Mrs. Miniver – 1942
Mrs. Miniver may have been a fantastic film, good enough to take home the Best Picture award for 1942. But while I was watching it, I didn’t quite understand why it was nominated for Best Special Effects. But then I remembered… Back in the early 40s, Best Sound was not yet a category. Sound effects were still being lumped in with the visual effects, and a lot of the film’s WWII action took place off screen, leaving the visuals to the viewers’ imaginations.
You see, the movie was not about the war per se, but about a woman’s strength of character as she cares for her family through the hardships of the war. For example, when Mrs. Miniver’s husband leaves to take part in the evacuation of Dunkirk, we see absolutely none of that battle. Instead, we stay with Mrs. Miniver and see her encounter with the wounded German soldier, a great sequence that didn’t require any special visual effects at all.
Another example is during an air raid, when Mrs. Miniver and her family are inside an above-ground bomb shelter. The entire time, the camera stays inside the shelter with the Minivers, and the audience is treated to the sounds of falling bombs, explosions, and gunfire. The only action we actually see is the walls of the shelter shaking a little, and tins of stockpiled food falling from a shelf. The destruction of the family’s house is never shown. That isn’t to say the storytelling wasn’t effective. It was. It just didn’t require award-worthy special effects, though the matte paintings of the destroyed sections of the house looked pretty real.
However, there were two brief scenes in which some visual effects were needed. The first was the scene in which the boats are gathering to go to Dunkirk. We are shown what appear to be dozens of small boats crowding the river. I believe these shots were composites of several groups of boats shown against some matte paintings. Compared to other contemporary films, this effect was nothing special.
Then there was the scene in which Mrs. Miniver and her daughter-in-law are in a car, caught beneath an aerial battle. All we see of the dogfight is when one of the planes catches fire and crashes in a giant ball of flames. The shot of the burning airplane flying over the roof of the car was pretty cool, but ultimately, it was over in seconds, and not special enough to warrant a Best Special Effects nomination.
So why was this movie nominated for that particular award? I suspect it was a combination of two things. First, the sound effects, upon which a lot of the film’s action was based, stirred the voters’ imaginations, almost like a radio program, which was still a popular medium at the time. After all, what we can’t see is often more intense than what we can. And second, Mrs. Miniver was such a wonderful and popular film that it was nominated for twelve Academy Awards. Academy voters loved it so much, they just nominated it for everything they could think of. Fortunately, it wasn’t one of the movie’s six Oscar wins. I don’t know. Maybe I’m missing something here…