Poor John Ford. To have your film win five Oscars – including your own personal little golden man for Best Director – only to spend your entire life knowing your hour of victory will forever be seen as the original award season snub. In 1942, at the 14th Academy Awards, Ford’s adaptation of Richard Llewellyn’s 1939 novel How Green Was My Valley beat out Citizen Kane in all the big categories, leaving Orson Welles to share custody of a single award (Best Original Screenplay) with Herman J. Mankiewicz. How has history regarded that decision? Well, let’s just say that no one is lining up to catch a 4K restoration of Ford’s flick about a Welsh village this week. – Richard Whittaker
Jan. 18 & 22
