15th Academy Awards · 1943
Mrs. Miniver
Directed by William Wyler
“"Mrs. Miniver" is more than a picture... It's dramatic. It's tender. It's human. It's real.”
Tap to rate
The story
Middle-class housewife Kay Miniver deals with petty problems. She and her husband Clem watch her Oxford-educated son Vin court Carol Beldon, the charming granddaughter of the local nobility as represented by Lady Beldon. Then the war comes and Vin joins the RAF.
What critics & audiences say
Tomatometer93%Fresh#38 of 98 winnersIMDb7.622K votes#63 of 98 winners
Metacritic77/ 100#69 of 93 winners
TMDB7.1/ 10
Famous lines
This is the People's War. It is our war. We are the fighters. Fight it then. Fight it with all that is in us and may God defend the Right.
She was a good cook, as good cooks go. And as good cooks go, she went.
Kay Miniver: Did you know that the 12th Lord Beldon was hanged?
Lady Beldon: He was beheaded! Such things happen in the best families. In fact, usually in the best families.
What goes to make a rose, ma'am, is breeding... and budding... and horse-manure, if you'll pardon the expression...
I'm sorry to disturb the harmony of this occasion, but our enemies are no respecters of flower shows.
Lady Beldon: My dear man, I spent the whole afternoon being pushed around by middle-class females buying things they can't possibly afford.
Kay Miniver: Oh dear, that means me.
Lady Beldon: Oh no, much worse!
I think it's lovely having flowers named after you.
I know how comfortable it is to curl up with a nice, fat book full of big words and think you're going to solve all the problems in the universe. But you're not, you know. A bit of action is required every now and then.
Gentlemen don't propose when they're eating.
Quotes via Wikiquote
Fun facts
- After Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war, the scene where Mrs. Miniver confronts a downed German pilot was re-filmed in February 1942 to reflect the nation's tougher mood: in the new version, she slaps him across the face.Wikipedia · Production
- The climactic sermon, written and rewritten by Henry Wilcoxon and William Wyler the night before it was shot, made such an impact that President Roosevelt used it as a morale builder, and part of it became the basis for leaflets dropped over enemy and occupied territory.Wikipedia · Production
- Even Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was impressed, writing that the film's "refined powerful propagandistic tendency has up to now only been dreamed of" despite not a single angry word being spoken against Germany.Wikipedia · Reactions of Nazi propaganda
- President Roosevelt ordered Mrs. Miniver rushed into theaters for propaganda purposes, and the sermon's dialogue was reprinted in Time and Look magazines.Wikipedia · Production
- The film was originally to be shot at MGM's studios in Denham, England, but the difficulties of wartime forced the production to move to Culver City, California.Wikipedia · Production
- Mrs. Miniver earned a profit of $4,831,000 on its initial release, making it MGM's most successful film up to that time, and it was the top box office attraction of 1942 in the United Kingdom.Wikipedia · Box office
- Mrs. Miniver was the first film centered on World War II to win Best Picture, and the first film ever to receive five acting nominations.Wikipedia · Introduction
- Of the 592 critics polled by the magazine Film Daily, 555 named Mrs. Miniver the best film of the year.Wikipedia · Critical response
- A real red hybrid tea rose named "Mrs. Miniver" was introduced in 1944; after one surviving plant was found in Germany in 2015, it was propagated in Exeter and returned to commerce in 2017.Wikipedia · In popular culture
- Not everyone was charmed: critic Manny Farber wrote that the difference between the film's family and their originals in Jan Struther's novel was "the difference between marshmallows and human beings."Wikipedia · Critical response