Review #487: 'Mrs. Miniver' (1942)

Directed by German-born American citizen William Wyler, depicting the plight of the British Home Front, Mrs. Miniver swept the boards at the Oscars, collecting five wins including Best Picture. It is now clearly a piece of propaganda film-making, made at the time where the U.S. were edging closer and closer to war, but this doesn't do anything to dampen what is an often gripping, moving and stirring film. Wyler's views are clear as day - American needed to enter the war before the threat of Nazism becomes too powerful to overthrow - and wanted to show the American audience of the stubborn, stiff-upper lipped efforts of its British allies, from the soldiers on the front lines, to the defiance of the women and the elderly at home.

As World War II draws inevitably nearer, middle-class housewife Kay Miniver (Greer Garson) journeys home after shopping to learn that station-master Mr. Ballard (Henry Travers) is naming his potentially prize-winning rose "Mrs. Miniver". Her husband Clem (Walter Pidgeon) has just indulged in an expensive new car and the two patter around admitting to their lavish spending. Their son Vin (Richard Ney) returns home from Oxford and falls in love with Carol (Teresa Wright), grand-daughter of aristocrat Lady Beldon (Dame May Whitty). But when war is announced, Vin joins the Air Force, and Clem volunteers to assist in the Dunkirk evacuation.

What is most surprising about Mrs. Miniver is its depiction of Britain. With an American director and a cast made up mostly of American and Canadian actors, the film is alarmingly successful in its realism, and doesn't look out of place amongst the many British films made during this era with similar settings. The cast border on perfection (apart from the slightly hammy Richard Ney), and Pidgeon, Wright, Whitty and Travers all receiving Oscar nominations for the efforts, with Garson winning. They manage to juggle a mixture of middle-class kitchen-sink drama and some naturalistic humour, with some playful scenes managing to alleviate the doom-and-gloom subject matter.

The film is keen to explore themes of social divide, and how this apparent barrier seems to vanish and diminish during wartime. Vin arrives home from his college spouting a new-found enlightenment about his fellow man, and how the wealthy live comfortably in ignorance while the lower-classes suffer, but has nothing to say when challenged as to what he's doing about it by Carol. It is only when he goes to war when he is truly with his fellow man, a revelation shared by the snobbish Lady Beldon (in a powerhouse performance by Dame Whitty) during the village flower show in an extremely moving scene.

A true milestone film, now admitted to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, that President Roosevelt heralded as being as important to the war effort as the soldiers on the ground, as he rushed it straight into theatres shortly after being completed. The film's famous final scene that shows a powerful speech on the country's unity by the Vicar (Henry Wilcoxon - whose brother Robert was killed in the Dunkirk evacuation), was transcribed and translated by Roosevelt and dropped into allied territory as a morale builder, and is now known as the Wilcoxon Speech. Historically important, but a magnificent film in its own right.


Directed by: William Wyler
Starring: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Teresa Wright, Dame May Whitty, Richard Ney, Henry Travers, Henry Wilcoxon
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie