who is hiding out there. In a flashback, he describes how the local farmers were forced from their farms by the land deedholders, who knocked down their houses with tractors. Tom soon reunites with the family at his uncle's house. The Joads are migrating with other evicted families to the promised land of California. They pack everything into a dilapidated car adapted to serve as a truck to make the long journey. Casy decides to accompany them.

The trip along Highway 66 is arduous, and it soon takes a toll on the Joad family. The elderly Grandpa dies along the way. Tom writes the circumstances surrounding the death on a page from the family Bible and places it on the body before they bury it, so his death will not be mistaken as a homicide if discovered. They park in a camp and meet a migrant man returning from California. He scoffs at Pa's optimism about opportunities in California and speaks bitterly about his experiences in the West. Grandma dies when they reach California. Eldest son, Noah, leaves the family, while son-in-law, Connie, deserts his pregnant wife, Rose-of-Sharon.

The family arrives at the first transient migrant campground for workers. The camp is crowded with other starving, jobless, and desperate travelers. As their truck slowly makes its way through a row of shanty houses and around the camp's hungry-faced inhabitants, Tom notes it, "Sure don't look none too prosperous."

After seeing trouble between the sheriff and an agitator, the Joads hurriedly leave the camp. The family goes to another migrant camp, the Keene Ranch. After working in the fields, they discover the high food prices in the company store, the only one in the area. When a group of migrant workers is striking, Tom wants to learn more about it. He attends a secret meeting in the dark woods. When the gathering is discovered, Casy is killed by a camp guard. Tom inadvertently kills the guard while defending himself.

Tom suffers a serious cheek wound, making him easily recognizable. That evening, the family hides Tom when guards arrive searching for who killed the guard. Tom avoids being spotted, and the family leaves the Keene Ranch without further incident. After driving awhile, the truck breaks down at the crest of a hill. They have little gas and decide to coast down the hill to where there are some lights. They arrive at the Farmworkers' Weedpatch Camp ("Wheat Patch"), a clean facility run by the Department of Agriculture, complete with indoor toilets and showers, which the Joad children have never seen before.

Tom is moved to work for change by what he has witnessed in the various camps. When police officers arrive looking for the murderer of the man Tom killed, he decides to leave, telling his mother that he plans to carry on Casy's mission by fighting for workers' rights:

I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look, wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build, I'll be there, too.

As the family moves on again, they discuss the fear and difficulties they have had. Ma Joad concludes by saying:

I ain't never gonna be scared no more. I was, though. For a while it looked as though we was beat. Good and beat. Looked like we didn't have nobody in the whole wide world but enemies. Like nobody was friendly no more. Made me feel kinda bad and scared too, like we was lost and nobody cared.... Rich fellas come up and they die, and their kids ain't no good and they die out, but we keep a-coming. We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out, they can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, cos we're the people.

IIn Dubious Battle (film)

Plot[edit]

In Dubious Battle is the story of the working class during the Great Depression, striking against an increasingly cruel establishment in ways that would lead to the formation of workers' rights, including a minimum wage. Two men form a union of workers after their wages are cut from $3 a day to $1 a day."^[4]

Cast

MA Medal for Benny
The Moon Is Down (film)

The Moon Is Down is a 1943 American war film starring Cedric Hardwicke and Henry Travers and directed by Irving Pichel. It is based on the 1942 novel of the same name by John Steinbeck. During World War II, German soldiers occupy a small Norwegian town.


OOf Mice and Men (1939 film)
Of Mice and Men (1992 film)
Ondu Muttina Kathe

PThe Pearl (film)

RThe Red Pony (1949 film)
The Red Pony (1973 film)

The Red Pony is a 1973 American made-for-television drama western film directed and co-written by Robert Totten, based on the 1937 novel The Red Pony by John Steinbeck. The film features Henry Fonda, Maureen O'Hara, Ben Johnson and Jack Elam.^[1]


TTopoli (film)
Tortilla Flat (film)

Tortilla Flat is a 1942 American romantic comedy film directed by Victor Fleming and starring Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, John Garfield, Frank Morgan, Akim Tamiroff, and Sheldon Leonard based on the 1935 novel of the same name by John Steinbeck.^[2] Frank Morgan received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his poignant portrayal of The Pirate.

Plot[edit]

Danny inherits two houses in the central coastal area of California, "just outside the old seaport town of Monterey." So, Pilon and his poor idle friends move in. One of them, the Pirate, is saving money which Pilon endeavors to steal, until he discovers that it is being collected to purchase a golden candlestick which Pirate intends to burn to honor St. Francis, for healing his sick dog, that later is run over and killed. One of Danny's houses burns down, so he allows his friends to move into the other house with him, and in gratitude Pilon tries to make life better for his friend. Things are fine at first until Danny's passion for a lovely girl named Dolores causes him to actually go to work in a fishing business. A misunderstanding caused by Pilon about a vacuum cleaner Danny had bought for the girl, enrages Danny; he becomes drunk and a bit crazy. He almost dies in an accident while interrupting the girl at her work in a cannery, but through Pilon's prayers, is restored to health. Danny then marries his sweetheart with the promise that he will become a fisherman now that Pilon has raised the money to buy him a boat. The movie's happy ending is quite different from the novel's ending, in which Danny dies after a fall.

WThe Wayward Bus (film)
The Winter of Our Discontent (film)

Plot

The story is about a Long Islander named Ethan Allen Hawley (played by Donald Sutherland) who works as a clerk in a grocery store he used to own, but which is now owned by an Italian immigrant (played by Michael V. Gazzo). His wife (Teri Garr) and kids want more than what he can give them because of his lowly position.

He finds out that the immigrant that owns his store is an illegal alien, turns him in to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and receives the store by deceiving the immigrant. Ethan continues to have feelings of depression and anxiety brought about by his uneasy relationship with his wife and kids, risky flirtation with Margie Young-Hunt (Tuesday Weld), and a plan to sell his property and a house of a close friend to a banker who wants to build a shopping mall.