Best Picture: #15
Original Release Date: June 4, 1942
Rating: Not Rated
Runtime: 2 hours, 14 minutes
Director: William Wyler
Quick Impressions:
Neither my daughter nor I could muster much enthusiasm for the idea of watching Mrs. Miniver, which sounded like just another tedious, black-and-white, war-related film standing between us and Casablanca.
Then we watched it, and it knocked our socks off. What an amazing surprise! This might be one of my new favorite films ever! I loved the movie, and she did, too. She currently ranks it third of the project, after Wings and Gone With the Wind, and it shot right to the top of my list, as well.
The movie ended with a notice urging Americans to support the war effort. With tears streaming down my face, I mimed a phone call and joked to my daughter, “Hello? Where can I buy these war bonds?”
The intensity of emotion I felt during the film’s moving conclusion surely has to be about something more than the movie. It is a well made, well told story, so cohesive and well crafted, which I always admire. But the emotions I felt were so deep and resonant, honestly a bit incommensurate with what had happened on screen. The only explanation I can think of is that Mrs. Miniver tapped into feelings of English patriotism that I (apparently) have. I can’t defend this rationally, but I know that’s what’s going on. This is a beautiful film about coming together as a nation to fight for a beloved way of life that means something. It’s as much about being English as anything else. I am not English, but apparently my heart thinks I am. This is slightly obnoxious of my heart. The Jetts left England during the reign of Charles II, so I mean…
I’m rolling my eyes at myself, but I felt something, and that’s just the way it is. But now, setting my delusional love of England aside, Mrs. Miniver is the type of film designed to evoke and stir deep feeling. Normally, I get annoyed when movies try so blatantly to manipulate my emotions, but this is so well done. I complained before about All Quiet on the Western Front being anti-war propaganda. (Make no mistake. I’m no fan of trench warfare. I just feel like I’m being beaten over the head with the message.) Mrs. Miniver is pro-war propaganda. (The message is not, “War is great.” It’s, “This is why we need to fight, to defend our way of life because we’re being attacked. Everyone has to help.”)
I can tell that the movie is trying to manipulate me, and usually that rankles me. But in this case, I simply don’t care that I’m being manipulated. The emotions stirred are so strong.
See there’s one thing about Mrs. Miniver that makes its manipulative propagandizing both more effective and more palatable. It is being filmed during the war. I kept pointing out to my daughter, “This movie came out in 1942. The war was still happening. The war in Europe won’t end until May of 1945. There’s a lot more war left. The outcome is uncertain.”
Both she and I were baffled by this as we watched. At one point, she joked, “Watch, they’re going to show the end of the war before it happens in real life.”
I was able to clear up some of my confusion after the film ended when I discovered it was filmed in Los Angeles (in Culver City, apparently. I was just there in February.) MGM sound stages seem like a much safer filming location than London. I realize the Blitz ended in 1941, but this film was released in June of 42. When did they film it? And how did anyone know nothing more horrible was yet to come? Knowing it’s an American made movie makes so much sense. It also explains why the London street scene in the beginning seems so odd. My daughter said, “I thought they were in England,” and I said, “It is England,” and pointed out the double-decker buses as proof, but they looked odd, and I became unsure myself, particularly because Greer Garson didn’t seem to have an English accent in the very first scenes of the movie. (I have no idea why not. She is English.)
At any rate, Mrs. Miniver was a delightful surprise, a well-acted movie with an incredibly moving conclusion. It is probably now one of my favorite films ever.
The Plot:
Mrs. Miniver is a charming English woman, happily married (to Clem, an architect) with three children, Vin (who is very much in college), Judy (who takes piano lessons), and Toby (who loves his cat Napoleon). She is so gracious, vivacious, and kind that the humble Mr. Ballard names a new breed of rose for her, The Mrs. Miniver. Ballard loves his rose so much that he enters it in Lady Beldon’s annual flower show. No one has ever dared enter a rose before because Lady Beldon herself has always won the prize for roses uncontested. Now an aged (and formidable) woman, Lady Beldon resents this break in tradition. She also resents upstarts like the Minivers, who have money and charm but no noble lineage. Lady Beldon’s granddaughter Carol visits the Minivers to ask them to urge Mr. Ballard not to enter the rose. She meets with resistance from their son Vin who has a lot of ideas about the class system. Then England is at war.
The Good:
Another movie that gave me a rush of strong, positive emotion at the end was Crazy, Rich Asians. In that film, the professor of game theory wins by giving her opponent the winning move. The mother is given the opportunity to be gracious. She is. And everybody’s a winner. I liked that message, that feeling. When we bring out the best in each other, we all win. Apparently this message really appeals to me because Mrs. Miniver does something so similar, and I have the same kind of big, positive, stronger-than-I-should-feel feelings about the ending of this film.
