William Wyler (33 page)

Wyler fought with Mayer over the part of Carol Beldon. Mayer wanted to use one of the young actresses on the lot, but the director insisted on Teresa Wright, whom he had introduced in
The Little Foxes
. Wyler told Hedda Hopper that “Teresa has the quality for this particular part,” and he promised MGM, “If you give me Teresa, I'll take any young man you've got on the lot for the juvenile.”
¹⁹
He chose Richard Ney from the studio's cadre of youthful actors to play Vin Miniver, and Wright went on to win an Oscar for her acting in the film.

Mrs. Miniver
offers the most idealized portrait of marriage presented by Wyler since he started working for Goldwyn in 1936. The first part of the film is closer to the idyllic, fairy-tale world of
The Good Fairy
and
The Gay Deception
than to anything Wyler directed after 1935, but it turns dark in the second half, which is dominated by destruction and death.
Mrs. Miniver
also feels more insistently claustrophobic and looks darker than those earlier works, as Wyler utilizes more nighttime settings.

The first part of the film presents a stylized portrait of a picture-postcard English town where neighbors live in harmony, and the Minivers are a portrait of domestic bliss. Early on, there are discreet references to the war in Europe, but this looming danger does little to upset the daily life of Belham. Clem Miniver is a prosperous architect, and his devoted wife, Kay, is the adoring mother of Vin, a student at Oxford, and two younger children. The opening of the film shows Mrs. Miniver shopping for a hat and feeling guilty about her extravagance, only to learn later that her husband bought a new car that same day. While returning home from the city with her purchase, she encounters the vicar, who has just indulged his own passion by buying a box of cigars. On the train, they are joined by Lady Beldon, Belham's dominant figure, who complains about the crowds and laments that, these days, “Everyone is trying to be better than their betters…. No wonder Germany is arming.” Her remark is funny, but it sounds an ominous note.

The centerpiece of the film is the annual flower show. Mr. Ballard (Henry Travers), the stationmaster, has the audacity to enter his rose against Lady Beldon's, which wins every year. Early in the film, when Mrs. Miniver returns from her shopping trip, Ballard persuades her to come see his rose, which is on display in his office. He shyly asks if he can name the rose for her, because “you've always had time to stop and have a word with me—and I always waited for you to come home, and you remind me of the flower.” The flower-show competition represents the British class system, whose strictures seem to be cheerfully accepted in the film but whose disintegration Wyler clearly endorses. Lady Beldon's eventual gracious acceptance of the superiority of Ballard's rose, in effect, Americanizes her, as it symbolizes the recognition that class structure is a thing of the past. By that time, she has also accepted Vin Miniver as a suitable fiancé for her granddaughter, Carol. Indeed, this section of the film has all the elements of a story by Wyler's friend Frank Capra.

The centrality of the rose as an emblem of England itself is also supported by Ballard's retort to a friend, who claims that if war comes, there will be no flower show. The stationmaster replies, “You might as well say good-bye to England. There will always be roses.” Wyler has shown his penchant for evocative natural images before (in
These Three, Come and Get It
, and
The Little Foxes)
, and he will later utilize this motif most effectively in
Friendly Persuasion
, a pacifist film made after the war. Here, the rose serves as a symbol not only of England but also of a world that will be effectively destroyed by the war. Despite the fairy-tale images and Wyler's pro-war sentiments, the film contains hints of his characteristic doubts about the world's direction after the war. This sense of foreboding would be confirmed by the dark tone of many of his postwar films and the elegiac tone (first seen here) of others, such as
Friendly Persuasion, The Big Country
, and
Funny Girl
.

Wyler's careful manipulation of this symbolism is evident in the scene in which Ballard invites Mrs. Miniver to look at his rose. They walk into his office, where the rose stands in a vase on a ledge with a mirror behind it. Wyler employs his characteristic frame-within-a-frame composition, momentarily focusing on Ballard's reflection in the mirror as he walks toward the rose. The stationmaster then signals Mrs. Miniver to approach the rose. She gazes at it with admiration, pronouncing it the loveliest rose she has ever seen. Then, as she moves forward to smell it, Wyler catches Ballard in the mirror again and—in a typically suggestive composition—shows Mrs. Miniver smelling the rose while she seems to be staring at Ballard's face in the mirror. Ballard will win the rose competition, but a short time later, he will be killed in the Blitz. Wyler thus embodies both the ideal of rural England and its imminent destruction in one shot. On viewing the film a second time, one cannot help but see both Ballard's triumph and his death in that single image.

