When Mr. Chips climbed up the Austrian mountains and got caught in thick fog which prevented him from climbing down again, he not only found his future wife sitting on a mountain top and waiting like him for the fog to go away. He also found an actress who would soon turn into one of the most popular stars of the next decade and who charmed and fascinated audiences around the world with her undeniable poise and innocence which she smoothly mixed with British elegance and sophistication and turned into a combination of experience, wisdom, mature appeal and lovely youthfulness – and who clearly filled some kind of need for American viewers during the time of World War II which corresponds precisely with the peak of her popularity and her career. Greer Garson specialized in movies that inspired the audience with the strength of her characters in a story that almost always included a fight for a greater good and love, movies without too many edges or complications that presented a wonderful distraction during these hardened times. And Greer Garson added to the overall innocuousness of these pictures with her inoffensive and charming screen presence that seemed to know no faults and she could be lovely without appearing flat and wise without appearing arrogant and found a sometimes maybe uneven but still engaging balance of a unique and distinctive style and a harmless and appealing everyday personality. Greer Garson had basically perfected this acting style from her first moment on the screen and even if she maybe did not truly develop in any way as an actress or tried to move her talents into a more challenging direction she still always brought her characters to life with charm, grace, humor and dramatic intensity – her characters may often have been one-dimensional and undeveloped but her acting always added a refreshing spark and aliveness which helped to make her performances much more engaging than they might have been otherwise. And her star power during the first half of the 1940s clearly indicates that her charm and loveliness was more than enough for movie audiences and even turned rather underwhelming pictures like Mrs. Parkington or Madame Curie into commercial successes. But by focusing on pictures that would make her performances their sole reasons d’être, Greer Garson unfortunately also tended to contradict one her strongest assets – her ability to be part of a team and to benefit from a movie that offers more aspects than her central performance. Never in her career would she ever be again as charming as she had been in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, a movie that never depended on her character and with Robert Donat offered her the strongest screen-partner of her career. And she was a formidable addition to Laurence Olivier in Pride and Prejudice, a movie that integrated Greer Garson into its universe instead of putting her at its center and enabled her to give one of her most praised and remembered performances besides Mrs. Miniver. But as Greer Garson’s popularity began to increase she also began to focus more strongly on movies that could be considered typical ‘star vehicles’ in which she would be the central and most of the time only noteworthy aspect, surrounded by a lacking script and a usually pale supporting cast. But throughout her career, the quality of Greer Garson’s performances mostly corresponded with the quality of her characters – of course she was able to deliver appealing work with substandard scripts, too, but her performances were always most worthwhile if they were given in a context that didn’t try to rest on them but support them instead. Like co-nominee and co-star Teresa Wright, Greer Garson possessed natural instincts for the screen which allowed these two actresses to fill their parts with spark and personality but they also depended on the support of the script to clearly establish their characters for them and fit them to their personality while also adding depth and an inner life that both actresses often were not able to add themselves, putting their own focus on the outer life of their character instead of their internal development. Greer Garson was a warm and engaging personality on the screen but she was also an actress who was in constant danger of repeating herself over and over, in both her acting and the kind of characters she played. Of course, Greer Garson clearly struck a chord with audiences, critics and Academy members – all of whom loved to see her ‘one woman shows’ but compared to contemporaries like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck or Katharine Hepburn, Greer Garson was rarely able to lift her material to a higher level and be noteworthy for the honesty and depth of her characters instead of their constant goodness. And because she usually offered hardly any surprise in her performances, Greer Garson faced her biggest problems whenever she did what she loved to do the most – carry a picture on her shoulders. She pleased audiences with her frequent collaboration with Walter Pidgeon but they never achieved the same kind of effortless chemistry as so many other famous on-screen pairs like Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy or William Powell and Myrna Loy and Walter Pidgeon never seemed to have any interest in crafting memorable characters and was always more than willing to be just another aspect of a movie designed to only showcase its leading lady. But Greer Garson mostly excelled in an environment that was able and willing to rise with her and who also needed more than a central character to truly shine, most notably a well-written script and a supporting cast that would take some of the pressure from her shoulders and allowed the movie to re-focus its attention from time to time, letting the audience breath and Greer Garson find a chance to focus more strongly on the details and peculiarities of her own character instead of trying to inhabit the whole movie with her performance, therefore reducing the danger of repetitiveness. Unfortunately, Greer Garson too seldom chose this way for her career, enjoying her position as the central aspect of most of her movies, unchallenged by co-stars, writing or directing – but 1942 proved to be an exception to this rule when Greer Garson starred in two popular and critically acclaimed movies with co-stars who were all as dedicated to the success of the picture as she herself. She worked opposite an Oscar-nominated Ronald Colman in the romantic drama Random Harvest and opposite a whole cast of Oscar-nominated performers in the Best Picture winner Mrs. Miniver in which even Walter Pidgeon appeared much more alive and unconventional than usual. In Mrs. Miniver, Greer Garson found herself as part of the team instead of its unquestioned leader – which overall resulted in a performance that deservedly stands as the signature work of her career because it gave her the chance to display all the qualities that made her both an appealing personality even if the limits of her talents may have still been visibly during certain moments.
