Day 22: Mrs. Miniver

Mrs. Miniver: 1942: Winner of the15th Academy Award

Starring:

Greer Garson as Mrs. Kay Miniver

Walter Pidgeon as Clem Miniver

Teresa Wright as Carol Beldon

Dame May Whitty as Lady Beldon

Reginald Owen as Foley

Henry Travers as James Ballard

Richard Ney as Vin Miniver

Henry Wilcoxon as Vicar

Christopher Severn as Toby Miniver

Brenda Forbes as Gladys - Housemaid

Clare Sandars as Judy Miniver

Marie De Becker as Ada - Cook

Helmut Dantine as German Flyer

John Abbott as Fred

I liked this movie, it was about a wonderful, super nice, super British lady named Mrs. Miniver. She was a symbol of everlasting hope and dream for the country she was in because she was kind and was the way a woman should be. Even under the pressures of war. Well she gave her husband and her son up for the war, let them be the soldiers God intended them to be. In the end the truth is that like the pastor said, the truth is that no one suffers like the innocent casualties of war, they are the true victims, women children and the old who are defenseless.. did you get bored yet? I did, it was pretty much how the movie went down, I understand why it won an award, because people got to talk like that, but it was tedious, and slow and I hated that .. had to die. It wasn't fair! It wasn't fair I tell you. But props to Greer Garson, she was soo on the spot. And I love the banter but cute lovey dovey banter between Mr.and Mrs. Miniver. It is one of those must watch once, but lets keep it to just once, shall we. 

It also won awards for;

Best Director: William Wyler

Best Actress: Greer Garson

Best Writing, Screenplay: George Froeschel, James Hilton, Claudine West, Arthur Wimperis

Best Supporting Actress Teresa Wright

Best Cinematography, Black-and-White Won Joseph Ruttenberg

Day 21: All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front: 1929: Winner of the 3rd Academy Award.

Starring 

Richard Alexander as Westhus

Ben Alexander as Franz Kemmerich

Lew Ayres as Paul Bäumer

William Bakewell as Albert Kropp

Edmund Breese as Herr Meyer

G. Pat Collins as Lieutenant Bertinck

Owen Davis, Jr. as Peter

Russell Gleason as Müller

Harold Goodwin as Detering

Scott Kolk as Leer

Arnold Lucy as Professor Kantorek

Beryl Mercer as Mrs. Bäumer, Paul's mother

Walter E. Rogers as Behn

Slim Summerville as Tjaden

Louis Wolheim as Stanislaus Katczinsky

This movie was brilliant. It was the war movie made for me. I know that sounds stupid but I loved it. It neither glorified nor bashed the idea of war. It put it in plain terms. You fight you die, for your country and for those who run it. That’s it. For a group of young brash German boys, the war could mean anything, what they never thought it to mean was death. Not death from a bullet, but of starvation, indecent sanitation, cold and insanity. The main character of the story paul is a brash young man who is fallen in with a war veteran named Kat. He befriends him while they watch their friends die in the trenches. Paul is witness to the many ways soldiers dies in war. Mostly by watching his friends as they slowly diminish in numbers. He himself is taken to the hospital when he is struck by a bomb with hihs friend. There in the hospital you see the soldiers who are dying and who are taken to places to die because after awhile fighting proves futile. Paul is relieved to go on break after he gets better and there he finds everything almost the same as when he left. He goes to visit his old school master and is asked to give a speech about war, where he delivers the famous line of the movie. He is heart broken by the war and he realizes that he can't just come back to normalcy, he too has gone off the looney bin in more than one way. He decides to go back. He is reunited with Kat and they are to go get some wood and Kat is killed by enemy fire. But Paul brings him to the surgeon nonetheless to try to fix him but is only devastated. The last scene is of Paul in the trenches and a butterfly. This movie was awesome and sad. It was beautiful and tragic, it was the realness which made it that much more believable. I don't think I could watch it everyday but I definitely love everything about it.

It also won awards for:

Best Director Lewis Milestone