Nominated against Blossoms in the Dust, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Hold Back the Dawn, The Little Foxes, The Maltese Falcon, One Foot in Heaven, Sergeant York and Suspicion for Outstanding Motion Picture at the Academy Awards for 1941, the real story always boils down to one simple fact. How Green Was My Valley, John Ford's elegiac drama about Welsh coal miners, managed to beat its tenth co-nominee, Citizen Kane, for movie of the year honors. By winning Hollywood's top award Ford's picture also ushered in literally decades of speculation about dry rot at the core of the Academy that has unfairly cast his film as the bastard child of Welles' more famous title.

But there is a reason for disowning the 1941 Academy Awards since Welles' veiled biopic of William Randolph Hearst has long been the emblem of cinematic innovation and accomplishment since its original, and commercially disappointing, release by RKO Pictures. Thereafter Citizen Kane has been atop virtually every survey of the world's best movies of all time regardless of the voice offering such an opinion, be they popular magazines, film societies or academic journals. In comparison, Ford's nostalgic drama is everywhere outclassed by Welles' more difficult picture that is admittedly harder to enjoy. Plus it wasn't nearly as popular with moviegoers of its moment and this distinction about context is what must be remembered when considering any Oscar race, let alone one as hotly contested as this one.

Still, there is something about judging a film on its own merits, especially since then-contemporary audiences largely stayed away from Citizen Kane while industry insiders struggled to grasp its audacity in form and content. That said in its defense How Green Was My Valley is still the lesser film, and this after previously discounting the other nominated works The Little Foxes, The Maltese Falcon, Sergeant York and Suspicion. Ford's movie is simply overwrought with an idealized Welsh backdrop that's handsomely brought to life with a $1.25 million budget spent nailing the zeitgeist concerned with earlier times not nearly so fraught with troubles as 1941 when the United States was increasingly pitched towards entering World War II.

Beginning with the voice-over remembrance of a now 60-year old Welsh man reflecting on his youth, How Green Was My Valley is the story of lost innocence and the break-up of extended families under the weight of modern pressures. Its particular sensitivity is in rendering its often overtly Christian message with the touch of practical humanism to make characters less religious symbols than flesh and blood people acting in complicated circumstances. Then its rich production design enlivens the exterior sequences and gives a real sense of warmth to indoor shots where the small Welsh town at the picture's center divides into ever criss-crossing public and private spaces.

Based on Richard Llewellyn's novel of the same name as adapted by Philip Dunne, How Green Was My Valley is about Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall), the youngest member of the Morgan clan. It's his memory that opens the film from his adult point-of-view (voiced by Irving Pichel) cast with an immediate sense of loss and melancholy even as his youthful vision is filled with light and happiness. And it's this sense of loss concerning the changing times that repeatedly negates new and progressive methods with a preference for older and more traditional ideas.

This tendency begins with the past tense "was" of the movie's title that lends the entire production a sense of fatality. Added to this is the 60-year old Huw who still lives in his old mining village even after the events of his tenth year that are subsequently described in the film. It's as if his bookend opening narration and the subsequent voice-over bridges are meant to paper the fundamental inconsistency of Huw's life. That is, his struggle to move beyond his family's mining profession and small town values as a symbol of the world's industrialization is deadened by the fact of how he ends up spending the 50 years between the on-screen actions and the adult man whose memory structures Ford's film in that same small town. In short, Huw is our wide-eyed surrogate moviegoer but he's ultimately unable to absorb the lessons of his childhood journey that makes the movie perhaps unintentionally dark and depressing.

Huw lives inside his close-knit family lorded over by his father Gwilym (Donald Crisp) and given its heart by his mother, Beth (Sara Allgood). Immediately complicating their lives are the pending nuptials of eldest son, Ianto (John Loder), to the lovely Bronwyn (Anna Lee) with whom Huw is immediately smitten. The newlyweds quickly have a son but then the more difficult adjustments of the film begin cropping up.

The mine where all the village men work is strained by increasing industrialization. Prices for coal drop and individual wages start to slide after years of seniority rights, relative privilege and a well-paid working class life. The Morgans scramble to make ends meet just as the call to unionization begins in the far corners of the village.

Taking up this chorus of self-determination the local preacher, Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon), champions the cause and helps direct the miner's strike to demand higher wages and more humane working conditions. This throws the Morgans into disarray as Gwilym sides with his employer while his fiery sons long for something more after seeing the writing on the wall that will end their once idyllic way of life. Caught in the middle is Huw, the family's one bright spot for earning a proper education, and the clan's daughter Angharad (Maureen O'Hara) who secretly loves Mr. Gruffydd.

In time the strike proves temporarily helpful to village affairs. The Morgans come to rely on Mr. Gruffydd for advice and direction but Angharad is eventually married off to the son of the town mine's owner, much to her chagrin and Mr. Gruffydd's disappointment.

The mining town's problems persist, however, and Ianto is killed in a wall collapse that widows Bronwyn as the other Morgan boys migrate to America. The close-knit clan begins breaking apart, Huw begins his formal education at a county school, Angharad returns home in the midst of a pending divorce and Mr. Gruffydd comes under attack for his relatively liberal beliefs.

After much discussion local leaders succeed in running Mr. Gruffydd out of town, though not before he and Angharad exchange their feeling of devotion, and then disaster strikes. Another mining tunnel collapses trapping Gwilym underneath the mountain.

Descending into the mine among several men, Huw finds his father and the pair embrace as the senior Morgan draws final breath and dies. Bringing the old man to the surface, the villagers face the end of their once simple, interconnected life and Huw's journey into an unknown future begins to buoy the hopes of his family and friend's alike who see him as the spark of a new world connected to the old.

Unfortunately, as we know from the 60-year old Huw's organization of the movie with a voice-over flashback, it's clear he never made good on this early promise. Instead How Green Was My Valley ends with a bitterness that's hard to ignore since Gwilym Morgan, the movie's ideological center, dies in the arms of his most devoted and youngest son, the one seemingly most suited to the task of fulfilling his legacy. But the boy fulfills the wrong legacy by simply accepting the mantle of family responsibility while ignoring the changing tide of industrialization he was taught to recognize as the progressive person he was intended to be.

Because the valley from which he hails is always already gone in both the past tense use of the film's title but in the way it's remembered throughout the screen story, Huw is at best a failure. At worst he's a fool for ignoring the direction of the future. In this divide between errors in judgment and the folly of willful ignorance Ford's movie successfully wraps enough good Christian ethic, populist sentimentality and folksy wisdom to sidetrack any discussion of what really lies at the heart of the film.

Sure the performers are uniformly appealing. Sets are recognizably from the 19th century, as are the costumes, although the values are squarely New Deal in nature. Then there's Arthur C. Miller's cinematography that's justifiably award winning and complimented by Alfred Newman's score that helps set the tone of Dunne's screenplay.

All in all How Green Was My Valley ends up being the portrait of a family run amuck in one of history's many paradigm shifts, this one from small town insulation to a more global economy. It fails to live up to its preferred optimism, however, and instead reveals a deeply melancholic view of personal memory and childhood.

As a metaphor for America in 1941 this slip between what the film is about and its flashback organization is a strong reminder of the gathering war clouds that lay just beyond this country's coastal borders. Regardless of how complicated this sentiment may be, and no matter how popular it was in its moment, it fails to support Ford's movie as picture of the year for producer Darryl F. Zanuck. Nor does it adequately explain how Huw's life story could have become so unsuccessful in light of the 50-year gap between the film's on-screen action and his recollection about "how green was my valley", once upon a time.