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A Few Words About A few words about...™ Mrs. Miniver -- in Blu-ray (2 Viewers)

bujaki

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Wyler is in dire need of re-evaluation. Maybe his films have not been available in good prints for many years, or maybe not at all. But he was more than just a theatrical journeyman director. People always talk about The Best Years of Our Lives (a masterpiece); Wuthering Heights; Ben-Hur; The Big Country; and maybe Mrs. Miniver. But what about Dodsworth (another masterpiece); Jezebel; The Letter; The Little Foxes, etc. etc. Catch these films in 35mm prints, or (dare we hope?) BDs, and you might see things differently. For the record, I've seen all of Wyler's films except 4 from 1929-30, and one from 1935.
Wyler knew how to get the best from his actors, but he also knew about camera placement, framing and angles; deep focus; editing, etc. One doesn't have to be showy to demonstrate one's craft.
BTW, all the directors that have been mentioned by others in this thread are great directors as well. All of them made turkeys during their careers. That doesn't lessen their overall artistic achievements.
 

AnthonyClarke

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classicmovieguy said:
He also wanted to create more of a 'war story' during the film's third act, with tanks rumbling through the streets of Salzburg. The mind boggles. I
I would have loved to have seen that!
And maybe it would have been even more realistic if they had dropped all the songs!
However and besides all that, Wyler's 'The Big Country' is my personal pick as the greatest Western ever made, just a notch above "High Noon'. But that's very subjective of course.
I just wish a proper Blu ray of The Big Country could be issued, without the horizontal stretching which makes the present Blu ray virtually unviewable for me, and which is such an insult to the director and cinematographer....
 

bujaki

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To think that The Big Country was Wyler's third and final Western! His first one, Hell's Heroes, a version of The Three Godfathers, was shot in both sound and silent versions. It's fascinating to watch and compare both, since the grammar of film language is so different. Both versions are well done: gritty, realistic, and less sentimental than Ford's version. There's the in-between version directed, at least partially, by Boleslawsky, also worth catching.
 

benbess

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Today I watched the blu-ray of the 1942 film Mrs. Miniver, directed by William Wyler. I thought I'd seen this movie before, but I was mistaken. I must have seen part of it at one point long ago, but not the whole thing. Anyway, the picture quality is very good on the blu-ray for this movie, which won the Oscar for Best Picture for its year, and which was a huge box office hit. Three noted figures stated how powerful this film was for the war effort—FDR, Churchill, and Joseph Goebbels, who wrote: "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."


It's helpful in viewing this movie to try to take yourself back in time to 1942 as much as is possible, and to think on how desperate the situation of the world was when this movie was in production and in wide release. I feel Mrs. Miniver is a dramatic and compelling telling of the war from the perspective of one upper-middle class British family.

As sometimes happens in movies, accents seem to be all over the map. Greer Garson, a graduate of King's College London, has of course the perfect accent, as does Dame May Whitty, Henry Travers, and the other British players. Canadian-American Walter Pidgeon doesn't even seem to try, sporting a more American side of the mid-Atlantic accent. American Teresa Wright is wonderful in this role, and does try and sort-of succeeds, but I think sometimes the accent comes and goes. American Richard Ney does try and kind of succeeds, but maybe lays it on a little thick once or twice? Tricky thing accents, but I do feel that in general Brits do American accents better than Americans do British accents. British-born Henry Travers, for instance, does a fairly good American accent in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt just a year later.

But those are very small things that don't get in the way of the enjoyment of the movie. Everyone is fine in their roles, and Wyler gets strong performances from absolutely everybody. And I think both Greer Garson and Teresa Wright are especially charismatic.

MGM's recreation of England in Hollywood is impressive given what they were working with. Some nice special effects work.

The flower show bit seemed both familiar and not familiar at the same time. I couldn't figure it out until I remembered that they copied this, or did an homage to it, for Downton Abbey:


Below there's some of the imdb trivia for this movie, and below that a poster, as well as a parody poster from a cartoon by Tex Avery.


"In real life, shortly after shooting was completed, Greer Garson married Richard Ney, who plays her son, Vin, in the film.

The Vicar's final rousing speech was printed in magazines like "Time" and "Look". President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered that it be broadcast on the Voice of America, and copies of it were dropped over Europe as propaganda. This speech has come to be known as The Wilcoxon Speech, in tribute to actor Henry Wilcoxon's stirring delivery of it.

Winston Churchill once said that this film had done more for the war effort than a flotilla of destroyers.

The closing speech, delivered by the vicar (Henry Wilcoxon) at the end of the film, was actually written by Wilcoxon and director William Wyler the night before it was filmed. Wyler had grown dissatisfied with the speech the screenwriters had come up with and convinced Wilcoxon to help him improve it. The speech proved to be integral to the film's success and was distributed across America and Europe in order to boost wartime morale amongst soldiers and civilians alike.

After completing the film, William Wyler joined the US Army and was posted to the Signal Corps. He was overseas on the night he won his first Oscar. He later revealed that his subsequent war experiences made him realize that the film actually portrayed war in too soft a light.

The film played for an incredible ten weeks at the Radio City Music Hall, one week less than Greer Garson's other smash hit, "Random Harvest (1942)," which was released the same year.

When discussing the impending marriage of their son, Kay says she is "Proud," to which Clem asks, "Are you prejudiced?" in a clear wink to Greer Garson's other major movie, "Pride and Prejudice (1940)."

ms. m best.jpg
mrs. m.jpeg
 

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