Posted by
SDS on Sunday, November 19, 2006 7:09:34 PM
I happened to fall asleep with the TV on Turners Classic Movies only to wake up early in the morning to the music of the Christian Hymn, O God Our Help in Ages Past. I checked out the movie on the tube and it was Mrs. Miniver. I had never watched it all the way through so I stayed awake. At the end, deeply moved and knowing why some people think this may be the best movie ever made, I thought, a movie like this could not be made in the Hollywood of today. The director, William Wyler, the head of the studio, Lois B. Mayer were Jewish, but this film about a middle-class English family in World War II, made in 1942 and starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, ends with a view of a cross being formed in the clouds, viewed through the bombed out roof of an Anglican church while the congregation sings Onward Christian Soldiers. By the end of the movie I was so moved by the message of the movie that I found myself singing along, much to the consternation of my cat who is not used to that behavior from me.
Before that ending, t
he rector delivers a homily which was printed up and distributed widely throughout the free world. Both Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill credit this film with doing more for the war effort than a flotilla of battleships.
Leftwing film critics hate this movie because it provides a positive view of those who soldiered on, who kept on going when the days were darkest, who believed in freedom at the risk of their lives. Whatever the detractors have to say about the movie, one fact is clear-- the brits did send a huge flotilla of ordinary people in their ordinary boats at the risk of their lives to rescue the soldiers at Dunkirk. That rosifcation, maybe wasn't so much. It really did happen. And the soldiering on -- that really did happen too. It is because there are so may sad demented people in Hollywood
whose hostility toward what is good and right is so strong that they hate a movie that truthfully presents the extraordinary heroism of ordinary people, that no really good movies about the Iraq war can be made and precious few about any other war.
In the meantime, buy a copy of Mrs. Miniver and watch it yourself and give it to a friend.