Maybe it seems contradicting that Mrs. Miniver is one of the few films that didn’t completely rest on Greer Garson but that it is still named after her character. But even if Greer Garson is surrounded by a strong ensemble, the script still turns her into the one aspect of the movie that pulls everything together. Mr. Ballard names his rose after her, Carol comes to her and meets Vin for the first time, Lady Beldon talks to her about their marriage, she is the one who listens to the planes in the air, hoping for her son to come back, she is the one who maybe stays at home while her husband goes to Dunkirk but she has to fight a German soldier in her own kitchen, she is the one who witnesses the death of others but she also remains the supportive wife and mother who gives comfort and advice to those around her. So Greer Garson may not be one to carry the picture on her shoulders alone but she is still presented as its center, the one character that is floating above all the proceedings, symbolizing the need for help and the courage more than anyone else – like the captain of a ship, she is the one responsible for the success of the journey, overviewing the proceedings without fulfilling all deeds herself. And Greer Garson was able to lead the cast while remaining a part of it, dominating the picture without suffocating it and her work effectively corresponded with the tone and style of Mrs. Miniver, making her character the one who is constantly affected the most by the happenings around her but who also helps to support this style and tone. Right from her first moments on the screen, her ability to portray women who are loving, kind and gentle sets the tone for the story to follow even if the subplot of a too expensive hat rather contradicts many intentions of Mrs. Miniver. Greer Garson is able to create a familiar character in her feeling of guilt over spending too much money and wondering how she will tell this news to her husband but this goal to establish the Minivers as an average English family fails very soon as it not only wants to portray them as average but also as role-models whose virtues and courage would even inspire the last row of the movie theatre. But because symbolizing those virtues is a full-time job, the Minivers soon begin to lose their averageness when their maid takes care of their house, a new car is bought or their son comes back from the university. The script also wants to portray the innocence of the British people by focusing on the Miniver’s daily life and worries but denying them every thought about the political situation around them again lets them appear too constructed and bended for the sake of the movie’s overall message. The character of Kay Miniver is also not helped by the writing when it lets her list those things that she likes but are too expensive like ‘hats or good schools for the children’, letting her appear strangely ignorant without exploring it any further. These contradictions also influence Greer Garson’s work in various aspects – the script does help her by showing her exactly what to do and how to express her emotions at different times but while it knows what Kay Miniver has to do it has a much less clear vision of who it wants her to be. Kay Miniver is supposed to represent the average British housewife who lives up to the demands of war time but simultaneously the movie also too often puts her on a pedestal of moral superiority, emphasizing her almost saint-like perfectness in a way that’s supposed to turn her into an admirable role-model but sometimes distances Kay Miniver too far from this goal. Greer Garson’s own performance is caught somewhere between this – she possessed certain qualities that made her characters very approachable and believable but her acting style and stylized personality also contradicted her own earthiness very often and made her characters too noble and respectable for their own good. So, the script and Greer Garson herself established Kay Miniver somewhere between this averageness and role-model function, sadly letting her lose some of her credibility on the way. Still, the part of Kay fit Greer Garson like a glove – precisely because this sometimes unbalanced combination came to her so easily and even if it contradicted the purpose of this character and various others she played during her career, she still handled those aspects of her work with engaging precision and made them barely noticeable in the context of her movies, including Mrs. Miniver. Most of all, her charm and grace helped her to become the woman who is worth fighting for – she turns herself into a symbol of both courage and need for help, a woman who fights her own fights but who would also encourage the men around her to go out and protect her virtues. When her son comes home and sees his mother and his fiancée waiting for him, he makes it clear very quickly which woman is his number one.
