Every once in a while there comes a movie which everyone sees and praises to the sky, and such a movie is "Mrs. Miniver." It is the story of an upper middle class English family transformed from the security of the peaceful country town to the most harrowing experiences that total war can bring. Yet it is more than this; it is the symbol of the suffering that every family exposed to be brutality of Nazi bombing has had to go through. In its simplicity and restraint, it is one of the most successful portrayals of human nature that has ever come out of Hollywood.

Walter Pidgeon, an architect, uses his pleasure yacht to rescue soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk, while his wife, Greer Garson, whose worries heretofore consisted in choosing her latest fall hat, is accosted by a wounded Nazi pilot in her own backyard. Her natural reactions to this terrifying experience are not sacrificed in an artificial attempt to be melodramatic. With thoughts of her husbank under the rain of Nazi pilot in her own backyard. Her natural reactions to this terrifying experience are not sacrificed in an artificial attempt to be melodramatic. With thoughts of her husband under the rain of Nazi bombs, she could have been made to assume superhuman qualities by overcoming her armed adversary; rather, she acted as any woman would have--scared to death herself, thinking of her sleeping children upstairs.

Richard Ney, their Oxford son, preoccupied with the social woes of the world, is jolted into the world of reality--piloting an RAF Spitfire, and falling passionately in love with a scioness of English aristocracy which he had so recently damned.

There can be nothing but praise for the directors of this picture. When human tragedy and the profound transformation of total war which is wrought upon an entire nation can be interpreted so accurately and humanly as in "Mrs. Miniver," moviedom can well afford to pat itself on the back.