Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Mommie Dearest?


Watching "Mrs. Miniver" today I detected something weird in the way Greer Garson looked at Teresa Wright.
She plays her mother in law and they have a great deal of scenes together talking about how uncertain their men's lives are in WWII, but when the film reaches its dramatic climax I sensed something Alfred Hitchcock would've been proud of.
I don't want to give away the ending to people who haven't seen it, but Garson exuded a total Mrs. Bates aura that was way more creepy than moving.
I dismissed it as me going all Freud on Oscar winning propaganda, but later when I started looking for information about the movie I found out that after filming, Garson married Richard Ney, the actor who played her son in the film and whose character is in love with Teresa Wright's.
Hmmm so maybe I wasn't being that crazy and maybe just maybe Garson and Wright got Oscars for this film because of the uneasy sexual tension that hovers over it as opposed to their delivery of tearjerking dialogues...

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