Tortilla Flat (1942)

Simply A Masterpiece

Pretty Good

Lack of good storyline.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This movie was made during the U.S. entry in WWII. Maybe that is why it leaves out the deaths that occur in the actual story of Steinbeck. The people in charge perhaps had the directive to make a light inspiring movie ("no heavy stuff, y'hear?"). I don't think it was in the spirit of the novel AT ALL. My low rating is based on the movie's lack of faithfulness to the novel AND the casting of Spencer Tracy in the role of Pilon. It was just not a good fit. Even if I could ignore the messing with Steinbeck's story, I could not watch Tracy's performance with any ease. It pretty much ruined the movie for me despite what I thought were pretty good performances by everyone else.

It could only happen in Hollywood. They buy the rights to a Steinbeck novel about Mexicans and Portuguese in California and put all white actors in the cast.Now, maybe I can buy Hedy Lamarr as a Portuguese beauty, but Spenser Tracy and John Garfield as Mexicans? Ludicrous casting, especially when the story is so ethnic.But, maybe it was genius as common stereotypes about Afro- and Mexican-Americans are played out in the form of Tracy, as a shiftless bum who mooches off his friends and manipulates them into providing him with wine and a roof over his head. Pilon (Tracy) is not interested in satisfying anything but his own belly and even goes after a poor wood-seller called The Pirate, in the form of Frank Morgan, who, in a Scorcese moment, got the Oscar nomination he should have gotten three years earlier for The Wizard of Oz.Lamarr was as beautiful as ever, and John Garfield did a great job as her pursuer, even as he had to avoid complete ruin from the machinations of Pilon.

I grew up in Monterey and I vividly remember my father speaking of these characters when he was growing up. Steinbeck sought to place these men in a motif that was similar to that of the knights of the Round Table showing all their excesses, loves, and loyalty to each other. While the film shows 1940's insensitivities it also captures a great deal of Steinbeck's purposes. It might be helpful to remember that Steinbeck wasn't writing of chicano's or even Mexicans per se, but of the creollo or Californio, i.e. the Spanish and later Mexican vaquero who ruled and reigned in Californio long before the Mexican national arrived in California.

This movie is full of surprises, not the least is the casting. (Was that "Toto" as "one of the boys"?) So many of the cast are in our movie memory banks. It's a well-acted, well-scripted film that can be enjoyed by the whole family.