NFR Project: 'Mrs. Miniver' (1942)

 

NFR Project: “Mrs. Miniver”

Dir: William Wyler

Scr: Arthur Wimperis, George Froeschel, James Hilton, Claudine West

Pho: Joseph Ruttenberg

Ed: Harold F. Kress

Premiere: June 4, 1942

133 min.

It won Best Picture, Best Director for William Wyler, Best Actress for Greer Garson, Best Supporting Actress for Teresa Wright. Walter Pidgeon was nominated for Best Actor; Henry Travers was nominated for Best Supporting Actor his impersonation of the kindly, rose-growing stationmaster, Mr. Ballard.

It is a propaganda film. As Orwell wrote, “All art is propaganda. On the other hand, not all propaganda is art.” It is a great propaganda film; it makes you want to take up arms and march out into the streets. It is a fair evocation of the struggles suffered by the English people during World War II.

Mrs. Miniver (Garson) is a lovely, kind, and intelligent citizen/goddess whose husband Clem (Pidgeon) is a bluff, pipe-smoking kind of guy. They have three children. Their eldest son (Richard Ney) is a cheeky lad who falls for the rich girl in the estate next door, Carol (Wright), and rapidly goes off to war. Privations increase. The family holds up, impeccably dressed. (If one is going to be bombed, one wishes to dress well for it.)

We are given their vital statistics: they live in a village outside London; they are typical folk; he’s a professional, an architect in fact. The results of the war on his home are testament to the havoc wrought by Nazi bombings, night after night in those early and crucial opening months of the War. Wyler astutely gets his actors to underplay, engaging the viewer’s sympathies. His characters are lit from within.

Clem is called upon to be part of the Dunkirk flotilla; Mrs. M faces down a Nazi who’s parachuted into her garden. The bombings decimate their home as they huddle in their back yard’s improvised bomb shelter. Tragedy strikes. Throughout, director Wyler quietly focuses us on the faces of the Minivers as they negotiate an uneasy path among the horrors of war.

It was a message England desperately wanted to articulate for American audiences; the result is a faithful recreation of a critical time in a nation’s life, and an articulation of the values that distinguished it from its enemies.

Wyler knows that the drama sells itself, and focuses instead on moments of pain alternating with twinges of hope; he articulates the kind of calm and confidence that is the most vital ally in a nation is distress.

It ends with Henry Wilcoxson as the Vicar saying from the ruined pulpit,

“The homes of many of us have been destroyed, and the lives of young and old have been taken. There is scarcely a household that hasn't been struck to the heart. And why? Surely you must have asked yourself this question. Why in all conscience should these be the ones to suffer? Children, old people, a young girl at the height of her loveliness. Why these? Are these our soldiers? Are these our fighters? Why should they be sacrificed? I shall tell you why. Because this is not only a war of soldiers in uniform. It is a war of the people, of all the people, and it must be fought not only on the battlefield, but in the cities and in the villages, in the factories and on the farms, in the home, and in the heart of every man, woman, and child who loves freedom! Well, we have buried our dead, but we shall not forget them. Instead they will inspire us with an unbreakable determination to free ourselves and those who come after us from the tyranny and terror that threaten to strike us down. This is the people's war! It is our war! We are the fighters! Fight it then! Fight it with all that is in us, and may God defend the right!”

And then everyone sings, “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” A categorical imperative. We are convinced that the cause is just (especially with a grim encounter with one of the Nazis’ finest – a sinister Helmut Dantine) because we empathize with this stereotypical clutch of stiff-upper-lip, no-nonsense civilian-saints whose sufferings transform them into holy soldiers.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Now, Voyager.