A journey from despair to hysteria

Just let me sleep it off...

Some movie recommendations from Elizabeth [Oh By Jingo! Oh By Gee!] caused me an emotional roller coaster yesterday. I know that I have a tendency to sink into the world of film, especially when I watch them alone and with a headset - there's nothing from the outside world that can reach me. But to go from inconsolable crying to almost choking to death with laughter (by now I sound like Jean Arthur) is something out of the ordinary, even for me. (Oh well, it doesn't happen every day...)

And for once, I will try to hold my promise to keep the blog post short. (Sure, no one has complained about them being too long, but personally I admire people who can express themselves in a short and concise way, and not, to directly translate a Swedish expression, "word poo".)

Mrs. Miniver

Director: William Wyler

USA 1942

134 min

Starring: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Teresa Wright, Henry Travers, Dame May Whitty, Richard Ney and Henry Wilcoxon, among others.

See it on YouTube here.

When I am seriously curious about a film I haven't yet seen, I try to read as little about it as possible not to get it spoiled. Therefore I was quite shocked at finding Mrs. Miniver not being a sweet, cosy, utopian small town story (ey, I only judged by the title...), but rather a beautiful, smalltown nightmare. All the sweetness and sincere joy and appreciation for the fellow man only adds to the tragedy.

Mrs. Miniver (Garson) is the loving housewife of Clem Miniver (Pidgeon) in an English village anno 1939. The married couple's main problem by the beginning of the film is how to tell to one another that they both have too extravagant taste in their shopping for a middle class family (an expensive hat and a brand new car, guess who bought what), and their small children embarrassing the elder brother Vincent (Ney) and his love interest (Wright). This soon changes when Britain joins the World War II, and Vincent has to join the RAF, and Clem goes on a mission on the sea.

Just to further make this film crab ahold of the viewer, there is a sweet side story with a deer old station master, Mr. Ballard (Travers, who we recognize as the angel Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life, 1946), with a passion for roses. He names his most beautiful rose after Mrs. Miniver to enter the local flower contest. This makes it very hard to watch the scenes where the Germans start bombing England to pieces, not to mention the total loss of joy in the face of the otherwise so happy-go-lucky Vincent in the last scene. I frankly couldn't recognize him as the same actor at first.

Bombing of London, 1940.

This is such a beautiful and heart tearing film. Wyler admitted openly that he made the film for propaganda purposes, since he disliked America's isolationism from the ongoing war. The film helped the Americans to sympathize with their British equivalents. The last speech, held by Wilcoxon's vicar (supposedly re-written the night before shooting by Wyler and Wilcoxon), was used as war propaganda. It was translated into several languages and air-dropped in leaflets over Nazi occupied Europe on the request of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Since then, the speech has gone to history as The Wilcoxon Speech, after the actor who first performed it.

The final scene in a bombed church.

Well, in short this is a terrific film. Judging by my reaction (in total loss of hope, drowned in tears, inconsolable), I can be your witness that it's an emotionally gripping film. It got about a billion Oscar statues:

Best Actress in Leading Role - Greer Garson

Best Actress in Supporting Role - Teresa Wright

Best Cinematography B/W - Joseph Ruttenberg

Best Director - William Wyler

Best Picture

Best Writing, Screenplay

A popular rumor is that Greer Garson's acceptance speech lasted for over an hour, something that is completely wrong. She did however speak for five and a half minutes, and broke the record anyway.
Isn't it funny that Greer Garson later went and married Richard Ney, who plays her son in the film?

Yeah, grow a mustache so you look a little older!

Favorite scene: Mr. and Mrs. Miniver in the basement with their youngest children during an air raid. As most children do, they at first sleep through bombings and shootings, but when the bombs comes so near that the basement almost falls in on them, they wake up and are scared to death. There was something horrible in watching a helpless mother trying to keep her calm while comforting her children, who for once really has something to be frightened about.

***

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Director: Norman Z. McLeod

USA 1947

110 min

Starring: Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo, Boris Karloff, Fay Bainter, Ann Rutherford and Florence Bates, among others.

See it on YouTube here.

After "The Miniver Experience", I needed something to cheer me up before I went to bed. And now I made the right choice!

Walter Mitty (Kaye) is a terribly absent-minded man who too often lets himself slip away into an exciting dream world of his own, where he is the admired hero and has a beautiful, helpless blonde (Mayo) on his arm.

