Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

colinedwards-24845 I hardly know where to start - so perhaps with the name of the town GLANSARNO. Since it is supposed to be set in the remote countryside of Wales, perhaps PONTSARNO or LLANSARNO or even TRESARNO would make it more believable. The FAQ asks what is the meaning of the name and DOESN'T EVEN ANSWER IT!! Most mining towns were NOT remote, and in 1895 were connected by railways. Oh dear, and what choices for the songs the miners sang travelling from work - hard songs even for the many excellent Welsh choirs and then near the end what an insult to have the pupils since one of the most well-known and famous Welsh songs 'Ar Hyd Y Nos' (All Through the Night') in ENGLISH!!! Most English speakers have trouble with Welsh and so to have a crafty illiterate Bessie Watty sing a beautiful song in perfect Welsh to the apple of her lusty eyes is also so unbelievable. Can't believe that to advertise the school to a town of illiterate and predominately Welsh-speaking townsfolk, Miss Moffat decides to use posters!!! That would not work and again - the poster of course is in English. Add to that, the English were distrusted and she would have needed to work hard very hard to gain acceptance. I can't believe there was anyone connected with the film who knew ANYTHING of Welsh country life and although many small independent 'schools' existed, every mining town had a State School by 1895 - they were not 'remote'. The stand-out character was John Dall and the only other believable characters were Rhys Williams (Mr Jones), Mildred Dunnock (Miss Ronberry) and Rosalind Ivan (Mrs Watty). Bette Davis depicted a strong character but one without empathy, love and conviction so necessary for her role as an educator. The imperious, isolated and punishing character she portrayed would not have gone well with the villagers or the potential students. A mine-owner (50% share) squire would have been feared rather than loved and although I like the bumbling Nigel Bruce I thought him poorly cast. When one sees a 'true' mining town so excellently depicted in 'How Green Was My Valley' it is truly the apogee when compared this film - the nadir in so many respects.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . to an alleged Oscar "Best Picture" foisted off upon the World by Fake Movie News Pioneer Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox. Zanuck had commissioned future Real Life Witch Hunter director John Ford to romanticize the Deplorable Lot of Welsh coal miners and to glorify Big Coal (which was and is, Then, Now, and Always, the world's most unnecessarily dangerous and poorly Unionized Worker Exploitation Racket among the many scams run by Labor-killing Corrupt "Conservative" Capitalism). After rigging an election to bestow Tinseltown's highly-coveted Gelded Statuette upon the mawkish HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, Zanuck and Fox insured a minimum of 100,000 MORE Coal Miner Murders World-Wide, according to a recent Socioeconomic Report. Zanuck smugly thought that HIS would be Cinema's Last Word about Coal. However, it did not take long for Warner Bros. to courageously cast its most famous Progressive Party Activist--Bette Davis--as a Hellcat Heroine fighting against the Coal Killer Realities glossed over by Ford's Fakey Fairy Tale. Davis' character in THE CORN IS GREEN, Miss Moffatt, is NOT content to sit on her Welsh Tuffet, frittering her curds a whey. Instead, she charges into the Coal Pit, dragging out miner Morgan Evans kicking and screaming until she's smoothed away the rough edges of his 40-carat diamond mind. "Make the light come into the dingy, black-dust tunnels, and some day save the children!" Moffatt orders Morgan as she sends him off to Crusade against Big Coal Flaks like Zanuck and Ford.

gkeith_1 I portrayed Miss Moffatt in acting class. This was scene work from The Corn Is Green. I had the lead part.I had to learn to know the character of Miss Moffatt. She is a strong-willed school teacher who wishes to increase the educational opportunities of children in the historic Welsh coal mining times in which child labor is exploited. There are no child labor laws here.I, as Miss Moffatt, am interested particularly in the education of Morgan Evans. He is my Teacher's Pet. He is illiterate, plus ignorant in the ways of the outside world. He is backward but promising. Perhaps I can instill in him a yearning to read, write and learn unlimited subject matter.My scene study included sitting on top of the hill of Moel Hiraeth in Wales, thinking about Morgan's future and how I can motivate him to want to eventually go to college. I believe that he has the intelligence needed, but that he has to work toward developing that ability.This time period is toward the end of the nineteenth century. Children do not necessarily have compulsory education, and they work all day in dangerous, filthy and unprotected environments earning small pay for their parents. Child labor laws were to come later in history, at least in the early twentieth century for the United States. Children, later, were raised to value education as a preliminary for the work world.I was told that Ethel Barrymore had played Miss Moffatt on Broadway. Later, I saw this film of The Corn Is Green starring Bette Davis.Morgan Evans in this movie is snarly and obnoxious. In my scene study, my play partner portrayed Morgan as more sympathetic. We never got to the part about Bessie Watty, she of the conniving ways and big mouth. Bessie Watty would have been a rival for Miss Moffatt's affections, since my director told me to portray Miss Moffatt as also romantically interested in Morgan Evans.In the Bette Davis movie, Morgan Evans is tall and rather cute -- after all of that coal soot is cleaned from his face. He is way younger than Miss Moffatt, but what the hey. He becomes a hunk, and for a stereotypical old maid school teacher perhaps he would be her only chance.The Corn Is Green: when you are down in a coal mine, you can look up and perhaps see a hole through which the sun shines. You can see yellow corn growing there, growing down into the coal mine. The long stalks are green. The corn husks are green. The green young man grows into the mature man, a citizen of the world. Or at least, so Miss Moffatt thinks.Ten out of ten.Smashing.Powerful.

SnoopyStyle It's 1895 in the small remote Welsh village of Glansarno. Schoolteacher Lilly Moffat (Bette Davis) is left a building by her uncle. Everybody expected a man and is surprised especially her degree in Master of Arts. She is dismayed by the illiterate children working in the coal mines and she sets up a school for them. Safe Mr. Jones and spinster Miss Ronberry are enlisted to help. Her housekeeper Mrs. Watty tries to be helpful but her daughter Bessie (Joan Lorring) is quite a gossiping schemer. The Squire who owns most of the town including a half-share of the mine opposes Moffat's school. She takes an interest in promising student Morgan Evans (John Dall) who she hopes to go to Oxford University.This is a simple traditional proper principled woman coming to rescue poor disadvantaged kids. The 'kids' could look a bit younger. John Dall is pass his mid-20s. Although both him and Joan Lorring did get Oscar nominations for their performance. This is workable formulaic film.