Though Gregg Toland is perhaps best known for his work with Orson Welles and William Wyler on such films as Citizen Kane and The Best Years of Our Lives, his camerawork in John Ford’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic novel rates among the influential cinematographer’s greatest achievements. Starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, the iconic itinerant ex-con leading his large family down Highway 66 in search of work and a better life in California, The Grapes of Wrath—one of American literature’s great politically liberal books adapted by a famously conservative auteur—stands as perhaps Ford’s most powerfully compassionate movie.