The memories of How Green Was My Valley are blackened by coal dust; mired in class struggle and death. The voiceover of Huw looking back at his childhood in this small Welsh mining town speaks of a hard life. But under Ford’s direction, sharp beams of life peek through the timbre of Huw’s recollections, the smallest of kindly gestures, and the resilience of this family. Ford’s films are frequently sentimental in the best of ways, but How Green Was My Valley is an exercise in one of the grandest occupations in life: remembering those close to us, telling others through the mist of time how they are “loving and beloved forever.” Though the film is rarely mentioned in cinema and memory conversation, it is a key example Ford’s idea that we cannot very easily distinguish between the past and the future, as they both travel through the present.
—Michael Leary