Oscars Retrospective: Mrs. Miniver (15th Academy Awards Review)
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One of the hardest aspects of trying to embark on a quest to watch and grade every movie that won the Academy Award for Best Picture (Outstanding Motion Picture) is having to contextualize the awards ceremony in the time that they occurred. So, it can occasionally be a tad quibbelsome (a word I’m only using to keep with the British motif) trying to compare films that may not have aged the best but were still serious contenders in their day. Of course, oftentimes the best films that were the most excellent back then are usually the ones that happen to age the best which is why you see numerous snubs. But still, sometimes you find a movie that has aged poorly but we still understand why it won the Oscar back when it came out.
This brings us to Mrs. Miniver. Now this is basically going to be two different reviews going on at once. We can review it as how it holds up today but we’re also going to review it in the context of the time period that it came out.
Mrs. Miniver, based off of a newspaper serial of the same name, revolves around the life of a family called the Minivers, particularly its mother, Kay Miniver (Greer Garson), as they live in a suburb of London dealing with their doldrum lives in the midst of the Battle of Britain. And when I say it shows their lives, I mean it literally is just the day-to-day life of a 35-year-old woman in British suburbia that’s occasionally interrupted by a war. She raises her kids, gossips with the neighbors and the major conflict of the film is a contest about who is going to win the pageant for who has the best flowers in the neighborhood.
I’m not really averse to slice-of-life films but this movie is so thoroughly British that the actors have a very, very reserved style of acting. Not a lot of big emotions, a lot of stiff upper lip-ness and neither Kay Miniver nor her husband, Clem (Walter Pidgeon), are especially interesting characters. Nor is anyone else in her community. Quite frankly, I found Mrs. Miniver to be a frightful bore. And, honestly, if you want my recommendation on whether or not to watch it just go back to read that earlier sentence: the film is about a suburban housewife and her friends debating who has the best flowers in the neighborhood that’s occasionally (and I do mean very occasionally) interrupted by a war. If that sounds up your alley, you’ll probably like this movie; if not, skip it.
So with that in mind, that’s Mrs. Miniver as it holds up today. But, now let’s look at it as it came out in 1942. Quick crash course of historical context of the world events as they were going on at that time. World War II had begun in 1939 where German Chancellor/Führer Adolf Hitler invaded Poland, prompting France and England to declare war on him and Italian Prime Minister/Duce Benito Mussolini (I am obligated to mention that some historians nowadays consider the war to have begun in 1937 since that’s when Japan invaded China but I digress). The German and Italian war machine then quickly defeated France and offered peace terms to Britain. Prime Minister Winston Churchill told Hitler exactly where he could stick those peace terms and what then ensued was the Battle of Britain and the Blitz where the German Luftwaffe bombed Britain while alternately dueling the RAF.
At the end of 1941, Imperial Japan (allied with Germany and Italy) attacked the United States Navy at Pearl Harbor. The U.S. responded by declaring war on Japan and Hitler promptly declared war on the U.S. in return. So by the time Mrs. Miniver came out, it had turned into a propaganda film celebrating the British spirit that had allowed them to stand up to the Nazis and encouraging an American public to keep the same brave face. So much so that President Franklin Roosevelt actually contacted the studio and asked them to rush Mrs. Miniver into theaters as soon as possible to drum up support for the war effort.
Mrs. Miniver ends up being more interesting as a historical oddity than as an actual movie. The movie is very much meant to be the epitome of the phrase “Keep calm and carry on,” a common British propaganda phrase that was basically telling the British populace that cowering in fear was how you let the Nazis win. Every proud Brit would do their part wherever they could and, if they couldn’t, just go about their daily lives and not let the fear do them in.
The best parts of the movie are the parts where the war actually does come home. There’s a scene where Mrs. Miniver encounters a German pilot (Helmut Dantine), they have Clem participating in the Miracle of Dunkirk and there’s a very excellent scene where the Minivers spend the night in a bomb shelter as bombs rain overhead.
Whenever these scenes occur, the film comes to life and you become very riveted. They’re genuinely very harrowing and I can only imagine what it must have felt to watch this movie back when it came out, knowing all too well that this was not too far off from reality.
I just wish it was a little more interesting but, again, I can’t begrudge it too much because that’s not the type of movie Mrs. Miniver is. While there were plenty of other WWII-era propaganda pieces made during the war years, many of which we’ll be talking about in due time, Mrs. Miniver sticks out among the crowd with just how dry it is. This seems to be the most mirror-like in the way it shines on the audience. It’s trying to be real, it’s trying to show just a normal life of a normal woman to better contrast with the horrors of the war. This is the movie of Winston Churchill’s Britain, showing the everyday people who would stand up to the Nazi menace and help out wherever they could. I just wish the characters had a bit more depth or fun to them.
So, yeah, this movie isn’t for me but I can understand its impact. If it sounds like it might interest you, feel free to check it out. It’s far from the worst movie to ever win the Oscar for Outstanding Production; it’s just poorly-aged is all.
And that's really all there is to say about Mrs. Miniver. I'm sorry for this beng a shorter review but there's pretty much nothing else to talk about. All the acting is fine but nothing too special. The cinematography is good for its era. It kinda goes into a more realistic style but doesn't fall into the trap of having patently ridiculous scenes like some of John Ford's movies. Nothing about it stands out aside from the fact that it was set during WWII which, to be fair, is a really big thing that stands out about it. In a time when a lot of other war movies (as you'll see in the next blog) were overwrought, having something this simple and realistic does make it feel a bit grittier. Mrs. Miniver is a movie where what you see is what you get and what you get is a little slice of realism that will only appeal to the most devoted of cinephiles nowadays. Still a neat piece of history though.
But is that timeliness enough to make it movie of the year though?
In case you missed it:
1st Academy Awards (1927/28): Wings/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans: Part 1, Part 2
2nd Academy Awards (1928/29): The Broadway Melody: Part 1, Part 2
3rd Academy Awards (1929/30): All Quiet on the Western Front: Part 1, Part 2
4th Academy Awards (1930/31): Cimarron: Part 1, Part 2
5th Academy Awards (1931/32): Grand Hotel: Part 1, Part 2
6th Academy Awards (1932/33): Cavalcade: Part 1, Part 2
7th Academy Awards (1934): It Happened One Night: Part 1, Part 2
8th Academy Awards (1935): Mutiny on the Bounty: Part 1, Part 2
9th Academy Awards (1936): The Great Ziegfeld: Part 1, Part 2
10th Academy Awards (1937): The Life of Emile Zola: Part 1, Part 2
11th Academy Awards (1938): You Can't Take It With You: Part 1, Part 2
12th Academy Awards (1939): Gone With the Wind: Part 1, Part 2
13th Academy Awards (1940): Rebecca: Part 1, Part 2
14th Academy Awards (1941): How Green Was My Valley: Part 1, Part 2
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