Cambrifornia: 'How Green Was My Valley' and its reception in Wales

Peregrine, Rhys 2026. Cambrifornia: 'How Green Was My Valley' and its reception in Wales. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

When How Green Was My Valley was released by Twentieth Century Fox in 1941, Hollywood’s films were playing to millions of cinemagoers around the world each week, helping to shape national identities, social and political discourses, and gender roles. Rather than passively absorbing these messages, however, audiences were capable of creating their own meanings from the films that they consumed. Studying the Californian production of How Green Was My Valley and its reception in Wales is an excellent way to explore this process of film production and film reception. How, we will ask, did Twentieth Century Fox encode this Welsh-set blockbuster with cultural significance? How did these meanings mutate as the film left Hollywood and travelled through Wales’s network of cinemas? To answer these questions, we will attempt to create a total history of the event, encompassing the overall historical contexts in which the film was created in Hollywood and watched in Wales. How was the film a product of the contemporary Hollywood studio system and wider American society? Likewise, how was its Welsh reception shaped by factors like the cinema buildings it was watched within, the cinematic sensibilities of its audiences, and the larger social and political landscapes in early-1940s Wales? The study is divided into three sections. Firstly, it focuses on the ways in which How Green Was My Valley constructed an idiosyncratic and defining version of Welshness. Secondly, it explores the film’s social and political themes. Thirdly, it considers the extent to which the film was aimed specifically at a female audience, and how its love stories, tear-jerker elements and glamorous costumes were vehicles for deeper gender discourses. At every stage, the study asks how Welsh audiences responded to the elements in question, either embracing, rejecting, or reinterpreting what they saw onscreen.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > History, Archaeology and Religion
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain E History America > E151 United States (General) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures
Funders:	James Pantyfedwen Foundation
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	13 May 2026
Date of Acceptance:	13 May 2026
Last Modified:	13 May 2026 15:53
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/186864

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