film

"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 in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build – I'll be there, too."

Henry Fonda's delivery of this monologue has become one of cinema's most memorable and quotable moments, and his entire portrayal of Tom Joad in John Ford's exquisite 1948 adaptation of John Steinbeck's Pulitzer-winning novel demands to be enjoyed again and again. Ford won the Best Director Oscar for a close-to-perfect examination of the Great Depression that follows the journey of the Joad family as they are forced off their Oklahoma farm and set out for California in search of work and dignity.