His reality is however somewhat different. His work contains of control reading trash novels with poorly dresses women in despair on the front covers. His boss constantly steals his ideas and takes the credit himself, and Mitty's frequent daydreaming puts his employment at stake. On top of all, he's engaged to a girl (Rutherford) with a horribly spoiled dog, and an equally horrible mother-in-law (Bates, who also plays an annoying mother-in-law in the Powell/Loy comedy Love Crazy, 1941).

One day his path crosses that of his dreamgirl's real life twin, Rosalind van Hoorn (Mayo, again), and soon he is drawn into a dime novel plot of his own - only with the difference that this is for real, and he can't just snap out of it like he can with his fantasies.

This is such a sweet, entertaining and insane movie. I can't believe that I hadn't seen it before, because it's exactly my kind of humour. I think I like Danny Kaye... Boris Karloff was really frightening in a role that kind of mocks his earlier horror performances. And I certainly admire how Virignia Mayo manages to act opposite Kaye and keep from laughing at lines like "Oh, Gaylord!". She should have been rewarded with some kind of reward for that.

By the way; I read on IMDb that Mike Myers is doing a remake of this film, probably finished in 2010. I don't usually like remakes, but if they are done as an homage to the original and with great respect it can be really interesting. And if there is one actor today that can do this role, I definitely think that Mike Myers is the one. I'm curious as heck!

Favorite scene: The dream sequence below. One of them, at least. It's so hard to decide, the whole film is totally hilarious.

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

The Best Years of Our Lives
Director: William Wyler
USA 1946
172 min


The Best Years of Our Lives is a wonderful postwar melodrama about returning war veterans and their difficulties assimilating with their old lives.
The films begins with three men returning home after the end of World War II: Al Stephenson (Fredric March), Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) and Homer Parrish (Harold Russell). It is the lives, love and pain of these three men that is woven together into this masterpiece of a film.

A disabled sailor, an airman and a soldier on their way back to an American small-town life.

Al Stephenson back with his family.

First we have Al Stephenson, an older-than-average soldier, who comes home to his wife Milly (superbly characterized by Myrna Loy, in her first role since before the war), daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright) and son Rob (Michael Hall).
The arrival of the family man is of course met with smiles, tears and embraces, but the home coming soon shows to have difficulties to deal with. Al is astonished when he realizes how much his children have grown up. He has also changed as a man by the war, something his wife Milly notices by his hardness and heavy drinking.
However, Al is soon back at work in an influential banking position, but has difficulties there too when it comes to the civil way of thinking and making decisions.

Peggy calms Fred down after his war nightmares.

Then, there's Fred Derry. He returns to his parent's home, where he also expects to see his wife Marie (Virginia Mayo). He finds out that she nowadays has a job at a night club, and he sets off to see her. When he can't find her he visits a bar, where he meets the celebrating Al Stephenson and family. Fred and Al get awfully drunk, and gets more or less carried home by Milly and Peggy.
Fred, sleeping in Peggy's bed while she occupies the couch, gets traumatic nightmares about the war, and Peggy puts him back to sleep. The morning after they eat breakfast, have a pleasant conversation and starts liking each other. Peggy drives Fred home to his wife.
Marie is delighted to reunite with Fred, but the long parting seems to have damaged their marriage more than they thought. All while Fred tries to keep a job, and continues to fall for Al's daughter Peggy.

Homer taking piano lessons by Butch Engle (Hoagy Carmichael).

The third postwar destiny we get to follow is that of Homer Parrish, who lost his hands in a fire in the war. (The actor Harold Russell lost his hands in the war too, but in a TNT explosion.) His hands are replaced by hooks who he is trained to handle well.
He is however uncertain about the feelings of his fiancée Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell in her first role not being an extra), a paranoia that is worsened by his family's obvious inconvenience with his handicap.

The wedding scene.

This is a film that easily could have felt like a patchwork, since there are three different stories told. But the script is brilliant, and the director William Wyler is too good for words. Having the three leading men characters becoming friends, and getting them to meet each other in regular intervals is a great solution for that problem. That also makes the viewer to emotionally sink even deeper into the destiny's of all the characters.

And the characters! Every single little character in the film is brilliantly cast, but the brightest shining star is (not surprisingly) Myrna Loy as the loyal wife. The scene where she brings breakfast to her husband in bed is wonderful. Her hesitation and insecurity, though she's trying to conceal it, fill the room.

In short: The Best Years of Our Lives gives a revealing and emotional insight in the relations of returning war heroes and their families, and the film could not have been made any better.


Film clip: Original trailer, 1946.