A middle-class British family, where the husband, the son, and his love interest all have a strong American accent (despite a poor attempt at a British one) is hard to get over.
shareAccording to IMDB bio, Greer Garson was British.
shareTry being an American and watching British, Irish and Australian actors who can't do an American accent resort to some sort of muddled "Southern" accent that makes them sound retarded.
But, somehow I get over it.
And yet the posters also go after the little boy who plays Toby, deriding his accent as "American". Chris Severn may have been BORN in America, but his parents and older siblings were British Immigrants from South Africa. A baby learns speech and accents from what it hears at home, and being no more than six or seven at the time of filming, probably had a distinctive and REAL accent.
"I do hope he won't upset Henry.."
Walter Pidgeon made no attempt whatsoever to modulate his accent. And yet he was nominated for an Oscar. He was a ridiculous actor. He had above average talent but exuded a pompous air (just like Clark Gable) that looks ridiculous and plain campy today. I am glad that they don't make em like him anymore.
share"Walter Pidgeon made no attempt whatsoever to modulate his accent. And yet he was nominated for an Oscar. He was a ridiculous actor. He had above average talent but exuded a pompous air (just like Clark Gable) that looks ridiculous and plain campy today. I am glad that they don't make em like him anymore."
I guess their standards were different back then. Many fight scenes were campy, even in John Ford's greatest films. Punches never looked like they connected, and when the rare sight of blood was shown, it always looked fake. In Westerns, they still got actors like Rock Hudson to play Native Americans (Winchester '73). That would DEFINITELY not work today.
These days, you have to look the part, which is why hair/makeup takes 10x longer than it did before. You HAVE to work out (audiences need to believe the superhero is strong by looking like they can bench press a car), and audiences now expect all actors to make a valiant attempt at an accent - or go home.
I guess you can look at a lot of the older movies as still having one foot in its theater traditions, where not every movie set or accent is as realistic as what we have today. As for Walter Pidgeon, I might have had a different take on his performance than you. I felt he played that father (warmly, playfully) in a more realistic way than other actors. He had believable quirks, but didn't go overboard with them either. The lack of an accent was noticeable, for sure, but I guess the Academy and audience members didn't mind it at the time.
I never found Walter's performance in this film to be impactful (not that he was bad), and have always wondered why he was chosen for this role when there were far better actors (including British actors) who could have done the role. But I agree with you 100% that he was far more restrained and far less schmaltzy in this film than most of his work in other films. For once in his life he was one of the least campy actors in his film. Greer emoted sublimely in this film, but I think we all know that such a performance would be considered to be campy or downright hammy today. Teresa Wright was very sweet, sincere and likable but also very affected.
Like you, I am not one to be too harsh on these actors for (what we perceive today as) their overacting. As you said, movies have always been influenced by trends in theatre, and realism had not yet become popular in American or English theatre at the time.I guess that affected dialogue delivery was an aesthetic that was appreciated at that time, and people were generally more willing to suspend believability. But what still bugs me is how lousy the writing was at that time. Flesh-and-blood characters were rare. The characters of Greer and Teresa in this film (especially Teresa) were living angels who could do or say no wrong. No shades of grey whatsoever. I do appreciate such a film on many levels but also find it insufferable on others. I am so glad we now live in an era in which the humanity of characters is acknowledged.
I think the flesh-and-blood characters would start emerging soon after WWII. That's when film noir, brooding racist John Wayne characters (in The Searchers) and the 1970s started coming around the corner.
But I think Mrs. Miniver, for the year it came out in, accomplished what it set out to do. While the family function more as archetypes, I think it was appropriate, to stir compassion and support for the war effort.
"Teresa Wright was very sweet, sincere and likable but also very affected."
That's a good way to describe her in my opinion. Very likable, but she also has a certain type of screen acting that is very safe. She was in a movie with a young Marlon Brando called The Men, and seeing them next to each other was like seeing actors from two completely different worlds.