At last, after an extended summer vacation, Hollywood has unwrapped a new cellophane-covered candidate for the gallery of immortal movies, complete with Welsh village and all. As often, before, John Ford is the responsible director. For as far back as Hollywood can remember, he has produced nothing but A-1 pictures, and "How Green Was My Valley" is no exception to this cinematic rule. If anything, it tops any picture he has ever made.

The plot centers around a Welsh coal mining family which revels in the beauty of its green valley. But in time, the slag and soot cover all that was green-in both nature and the miners. As the slag piles increase, the Morgan family gets bigger and poorer, their daughter becomes eligible, their sons turn radical, and the bosses start cutting the wages. This is the backdrop for the hour and a half of dramatic entertainment that follows.

The youngest Morgan son, Hugh, stands off and watches the action go by, and it is through his eyes that the picture is shown. Walter Pidgeon comes to the town as the local pastor, and acts as the moderator and go-between in the social problems which face the ever-poor miners. His counsel helps to avert violence during a long, hard winter when the miners are on strike. Maureen O'Hara, the eligible daughter, falls in love with Pidgeon, but he, fearing he can never offer her a big enough income, shuts himself in his church while the Oxford-trained, spats-loving boss's son marries her.

In time, all the Morgan sons except Hugh leave for all parts of the globe, where they hope to get a decent wage. From then on, the suffering of the miners grows, the wages go lower still, blackness seems to come over the whole valley, and finally the mine blows up, killing Mr. Morgan, father of the family. The last two minutes are a reverie recalling what the valley looked like before the "city folk took over."