The Migrants

Lots of low-key, powerful acting. The moments of emotional 'pay off' are built slowly and with great care. Did Ron Howard ever have a better moment on screen then the time he almost escapes the migrant life but finds himself trapped again when a family member dies and he is needed to work and cries out with real anguish "Nothing ever works out!"?

But the real gem of the film? It is the moment when Cloris Leachman 'loses it'. A sadistic sheriff is going to confiscate the family's pitiful but 'illegal' rabbit trap which is the only way they can put some meat on the table. Her authentic and 'full body' hysteria is the equal of her Academy Award winning moment at the end of The Last Picture Show. She literally holds nothing back - in both films it is scary its so good!

A young Sissy Spacek plays Ron Howard's sister and Cindy Williams (of Laverne and Shirley fame) is natural and delightful as Ron's girlfriend. The sets, people and detail are realistic and not 'prettied up'. When I look at all the crap on DVD, why can't they give this a decent treatment? Who wrote this? LANFORD Wilson, famous playwright and he used a TENNESSEE WILLIAMS short story as the basis - meeting and working it out with Tennessee!

Unlike today's younger family society that relies far too heavily on the government to put food on their plate (food stamps), a roof over their head (social housing), and a regular pay check (social and medical welfare) this family of nomads, the Barlow family, toiled in farmers fields picking fruit and/or vegetables from daylight to daybreak as they traveled in a caravan with other migrant workers from one farmers fields, to the next.

As much as the work needed to be completed by menial workers who were shunned from actually entering the towns, they toiled in the nearby fields and their foreman would go into town and pick up any supplies that the migrant workers needed and charge them a little more for his services.

This nomadic life still exists for many families, but mainly by immigrant workers who are not afraid of hard work unlike many North American people are today. The film has a stellar cast of A-lister actors and their solid performances are well worth watching. It is a tough life as migrant workers that they had no choice in becoming migrant workers as a family and it is a good reminder for all of us that our lives could be so much worse, so suck it up butter cup and appreciate what we have today.

A solid 6 out of 10 rating

As a senior at an all-boys Jesuit high school, we the entire student body were required to watch this. It was part of the school's relentless insistence that we in all ways should be Men for Others.

I've remebered this film ever since as my awakening awareness of the poor.

Acclaimed TV-movie from CBS features Ron Howard as the eldest child in a gypsy-living, crop-picking family who dreams of his independence, guiltily planning for the day when he can make a life for himself in the city--far away from the long, sweaty days out in the fields. Lanford Wilson adapted the short story by Tennessee Williams, showing us the hardships behind this caravan of migrating workers who pick up and go from one crop to the next in the southeast. Still, with such attention to the milieu, one feels the character content comes up short. Wilson and director Tom Gries spend so much time telegraphing us that one of the workers is sick, we have nothing much to look forward to except his demise (and the burden this will place upon matriarch Cloris Leachman). Meanwhile, Howard's relationship with factory-line worker Cindy Williams (reunited from 1973's "American Graffiti") is sketchy--and it comes as a surprise to learn later that she's 'underage'. Emmy-nominated Leachman performs her role without affectation or vanity, and her wry way with a line of dialogue (neither saint nor sinner) ultimately makes the film worth-seeing, although it isn't an emotional or touching picture, as it was undoubtedly meant to be. Wilson and Gries haven't shaped the characters with care, introducing us to them within a flurry of activity. The effect is off-putting, and the finale--a hopeful question mark--doesn't begin to resolve the central family's issues.

Recommended by a friend, I reluctantly watched this film, dreading the thought of watching familiar actors reenact the Joad family. Instead, I was mesmerized by a life made real by the extraordinary talents of Cloris Leachman and Ron Howard. This IS the Joad family, as they existed in more recent times in the South. The film continues to haunt my thoughts years later.