Wyler makes a similar visual point shortly thereafter. In the bell tower, Ballard and his friend are ringing the bells as they engage in a dialogue about the potential wartime cancellation of the flower show. After Ballard retorts, “There will always be roses,” Wyler cuts to a sarcophagus in the church before showing the parishioners streaming in for the Sunday service. This cut offers another indication that although the war will not destroy the spirit of the English, it will demolish their way of life. The death image is then repeated during the service. Wyler first shows the Minivers lined up in their pew and then cuts to the Beldons, with Lady Beldon closest to the camera and Carol to her left, lined up with another sarcophagus in an alcove beside her. Moments later, the vicar informs the congregation that the prime minister has just announced that the country is at war. During his remarks, Wyler cuts twice to the Beldon pew and includes the sarcophagus in the composition; the second time, in a more extended shot, it actually dominates the frame, almost dwarfing the women. In the forefront of the frame, the Beldon name, on a gold plate attached to the door of their pew, is lined up with the top of the figure on the sarcophagus, whose hands are held in a gesture of prayer. Again, the cut and the framing foretell the end of a class structure, as well as the death of Carol Beldon.

The most effective sequence of the second part of the film shows the Minivers in an air-raid shelter as the Germans bomb their town. The narrative strategy of the entire film forces the audience to experience this episode through the Minivers' point of view, and Wyler's tight framing and use of low angles magnify the claustrophobic feel, practically imprisoning both the characters and the audience in the frame as they hear but do not see the destruction taking place outside. The scene becomes a bit heavy-handed when Mrs. Miniver reads a passage from
Alice in Wonderland
during the bombing, but Wyler recovers his artistic balance when the door of the shelter bursts open and the smoke from the bombs permeates the door frame behind the huddled family.
²⁰

This scene is followed by a sequence in which the Minivers greet Vin at the train station. This time, instead of returning home from college, he is returning from his honeymoon with Carol. Upon the couple's arrival, we see the destruction caused by the bombing—much of the Miniver home has been destroyed. This scene is followed by the flower show, where Lady Beldon demonstrates her democratic spirit by overturning the judge's decision and awarding first prize to Mr. Ballard. This sequence is the emotional high point of the film and, in all likelihood, is the precursor to the county fair scene in
Friendly Persuasion
, where another idyllic communal event is overshadowed by the outbreak of war. Characteristically, Wyler follows this scene with the death of Carol Beldon.

Carol's death comes as she is driving back to the Miniver house with Kay after the flower show. During the drive, which takes place at night, Wyler films the two women as if they are trapped in the car; the tight construction recalls the air-raid shelter scene, although this time, both women can see the destruction through the car window. They watch as a downed airplane bursts into flames and fear it might be Vin's. During the aerial battle, Carol is hit by a stray bullet from a plane and dies shortly after reaching the Miniver house. Wyler memorializes Carol's death by cutting from a shot of Kay holding Carol's body and sobbing to a shot of an empty staircase—an iconic image in Wyler's work and the setting for numerous moments of emotion and conflict. Although the staircase motif does not figure prominently in this film, it is the scene of one of its most joyous moments when Vin, home on leave, bounds up the stairs and stands grinning between his mother and his new bride. Now, however, it is bare and desolate. Only the clock that Clem is always adjusting bears witness to the tragedy—its time now literally “out of joint.”

