Frank Morgan as 'The Pirate' was an interesting choice. I am glad Hedy Lamarr got this starring female role because there are no female characters with much of a voice in the book, however Danny is still fairly forgettable. This is mainly to create a stronger romantic plot with Danny. Sweets Ramirez (Lamarr) is given a role of much more bulk in the movie compared to the book. Spencer Tracy is one of my favorite actors, but he does a terrible job imitating a Mexican-American accent compared to the Portuguese one he used in Captains Courageous. Pilon (Tracy) is the brain and voice of the group of friends, so he is present in most every adventure and the one that I enjoyed reading about most. Steinbeck seems to have a little confusion about who his main protagonist is. Danny (Garfield) is the central character in the book who ties all the friends together, but many of the episodes have very little to do with him and I didn't find him all that charming of a character. The adapter doesn't choose all of what I would consider to be the better episodes from the book, but there are just too many characters to get to know in less than a two hour time span. The movie picks a handful of these episodes and invents some new ones in an effort to create a sensible story.

The book is filled with so many uneven episodes in the lives of this group of paisanos.

Tortilla flat movie poster