Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1945, our vines have tender grapes, roy rowland
Director: Roy Rowland
Having established himself as the prototypical screen gangster in Little Caesar, it is unusual to see Edward G. Robinson take on such a wholesome, patriarchal role, as he does in Roy Rowland’s Our Vines Have Tender Grapes. Though the picture is exceedingly mawkish, it retains its interest not only through the talent of its performers, but by Dalton Trumbo’s fascinating script. Famously among the Hollywood Ten, the picture was the last that Trumbo had written before the contemptible HUAC trials. It would be naive to suggest that the film doesn’t contain what could be perceived as being communist ideas – it is a picture entirely about communal sharing and, the one time the seemingly infallible Margaret O’Brien is punished, it is because of her selfishness. There are some further allusions to the communist party, such as a sequence in which O’Brien accidentally kills a squirrel, which, for the entirety of the picture, is referred to exclusively as a red squirrel. O’Brien’s pal quips, “Shucks, it’s only a red squirrel! They’re bad!” It is absurd to suggest that the ultra-liberal content could have had any negative effects on the well-being of the country, of course, but, as spoken by a Newspaper editor in the picture, “Funny how different the same words can sound to two people.”
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