Best Actor 1942: Walter Pidgeon in Mrs. Miniver

Walter Pidgeon received his first Oscar nomination for portraying Clem Miniver in Mrs. Miniver.

Mrs. Miniver tells of a family in London who must deal with the realities of World War II.

Walter Pidgeon only ever received two Oscar nominations and both were for portraying the husband of Greer Garson's titular character. The second film it could have possibly been called the Curies, instead of Madame Curie, but there is most certainly a reason why this film is called Mrs. Miniver rather than the Minivers, or Mr. Miniver.

Mr. Miniver here is just not the focus of the film by any means, it is distinctly focused on Mrs. Miniver, there are large stretches that completely avoid Mr. Miniver such as when he goes to help in the Dunkirk evacuation, you see basically nothing of what he does, because it stays home with Mrs. Miniver, and away from Clem. Due to this reason Walter Pidgeon is given very, very little to do in the film, almost all of the big emotional moments of the film, are either away from him, or he is very much in the background of the scene. The film never really gives him much focus unless he is interacting with his wife, therefore the main matter really is how is his chemistry with Garson.

Well their chemistry together is fine I guess, it is far from any sort of movie magic that is for sure, it is even far from a good paring that one would really want to see again and again. They really are just fine together. I believed them as husband, and wife, well enough, and they were good enough, but there is not a single scene together that I would really say constitutes anything special. After his chemistry there is very little to say about Pidgeon performance, besides he plays a nice enough father and husband. He is there, his reactions, the little there is of them, are fine enough I guess, he never is ever bad in the role, but nor is there anytime where I say now that is a great performance, or even now that is a good performance. It is a performance though that is suitable to the role, I suppose he could have made himself stand out more, but that really was not the point of the part or the film.