How Green Was My Valley

The backlot mining village (impressive as it is) and the babel of accents hardly aid suspension of disbelief in this nostalgic recollection of a Welsh childhood, based on Richard Llewellyn's novel. An elegant and eloquent film, nevertheless, even if the characteristically laconic Fordian poetry seems more contrived here (not least in the uncharacteristic use of an offscreen narration). Its tale of the calamitous break-up of a traditional way of life - with immigration to America offering a despairing hope of salvation - looms larger in the mind if you think of it (as Ford obviously did) as dealing with Ireland rather than Wales.