Homestead Movie Quotes

In Grapes he worked with astonishingly low levels of light; consider the many night scenes and the shots in the deserted Joad homestead, where Tom and the preacher seem illuminated of a single candle, Tom silhouetted, Casy side-lit. The power of Ford (1895-1973) was rooted in strong stories, classical technique, and direct expression. Years of apprenticeship in low-budget silent films, many of them quickies shot on location, had steeled him against unnecessary setups and fancy camera work. There is a rigorous purity in his visual style that serves the subject well. The Grapes of Wrath contains not a single shot that seems careless or routine.

Fifteen feet. The unspoken irrevocable distance like an old Western movie where the mountain man meets the braves in some meadow. Or the homesteader confronts the landgrabbing rancher and his hired guns, the horses always pulling up to stand in a nearly taut line as if at a precipice. Always that bit of mutually respected demilitarized zone across which words can be flung followed maybe by bullets and arrows and death. That’s what we called it, the DMZ. Awkward at first but not now. In this case we had decided without discussion or even any medical evidence that there was no way the sickness could infect from that far off. Probably not even from five feet, probably not even in a casual touch, but everybody, mostly me, felt better about this gap. If we needed to, we placed objects in the middle of it to be retrieved and that was okay