Must-watchWorld War II · Film · 1942
Mrs. Miniver
A comfortable middle-class family in an English village near London is drawn into the war as the husband takes his motorboat to Dunkirk and the wife faces an enemy pilot in her own kitchen.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 3 places.
Stop 1: Belham, a fictional village near London
Key location
Kay Miniver's easy life of new hats and flower shows changes as war is declared and her son joins the RAF.
Stop 2: Dunkirk
Clem Miniver joins the flotilla of small boats that sails across the Channel to bring the army home.
Stop 3: Belham under the bombs
Kay finds a wounded German airman in her garden, and the village's flower show goes ahead under the shadow of air raids.
What really happened
Released in June 1942, before the United States had fought in Europe, the film was made to show Americans an England standing alone. It dramatises the Dunkirk evacuation of May and June 1940, when hundreds of civilian boats joined the Navy to bring home about 338,000 troops, and the bombing raids of the summer of 1940.
Belham and the Minivers are fictional, and the film's England is an idealised Hollywood village built in California. Its closing sermon in a bombed church was reprinted and widely circulated as propaganda, and Churchill reportedly said the film had done more for the Allied cause than a fleet of battleships.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- Mrs. Miniver
- Directed by
- William Wyler
- Countries
- United States
- Languages
- English
- Released
- 1942
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Western Europe
- Themes
- Home front