Mrs. Miniver gives us three immensely captivating women, Mrs. Miniver herself, Greer Garson, May Whitty, as Lady Beldon, and Theresa Wright as her niece Carol. All three actresses were Oscar nominated for these roles, and Garson and Wright won.
My daughter and I took a break after watching a little more than half of the film. Both of us loved it so much already that we would have watched straight through to the end, but we started alarmingly late, so we had to finish up the next night. That’s when I confirmed Garson and Wright won Actress and Supporting Actress that year. (We already strongly suspected they had just from watching the performances.) We were thrilled with the news. Then in the second half of the movie, May Whitty gets some amazing moments as Lady Beldon. I checked just now to see if she’d been nominated, too, because I had a feeling that was the case.
They’re all amazing. Garson simply oozes charm as the title character. It’s very weird to me that she plays the part of this matronly woman with a twenty-year-old son just two years after playing Elizabeth Bennett in a version of Pride and Prejudice that my mother adores. But then again, she also has a very young son, so it’s hard to pin down Mrs. Miniver’s age. It is easy to understand why someone might name a rose after this woman. Her beauty comes not just from her looks or charm, but from her behavior. She seems so effortlessly gracious. She is kind and helpful to everyone and seems naturally adept in any social situation. She’s also cool-headed, brave—I mean truly courageous—and has remarkably sound judgment. She has to worry about things like, “Should I buy a frivolous hat?” because none of her truly important actions are ever wrong.
She makes these amazingly quick, sound decisions. And she stays so brave and calm for her children. I’m better under pressure (than not), and I’m a load of fun (under the right circumstances) but I am neither brave nor calm (ever). My poor children probably feel like they’re living through the war right now! I love this woman. She has all of these fine qualities, and she’s also so genuine, and genuinely happy. My daughter found it amazingly refreshing to see a stable, happy couple in a good relationship depicted onscreen. You can see why Mrs. Miniver and her husband Clem got married. They love each other and enjoy each other’s company. It’s pretty impressive that an actress can jump from playing Elizabeth Bennett to Mrs. Miniver in just two years. (Granted, they’re vaguely similar in character, but not in age. Mrs. Miniver is really more of a mash-up of Lizzie and Jane, in twenty years.) As I just discovered, the year after the movie released, Greer Garson married Richard Ney, the actor who plays her college-aged son Vin. (My daughter will be delighted to learn this, I’m sure. She kept saying, “He kisses his mother just like he kisses his wife! I think he kissed his mother longer that time!”) Mrs. Miniver is an incredible woman, and Garson makes it look easier to be her.
Teresa Wright (whom my daughter remembered from Shadow of a Doubt) is also wonderful in the film. Carol is so delightful that my only complaint while watching was that she seemed a bit wasted on Vin. (I revised this opinion, though, as the film went on.) Carol’s initial meeting with Vin is fantastic to watch. It’s refreshing that she’s not there to swoon over him. Instead, she immediately calls him out on all his nonsense (not that there’s no merit to his arguments, but I was so impressed with the way she shut him right up). She’s the one who comes from a noble family. She behaves like it, and Wright gives Carol a life and vitality that is absolutely key to making the movie work.
And then late in the film, May Whitty practically steals the movie. Out of nowhere, my daughter declared, “She’s my favorite one,” and I heard myself saying, “Me too!” before I had even known.
All of these strong female characters are well written, but it is the actresses who bring them to life believably.
The male supporting cast is good, too. Walter Pidgeon is so much easier to like as Clem Miniver than he was in How Green Was My Valley. (It’s easy to fantasize about showing his character in that film this movie and saying, “See? This is what happens when you marry the woman you love.”) Rhys Williams who memorably played Dai Bondo in How Green Was My Valley also has a small roll as the maid’s affable, war bound boyfriend Horace. Best known as Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life, Henry Travers is very convincing as Mr. Ballard, humblest when exalted. Henry Wilcoxon makes some rousing speeches as the vicar, and Reginald Owen pulls off a tonally tricky role as Foley, a man who is strangely comical while going about business that is deadly serious.
The children are also quite adorable in this film, specifically Christopher Severn as Toby. He’s a very cute child. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell if he is acting, or if some of the cute moments are coming from the child actor himself. He’s wonderfully natural, so you really can’t tell what’s scripted and what’s not. “Children still seem like children,” my daughter mused. “In all these years, that really hasn’t changed.”