But even if Greer Garson was able to mostly handle Kay Miniver’s two different aspects, the truth remains that even the signature part of her career was not one that enabled Greer Garson to overcome all of her weaknesses on the screen. The script clearly guided her which but it also left room for some of her melodramatic and affected acting choices which range from sitting in her bed as if she is posing for a painting to delivering certain lines and words with clear exaggeration of dramatic intention. Most of all this shows that even if the part of Mrs. Miniver was fitting Greer Garson like a glove she was still an actress with surprisingly visible limits, especially for an actress who received seven Oscar nominations during her career as she seldom tried to truly inhabit the inner life of her characters. She played her parts with confident and competence but offered little variations and most of all weakened her overall effect with the aforementioned artificiality in her acting. But beyond that the character of Kay Miniver is not only a product of contradicting intentions but also a presentation of deliberate limitation. The movie may be named after her but it is Mrs. Miniver instead of 'Kay Miniver', underlining that the character is never defined by herself, never allowed to develop her own point of view and always created in relation to others around her. And so the final result is a performance that is as contradicting as everything that went into it – Greer Garson suffers from the writing but also benefits from it like rarely again in her career, there are limits in her character and in her acting but she still handled all variations of her character successfully. Mostly because Mrs. Miniver is a movie that offered Greer Garson dramatic moments without forcing her out of her comfort zone and also opportunities to be lively and even humorous without appearing too misplaced. She can be disarmingly honest in her conversations with Lady Ballham and a little manipulative at the same time, she reacts to the fact that a rose will be named after her with the kind of charming delight that anyone would express at this moment and she knows how to both support her husband and take the lead whenever it is necessary. It is mostly the last aspect of her work that Greer Garson handles with beautiful conviction – she never steps out of her role as the wife and mother, the woman who prefers to stay in the background, but she still plays a much more crucial part in holding the family together even if she remains a rather passive character. Kay Miniver seldom takes a more active approach to the storyline, things instead happen to her – the German soldier in her kitchen, war, her part in the rose contest, all these things come to her and demand her response. But in this passivity she is still a much stronger force than Mrs. Miniver’s other main female character, Teresa Wright’s Carol, who might actually be a bit more active but still never suggests at the same inner strength like Greer Garson does. Most of all, Greer Garson uses this strength to portray how her husband and her children are the foundation of her life and her face wonderfully displays her constant worries that this war might take this foundation away from her. And it’s nice to see that despite that propagandistic nature of Mrs. Miniver, Greer Garson never portrays Kay as a woman who busts with pride as she watches her eldest son go and fight the Nazis – instead, Greer Garson lets Kay react like any mother would, with constant worries and fear for his life. She lets Kay appear completely helpless when she looks at her husband after her son told them that he is already finished with his training and when he says ‘Soon I will be able to do…whatever it is they want me to.’, Greer Garson brilliantly delivers the simple word ‘Fighting.’, for once forgetting every tendency for melodrama and letting herself go in the context of the scene, believably showing a mother who knows that she can’t control her son’s life and that he must make his own decisions even if she doesn’t agree with them. All these worries for her children provide some of Greer Garson’s most memorable moments on the screen – she is able to reflect that her fear during a German air raid is always a fear for the life of her children and when she hears some planes above her house and hopes that her son will be among the pilots, she displays a whole array of emotions from fear, hope and uncertainty to nervousness and anticipation. She may feel a little bit lost during her scene with the German soldier, unable to combine her usual dignity with the fear and apprehensions that Kay is experiencing in this moment but she improves vastly once Kay is in control of the situation, displaying an unforgettable look of disgust and horror on her face after she slapped him and she again finds a chance to deliver a single line brilliantly when she sends a doctor away with a quick ‘Thank you’, trying to control her calm appearance but feeling the urge to be alone as quickly as possible. Greer Garson also beautifully controlled her performance, avoiding any loud dramatic intensities and she is absolutely heartbreaking in her final moments with Teresa Wright, restraining her acting to let the drama of the situation speak for itself. Unfortunately there are moments in which Greer Garson also appeared too controlled, not able to truly let go and work more with her instincts instead of her head, failing to bring the needed emotional intensity, too, especially in her scene when she learns that her daughter-in-law had been hit by a bullet, a bit of news she registers with a bored and vague ‘Oh no, darling…where?’. But these moments are thankfully rare and Greer Garson nicely balances the dramatic moments of her performance with a lighter touch whenever it is appropriate. She can be both proud and embarrassed of her son when he talks about poor and rich people, she can watch the romance between him and Carol blossom with motherly delight and she can intriguingly tease her husband when she tells him that a rose was named after her. Her scene with the German soldier also paved the way for one her most enjoyable and relaxed moments on the screen, when she tells her husband about the whole situation in a very nonchalant, playful and even sexy way – this single moment also shows that Walter Pidgeon and Greer Garson have never been better together than in Mrs. Miniver because this was the only time they truly appeared to be a team of equals. Blossoms in the Dust had Walter Pidgeon leave too early and didn’t find any balance in their relationship, Madame Curie had him too timid and shy while he was bursting with unbearable arrogant and ignorance in Mrs. Parkington. But in Mrs. Miniver they are a true couple from beginning to end, showing their love but also a strong friendship for one another that serve as the movie’s most steady foundation.
Overall, Greer Garson played her role like she almost always did, by following the guidelines of her character without adding any depth herself but the structure of the script was enough for her to shine in a part that highlighted all of her strengths and allowed her to deliver some memorable and moving moments but also to become a strong symbol of maternal love, marital support and determined volition. Her performance is filled with the right amount of charm and seriousness, showing how Kay Miniver adjusts herself to the tasks she was given without losing the core of her identity, making the part not only tailor-made for her but also allowing her to embrace this portrayal of womanhood without scarifying the integrity of the character for the sake of sentimentality. Thankfully, Greer Garson never tried to steal or dominate the movie and instead flowed along with the story, holding back whenever the focus shifted, making her more real and three-dimensional than she might have been otherwise. It’s not a perfect performance in any way – for this, both Greer Garson’s acting and the quality of the writing lack the necessary substance but it’s a strong and thought-through portrayal that manages to impress despite its limitations.
Title: Best Actress 1942: Greer Garson in "Mrs. Miniver"
Rating: 100% based on 99998 ratings. 5 user reviews.
6:39 AM
Rating: 100% based on 99998 ratings. 5 user reviews.
6:39 AM
