Each Wednesday, we take a look at great works of art in our Turkey Hollow cultural moment. Recently, we’ve written about timeless films from the past that might have been forgotten by some of our older readers or overlooked by younger readers. This week, we review Mrs. Miniver, an award-winning masterpiece and international phenomenon from 1942.

Starring Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon and directed by William Wyler, the film was the number one box office hit of 1942 and the second biggest box office hit of the decade! It followed only Gone with the Wind in total box office receipts. Ironically, few today know of this film gem.

Mrs. Miniver was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and took home seven of them including Best Picture, Best Actress (Greer Garson) and Best Director.(William Wyler). On the night of the awards, Wyler was flying bombing missions over Germany! Winston Churchill said of the film, "Mrs. Miniver is more important to the war than the combined work of six divisions." Today, it is one of the finest films to emerge from the World War II era, having served to motivate a nation in wartime.

Get out your Kleenex because even the most hardened among us will shed some tears. Valerie J. Nelson in her Amazon.com review says:

"A movie doesn't win seven Oscars for nothing. A glowing Greer Garson (Best Actress) commands the screen as Mrs. Miniver, a middle-class British housewife whose strength holds her family together as World War II literally hits their home. Walter Pidgeon as her architect husband seems to be the prototype for future TV dads in this affecting portrait of love--familial and romantic--during war. But the relationship between Mrs. Miniver's college-age son (Richard Ney) and the upper-crust Carol (Best Supporting Actress Teresa Wright) is filled with inherent drama--as the war speeds up their young love, it also has the potential to doom it. The 1942 film, which also won for Best Picture and Best Director, is filled with colorful characters, snappy dialogue, and sensational plot twists. Although you spend much of the movie dreading that one of the Minivers will become a casualty of war, when it finally happens, it's not what you anticipated. Exactly what you'd expect from a legendary film that lives up to its billing."

The clip below is of the famous Wilcoxon Speech, one of the film’s more moving scenes. Given by actor Henry Wilcoxon, the final speech was later broadcast over Voice of America in Europe and printed on millions of leaflets dropped over German-occupied territory. In part, the speech and the film were credited with mobilizing America to defend its European allies.

Do yourself a favor and rent Mrs. Miniver for an evening remembering a time when distinguishing between good was so much easier. This is one of my all time favorite movies.