The final scene takes place in the church, which, like the Miniver home, has been partially destroyed in the bombing. The vicar eulogizes those villagers whose lives were lost, including Mr. Ballard and Carol Beldon. He then turns to the congregation. In the final draft of the script, his speech is brief: “The homes of many of us have been destroyed, the lives of young and old have been taken, yet we gather here, those of us who have been spared, to worship God as our ancestors for a thousand years have worshipped him under this roof…a damaged roof, but one through which the sun now shines as it never did before.”
²¹
He then reads Psalm 91, and the congregation rises to sing a hymn, “Our God Our Help in Ages Past,” as the film ends. Wyler, however, was dissatisfied with the speech and with Henry Wilcoxon's portrayal of the vicar, so he rewrote the speech to make it more rousing and patriotic. In the film version, the vicar tells his congregation to take the devastation of the Blitz as a test of their national will. The new speech goes in part:

Surely you must have asked yourselves this question. Why, in all conscience, should these be the ones to suffer? Children, old people, a young girl at the height of her loveliness? Why these? Are these our soldiers? Are these our fighters? Why should they be sacrificed?…

Because this is not only a war of soldiers in uniform, it is a war of the people—of all the people—and it must be fought, not only on the battlefield, but in the cities and in the villages, in the factories and on the farms, in the home and in the heart of every man, woman and child who loves freedom!…

Fight it, then! Fight it with all that is in us! And may God defend the right.

Churchill was so taken with the film that he described it as “propaganda worth a hundred battleships.”
²²
After a private screening at the White House, Roosevelt ordered MGM to release it across the country immediately. The president was so impressed with the vicar's speech that he asked to have it broadcast over the Voice of America in Europe, translated into several languages, and air-dropped as leaflets over German-occupied territory.
²³
It was also reprinted in numerous publications, including
Time
and
Look
.

Mrs. Miniver
was Wyler's greatest financial success. It became not only the top-grossing film of 1942 but also one of the biggest moneymakers in ten years—second only to
Gone with the Wind
. The film won six Oscars, including Best Director for Wyler. It was his first win in four nominations since 1936. When his name was announced, however, Wyler was already overseas, serving his country (like Vin Miniver) in the U.S. Air Force. His wife, Talli, accepted the Oscar for him.

Wyler did not finish
Mrs. Miniver
until February, and he was already anxious to join the war effort. In December 1941, he had applied for a temporary appointment to the U.S. Army and assignment to the Signal Corps, but he learned in March 1942 that “there is no vacancy at present in the Signal Corps to which you could be assigned if appointed.”
²⁴
He was confused and frustrated by this news, as a number of his colleagues, including John Ford, Frank Capra, and Darryl Zanuck, had already received military commissions. Wyler then appealed to Lieutenant Colonel Richard Schlosberg, head of the army's Photographic Division, who had recruited him some months earlier. Wyler told Schlosberg that he would be flying to Washington with Zanuck, who had received a lieutenant colonel's commission and was assigned to supervise training films. What Wyler did not know was that Schlosberg disliked Hollywood types in general and had no use for Zanuck in particular. Frank Capra had also been trying to secure a commission for Wyler and had recently received a major's commission himself. Schlosberg transferred Capra out of the Photographic Division and assigned him to Special Services, where he would supervise films designed to boost military morale. In his autobiography, Capra wrote that Schlosberg told him, “One Darryl Zanuck around here is enough.”
²⁵

The delays were grating on Wyler. A possible solution presented itself through Samuel Goldwyn, who received a message from Roosevelt that America needed a film about Russia, which was being threatened that winter by Hitler's army. In her memoir
An Unfinished Woman
, Lillian Hellman wrote, “The Russian news was very bad that winter of 1942, but all of America was moved and bewildered by the courage of a people who had been presented to two generations of Americans as passive slaves.”
²⁶
Goldwyn wired Mellett at the OWI to say that he would produce a documentary about the Russian people and release it commercially. Wyler and Hellman were asked to prepare a film, and both were excited about the project. They both went to Washington, along with cinematographer Gregg Toland, to meet with the Soviet ambassador, Maxim Litinov, who told them that making such a film would be impossible without the cooperation of the Russian government, which, given the current situation, was unlikely. The next day, however, Foreign Secretary Vyacheslav Molotov approved the idea. Hellman and Wyler returned to New York the next day and met Goldwyn at the Waldorf Towers. The producer agreed that Wyler and Hellman should travel to Russia to see what sites could be photographed. It was also made clear that many of the resources needed to make the film—planes, cameras, crew—would be supplied by the Russians. Hellman described the meeting as “pleasant,” recalling that “the three of us were, for a change, in complete accord on all details.”
²⁷