MRS MINIVER
1942

“We will come. We will bomb your cities.” So bristles a character in the film Mrs Miniver: a German pilot who had been shot down in the quiet little English village of Belham, momentarily bringing the horrors of World War II to what is largely a domestic drama. The movie, released in June 1942, (and going on to win the best picture Oscar the following year), is credited with consolidating American support for the Allies, at a time when the public backed isolationism.

Churchill is credited as saying that "this is worth either five battleships or 50 destroyers.” The ultimate endorsement however, came from an unlikely source. Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wrote that Mrs Miniver “shows the destiny of a family during the current war, and its refined powerful propagandistic tendency has up to now only been dreamed of. There is not a single angry word spoken against Germany; nevertheless the anti-German tendency is perfectly accomplished.”

PLOT:
This story of an average English middle-class family begins with the summer of 1939; when the sun shone down on a happy, careless people, who worked and played, reared their children and tended their gardens in that happy, easy-going England that was so soon to be fighting desperately for her way of life and for life itself. It follows the family as they experience life in the first months of World War II. While dodging bombs, the Minivers' son courts Lady Beldon's granddaughter. A rose is named after Mrs. Miniver and entered in the competition against Lady Beldon's rose...

CAST:
Greer Garson ... Mrs. Miniver
Walter Pidgeon ... Clem Miniver
Teresa Wright ... Carol Beldon
Dame May Whitty ... Lady Beldon
Reginald Owen ... Foley
Henry Travers ... Mr. Ballard
Richard Ney ... Vin Miniver
Henry Wilcoxon ... Vicar
Christopher Severn ... Toby Miniver
Brenda Forbes ... Gladys (Housemaid)
Clare Sandars ... Judy Miniver
Marie De Becker ... Ada
Helmut Dantine ... German Flyer
John Abbott ... Fred
Connie Leon ... Simpson

Directed by William Wyler

RUNNING TIME: 134 minutes