The film also won Best Screenplay and certainly deserves it. I love the neat profundity of the story. Yes, it’s obviously contrived. I mean, a true story would never be quite this perfect. But the story is so well constructed, so well told. How did anyone ever write something so perfect this quickly? (I mean, it must have been written fairly quickly. The Blitz was still happening in 1941, and the movie came out in June of 1942!) I’m particularly impressed by the way this film tells us a story with such vivid, likable, specific characters, but then somehow manages to make them almost archetypal at the same time. We really care about these quirky, wonderful people, but at the same time, they represent more than themselves. The opening credits play over the image of the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom, beside a single, long-stemmed rose. Somehow, this gives us the entire story in one image. The movie draws on the existing resonant power of these symbols and at the same time gives new meaning to them. It’s very effective.
Mrs. Miniver also won Best Cinematography. It looks beautiful, but the images serve the story. Rebecca and How Green Was My Valley have more conspicuous cinematography. Still, this is nicely shot.
Best Scene:
The best scene is the ending. I know because when I watched it, tears started streaming down my face, and my heart exploded, and I wanted to buy war bonds, and I thought, “What a perfect ending! It’s so neat, profound, and beautiful!”
I then looked over and discovered my daughter having the same experience. As we watched the movie, she had theorized about the title, coming up with numerous meanings. “And now I see,” she sobbed, “that the meaning I thought least likely was the one it was!”
“It’s all of them!” I sobbed back. “It’s all of them!”
Until the very end, I thought the best scene in the film was Lady Beldon’s flower show. May Whitty is so excellent as Lady Beldon. It’s too bad she couldn’t have gotten an Oscar, too. She deserves one. She really lets us see Lady Beldon’s vulnerability and her character.
“What a great lady!” I thought. I might have said it out loud. I think what I kept jabbering was something like, “That’s right! That’s right! We all help each other to be our best selves! That’s how we shine! They allow her to behave with nobility, and so she does. And now they get to witness it and be encouraged by her example. Everyone wins here.” I found this scene so moving.
Best Action Sequence:
As I watched the scene with the German pilot unfolding, I realized, “I’ve seen this before.” I haven’t seen the movie before, but I’m positive I’ve seen that scene (probably in an Oscars clip package or an AFI special). It’s great. We had intended to stop the movie at that point, but obviously we couldn’t stop it with that going on!
I’ve also seen part of that late scene in the car before, too, totally out of context, though, so I didn’t expect what was coming.
These are the best two action sequences in the film (in that order), each absolutely riveting. I also enjoyed the mysterious secrecy of the episode with the boats. I love the feeling of urgency and confusion it gives the audience. We must have been feeling what they did as they waited to learn just exactly what was going on.
Best Scene Visually:
Late in the film, Mr. and Mrs. Miniver gather with their two young children (and Napoleon the cat) in their little family bomb shelter. I love the camera angle as the mother reads the children a bedtime story, then the increasing intensity of the claustrophobic scene that follows.
I’m so impressed with the bravery and calm of these parents. I can’t even seem to remain calm during the ordinary catastrophes of everyday life.
One thing the film does extremely well is build up our investment in the Minivers’ house. During this entire scene, I was so worried about their house. I kept thinking in horror, “They had better not blow up their house!” I was as worried about the house as my daughter was about the cat. I must give the movie credit for this. Yes, it’s a lovely house, but the most important thing is that they live there. They’re so happy there. It’s their home, and I felt as emotionally invested in it as I did in them! We see the house so often, and it looks so nice and so stable.
The Negatives:
It took me an extremely long time to warm up to Richard Ney as Vin Miniver. For one thing, he seemed vaguely like a Jimmy Stewart type, but then wouldn’t it be better just to cast James Stewart? You watch and think, “I’m sure he’ll mature and change, but he’s not going to change into James Stewart!” and that’s disappointing. Of course, James Stewart would not be particularly believable as a young Englishman (though, of course, he would be entirely believable as someone who flew combat missions in World War II).
Perhaps it is the character that bothered me. Certainly I could see shades of college-aged me in Vin. “Oh no!” I joked to my daughter. “He went to my college!” I’m still pretty much like that now, rambling on and on about all my ideas. I do a lot of reading, thinking, writing. When it comes to action, you probably want someone else. (I did set some Doritos on fire the other night. Does that count as action?) So maybe some weird kind of self-loathing makes me a bit hostile to Vin Miniver, which isn’t Richard Ney’s fault. But then, as the character matures, the actor continues to get under my skin a little. I’m not sure why. I will say that by the end, I liked him enough for the ending to work, but for me, Ney was probably the weakest member of the cast.
Overall:
Mrs. Miniver is a touching story and a remarkably effective film. The cast is so charming, the characters so likable that the movie is a pleasure to watch from the very beginning. But, wow, does that ending pack a punch! It’s so satisfying that I know I’m being manipulated and simply don’t care. Describing the film to my husband, I explained, “It’s like when we saw Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. I stopped thinking about aspects I liked and just got sucked into the movie, enjoying the experience.” This is a great film. It’s now one of my all-time favorites.