Short Circuits: How Green is Our Valley?

Green is the new PC. It's the new Black.  It's the one campaign topic that every candidate seems to agree needs high priority attention (although what they would do about it ranges from arm-waving scare tactics to thoughtful policy positions). 

The point is that it's less than two weeks into the New Year and I have already seen a gazzillion articles, citations and projections that put green at the center of the universe.  The life-changing, planet-changing, economy-changing, geo-political altering topic of the new century. 

And that got me to thinking about a movie made in 1941.  Funny how the mind, mine at least, makes  connections to unlikely places.  You know, that corner of your sub-conscious that seems smarter than you are. 

Of course "green" is in the title

I probably saw this film on the Million Dollar Movie when I was about ten. (Go ahead, speculate.  Yes, TV was still all black and white then.)  I remember it as a moving kind of tear jerker that introduced me to the "industrial revolution"; although it's unlikely the term was ever used.

So what's the connection to energy matters?  Is it that the story is about coal mining in Wales?

No.

Is it about how much any true movie fan loves Maureen O'Hara?

No. 

Is it about the industrial revolution?

Yes, sort of.

The story is all flashback about how the industrial revolution profoundly changed the planet, societies, economies, governments, religious and social structures.  It's also about how all of this was exemplified by how it changed the life of a boy growing up in a small town in Wales where most of us would not imagine that we had much to share in common.

But we did and we do.

I think that what is happening to us now is equivalent to the industrial revolution.  This is much bigger than the information age or the nuclear age. 

This one will change the planet and how we all think, work and live in it.

So the gazillion stories may not all be right but they do share one thing in common.  They are looking in the right direction.

Now back to the movie....

"This story of a Welsh valley's turn-of-the-century descent from pristine paradise to despoiled coal mining region, is told in flashback form by Huw Morgan, an old man who has decided to leave the valley forever. Huw is the youngest in a family of 6 brothers and 1 sister and the film centers on his struggle toward manhood amid conflicting demands of faith, economics, education and family loyalty in a Wales caught in an irreversible shift from a pastoral to an industrialized society."  ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033729/plotsummary)

"John Ford's film adaptation of the wonderful Richard Llewellyn novel, HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, was named Best Picture of 1941 and is one of my all-time favorite movies. It features a fabulous and colorful cast starring Walter Pidgeon and Maureen O'Hara with Donald Crisp (who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Mr. Morgan), Sara Allgood, Roddy McDowall, Anna Lee, Barry Fitzgerald, and Rhys Williams. Ford won his third Best Director Oscar for this film and it was the second year in a row he was so honored."  ( http://www.reelclassics.com/Movies/HGV/hgv.htm )

Worth a take.