Tom Joad: I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin’ fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin’. And I been wonderin’ if all our folks got together and yelled –
Ma Joad: Tommy, they’d drag you out and cut you down just like they done to Casey.
Tom Joad: They’d drag me anyways. Sooner or later they’ll get me one way or another. Till then –
Ma: Tommy, you’re not aimin’ to kill nobody.
Tom Joad: No, Ma, not that. That ain’t it. Just, as long as I’m an outlaw anyways, maybe I can do something, just find out somethin’, just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that’s wrong and see if they ain’t somethin’ that can be done about it. I ain’t thought it out that clear, Ma. I can’t. I don’t know enough.
Ma: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? They could kill ya and I’d never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?
Tom Joad: Maybe it’s like Casey says. A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then –
Ma: Then what, Tom?
Tom Joad: I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be there in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be there in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they built – I’ll be there, too.
Ma: I don’t understand it, Tom.
Tom Joad: Me, neither, Ma, but – just somethin’ I been thinkin’ about.
***
John Ford, Gregg Toland (before “Citizen Kane”), Henry Fonda, John Carradine, a script lifting whole blocks of text straight from Steinbeck. This is one of the few examples of the movie being as good as the book. Not better, but not the usual feeling of incompleteness. Most of the gratitude should go Toland’s way — as this type of cinematography was almost unseen in a Hollywood production at the time.
Anyway, when do we do the remake set in Indonesia?