18.6.09

Here's to You, Mrs. Miniver

Mrs. Miniver (1942) is propaganda of a particularly effective kind, a film "worth a hundred battleships" said Winston Churchill. Influenced by the Office of War Information, director William Wyler depicted an England democratic and plucky and far different from the snobs and toffs that dominated pre-War Hollywood's imagination. Clem and Kay Miniver, (Walter Pidgeon and Greer Garson) portray a middle-class family facing down the Germans in their own garden. The ending speech, in which the Minivers and their neighbors vow to defend their way of life influenced an FDR speech and a portion of it was reprinted and dropped over occupied Europe. Here's the speech scene: