Mrs. Miniver

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Movie
German title Mrs. Miniver
Original title Mrs. Miniver
Country of production USA
original language English
Publishing year 1942
length 134 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director William Wyler
script James Hilton ,
George Froeschel ,
Claudine West ,
Arthur Wimperis
production Sidney Franklin
music Herbert Stothart
camera Joseph Ruttenberg
cut Harold F. Kress
occupation
synchronization

Mrs. Miniver is a 1942 American drama film directed by William Wyler, starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon . The novel Mrs. Miniver Experiences the Pre- War Period ( Mrs. Miniver ) by the British author Jan Struther served as a literary model, in which she tells the story of the fictional Miniver family in England during the Second World War .

plot

“This is the story of a middle-class family in England. The early summer sun of 1939 shines on the peaceful idyll of serene life. There seems to be nothing for these people but joy in the children, in work, in play and in the garden. Until the sun of happiness goes out, because fire fell on the earth, because the great genocide began. This film is a document of that time ... "

Normality with the Minivers

Mrs. Kay Miniver walks the busy streets of London . She wants to take the bus home, but changes her mind to buy the last copy of an expensive hat. Then she gets on a train and meets the pastor and Lady Beldon, exhausted from shopping. When she arrives at Canterbury train station , the station master, Mr. Ballard, leads her into a room to show her a red rose that he has grown. Since Mrs. Miniver was always kind to him, Mr. Ballard would like to give the rose her name. When she arrives at her small community home, her husband, Clem, an architect, is expected.

Encounter between Vin and Carol

The next morning the Minivers pick up their idiosyncratic son Vin, who is studying at the famous Oxford University , from the train station. During lunch, Lady Beldon's neighbor and granddaughter, 18-year-old Carol, appears to tell them about the upcoming rose exhibition and Mr. Ballard's participation. This one has his rose "Mrs. Miniver ”registered at the exhibition. Since Lady Beldon has won the coveted trophy every year for forty years, Carol fears a conflict between Mr. Ballard and her grandmother. Vin eventually interferes and starts an argument. When Carol countered cleverly, Vin left the table insulted.

Within the next few days, the rose was discussed controversially in the village community. One evening there is a ball in a chapel in the village. Carol meets the Minivers and wants to apologize for their behavior towards Vin. He's not there, but sends Carol a message inviting her to talk to him in private. A little later, Carol appears at the boat dock, where Vin apologizes for his behavior, although he has not changed his mind. He lets Carol invite him to a dance and later confesses to her that it was the best day of his life.

Outbreak of war

During the service, the pastor receives the news that the German attack on Poland has just begun and he decides to end the mass after just a few words. Vin later visits the Beldons to inquire about them. When the air raid alarm goes off, he stays with them while the residents in the village are asked to darken their windows.

A few months later, Vin, who in the meantime had trained as a pilot and passed his flight exercises with honors, was transferred to his home village. In the evening, before he has to leave again, he proposes marriage to Carol. The following night, Mr. Miniver is asked to lend his motorboat to the Allies. In a bar in Ramsgate he meets other comrades and an officer who explains the situation to them. All available motor boats with a boat length of over ten meters are to be confiscated in order to free 400,000 men who were trapped by the opposing artillery from the “ Dunkirk pocket ”.

German pilot

A week has already passed and Mrs. Miniver has not seen her husband or son again. She leaves her house and meets Mr. Ballard. After a little chat with him, she happened to find a German pilot in a bush who had been wanted for weeks. Mrs. Miniver tries unobtrusively to take his gun from him, but he wakes up and follows her to her house. He is wounded and demands a coat from her. When he suddenly passes out, Mrs. Miniver takes the gun from him and calls the police, who arrest the German.

When Clem Miniver returns home, Lady Beldon appears and explains that her granddaughter is too young to marry Vin. At the age of 16, she got her way through to her parents and married a man who later died in the war. She wants to spare Carol this painful experience. In the end, however, she gives in as she has to realize that Carol and Vin are deeply in love.

Bombardment of the village

In the weeks that followed, the village was bombed by enemy planes at night. The Minivers house is also damaged. When Lady Beldon and the Minivers pick up Vin and Carol as a married couple from the train station, they meet Mr. Ballard, who is convinced that he will emerge victorious from the upcoming flower show. This takes place in the afternoon. A servant gives the hostess the results of the judges on a slip of paper, who gave her first place and Mr. Ballard second. When Lady Beldon is about to announce the results, she takes another close look at her competitor's rose and decides to award the award to Mr. Ballard.

The event is suddenly disrupted by a soldier. German bombers are on their way again. Lady Beldon interrupts the event and explains that she can accommodate all guests in her spacious basement. However, Mrs. Miniver and Carol drive home and have to stop with their car when German planes circled overhead. When they see a burning plane crash, Carol is shot injured. On arrival at home, Mrs. Miniver immediately calls a doctor, but Carol dies before she can receive medical attention. The next day, Vin returns from his assignment. He has already received news of Carol's death. The next day, all recently deceased members of the community are mourned in the destroyed chapel. Lady Beldon sits alone in her row until Vin finally goes to help her.

background

Book template

Mrs. Miniver is based on the stories of the British writer Jan Struther (born June 6, 1901 as Joyce Anstruther , † July 20, 1953). She wrote several short stories in 1937, which were published in The Times newspaper . The protagonist of the stories is the fictional Mrs. Miniver, who lives with her family near London. In her later stories, Struther made more and more reference to the impending World War II. In 1939 she wrote the stories down in letter form to illustrate the war experiences of the individual characters. She then published a book that became a huge hit in the United States. The producer Sidney Franklin finally got the film adaptation of the stories rolling when he commissioned George Froeschel , James Hilton , Claudine West and Arthur Wimperis to write a suitable script from the material. The script begins in 1939 when England declared war on Germany, while the original book ends here. The plot was completely rewritten so that only the characters remained true to the literary template.

Filming

Filming began in November 1941. Although the film is set in England, it was shot entirely in Culver City , California . William Wyler initially wanted to cast the lead role with Norma Shearer , but she was not very enthusiastic about playing the mother of half-grown children. For a short time, Irene Dunne was also mentioned as Mrs. Miniver. Eventually Greer Garson took on the lead role, although she did not want to play it either for reasons of age. She also feared the well-known perfectionism of Wyler, who had scenes repeated particularly often until he was satisfied with the result. As a result, there were repeated tensions between the director and the actors on the set. Garson, however, got along particularly well with Richard Ney , who played the role of their idiosyncratic son Vin Miniver in the film. They married on July 24, 1943. However, the marriage only lasted until September 25, 1947.

During the filming, Germany declared war on the USA in December 1941. The studio then allowed Wyler to re-shoot some scenes that had previously been toned down compared to the novel and to portray the Germans in a more negative way.

reception

Publication and aftermath

On June 4, 1942, the world premiere took place in New York's Radio City Music Hall , where the film ran for ten weeks. It was also shown in Europe in the late 1940s. At $ 1,344,000, the film was an average expensive production for MGM , but ended up being the financially most successful film of 1942 with grossing $ 8,878,000 and total profit of $ 4,831,000. Mrs. Miniver won six Academy Awards from a total of twelve nominations . According to a poll by the US magazine Film Daily , 555 out of 592 film critics voted Mrs. Miniver “Film of the Year 1942”.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill reportedly claimed that the film brought more to the end of the war than a fleet of destroyers. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt was so impressed by the vicar's final speech in the bombed church that he had it distributed with leaflets in Europe and announced on the radio in the USA. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels was one of the admirers of the film : “Here everything can be seen in perfection, which I have been asking and demanding from German film production for months, indeed for years.” He presented the film to German film producers “in order to show them how to do it ”.

In Germany, the film was only released in cinemas on October 21, 1960. As Der Spiegel notes in a contemporary review, the scene with the plane played by Helmut Dantine was shortened.

Reviews

For Bosley Crowther of the New York Times , Mrs. Miniver was "definitely the best film" made about World War II at the time, and at the same time a "most glorifying tribute to the British" who "valued the war." put away ". Director William Wyler showed a "sensitivity" in his direction that "rarely appears in films". The cast is "excellent" in every role. Herb Golden of the industry journal Variety found the film "so warm-hearted, so well done that Mrs. Miniver's family becomes the family of the audience." The story of the Miniver family “truly brings the war into one's own family”.

"In the context of a humanly appealing family story, Wyler's director pushes the intention of getting the United States in the mood for war back to the point where an artistically remarkable drama of general importance emerges," said the lexicon of international film . The television magazine Prisma called Mrs. Miniver a “careful melodrama about moral courage and the psychological consequences of a war”, which “should give people courage” and “an idealized England” on display: “Despite air raids, award-winning roses are still here The main actress was also praised: “Greer Garson impressed with her Oscar-winning performance.” According to Cinema , this is a “heartfelt war melodrama” and a “clever propaganda film: the cheerful prelude follows the horror all the stronger ”.

Interpretation of the critics

Despite the positive response from viewers, the film was often criticized after the Second World War. The film critics accuse it of a lack of reference to reality and call it a propaganda film (“An effective piece of wartime cinematic propaganda that helped defeat the Nazis.”) Director William Wyler has publicly commented on this thesis. He mentioned in an interview that the film was only intended to show American viewers the situation of the English soldiers in the war. Wyler believed that the Americans had to overcome their isolation from the war in order to assist the English in the war. After the 1943 Academy Awards , he volunteered for the United States Army .

Awards

Mrs. Miniver was nominated for an Oscar in twelve categories . At the award ceremony on March 4, 1943 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles , the film won a total of six Oscars and was able to prevail over films such as Years Found and The Splendor of the House of Amberson in the Best Picture category . Greer Garson, who won the Oscar for Best Actress for her title role , gave a five-minute acceptance speech at the award ceremony, which is considered the longest to this day.

Won:

Nominated:

The cultural and historical significance of the film was recognized in 2009 by its inclusion in the National Film Registry .

German version

The German dubbed version was created in 1960 in the MGM synchronization studio in Berlin .

role actor Voice actor
Mrs. Kay Miniver Greer Garson Tilly Lauenstein
Clem Miniver Walter Pidgeon Siegfried Schürenberg
Carol Beldon Miniver Teresa Wright Marion Degler
Lady Beldon May Whitty Agnes Windeck
Foley Reginald Owen Konrad Wagner
Mr. Ballard Henry Travers Hans Hessling
Vin Miniver Richard Ney Eckart Dux
Vicar Henry Wilcoxon Ernst Wilhelm Borchert
Housemaid Gladys Brenda Forbes Kate Jaenicke
Ada Marie De Becker Alice Treff
German pilot Helmut Dantine Dietmar Schönherr
Horace Rhys Williams Werner Peters
George Aubrey Mather Robert Klupp
Mac Charles Irwin Günter Pfitzmann
police officer Frank Baker Horst Niendorf
Chandler, Lady Beldon's butler Leonard Carey Gerd Prager
dentist Ian Wolfe Toni Herbert
captain Vernon Steele Friedrich Schoenfelder

literature

  • Jan Struther: Mrs. Miniver experienced the pre-war period ( Mrs. Miniver ). German by Anna Katharina Rehmann . Scherz, Bern 1943.
  • Jan Struther: Mrs. Miniver . Harvest Books, 1990, ISBN 0-15-663140-7 .
  • Ysenda Maxtone Graham: Real Mrs. Miniver: The Life of Jan Struther . History Press Tempus Publishin, 2007, 228 pp., ISBN 0-7524-4306-2 .

DVD publications

  • Mrs. Miniver . Warner Home Video 2004, et al. with US cinema trailer and footage of the Academy Awards with Greer Garson
  • Mrs. Miniver (Special Edition) . Warner Home Video 2007, et al. with US cinema trailer and footage of the Academy Awards with Greer Garson

Soundtrack

  • Herbert Stothart : Mrs. Miniver. Suite . On: Great Stories From World War II . Film Spectacular Vol. 6. Decca, London 1976, sound carrier no. PFS 4350 (LP) - New recording of excerpts from the film music by the London Festival Orchestra under the direction of Stanley Black.

Web links

Wikiquote: Mrs. Miniver  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Opening credits from the film Mrs. Miniver .
  2. ↑ Michael Troyan: A Rose for Mrs. Miniver. The Life of Greer Garson . The University Press of Kentucky, 1999, p. 125.
  3. ↑ Michael Troyan: A Rose for Mrs. Miniver. The Life of Greer Garson . The University Press of Kentucky, 1999, pp. 129-130.
  4. ↑ Michael Troyan: A Rose for Mrs. Miniver. The Life of Greer Garson . The University Press of Kentucky, 1999, p. 148.
  5. ↑ Michael Troyan: A Rose for Mrs. Miniver. The Life of Greer Garson . The University Press of Kentucky, 1999, p. 134.
  6. ^ The diaries of Joseph Goebbels: Part II: July-September 1943 . KG Saur, Munich 1993, p. 64.
  7. ↑ a b Mrs. Miniver. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed September 24, 2020 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  8. ↑ See New in Germany: Mrs. Miniver (USA). In: Der Spiegel , June 7, 1961, p. 76.
  9. ↑ “But certainly it is the finest film yet made about the present war, and a most exalting tribute to the British, who have taken it gallantly. [...] William Wyler has directed with a sensitivity that rarely shows in films. […] Every one in the cast […] are excellent. " Bosley Crowther : Excellent Picture of England at War . In: The New York Times , June 5, 1942.
  10. ↑ “The film is so warm, so well done, that Mrs. Miniver's family is the audience's family […]. Mrs. Miniver truly brings the war into one's own family. " Herb Golden: Mrs. Miniver . In: Variety , May 13, 1942.
  11. ↑ Mrs. Miniver. In: prisma.de . Retrieved March 30, 2021 .
  12. ↑ see cinema.de
  13. ↑ See Jamie Gillies ( Memento of October 13, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) on apolloguide.com
  14. ↑ Thomas Bräutigam : Lexicon of film and television synchronization. More than 2000 films and series with their German voice actors etc. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-289-X , p. 260.
  15. ↑ see synchrondatenbank.de
  16. ↑ Mrs. Miniver. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing index , accessed on September 24, 2020 .