THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES Movie Review

1946 William Wyler

William Wyler's story of returning veterans is the most critically acclaimed film of the post-war years. Because it has been so popular with audiences, few people realize how unusual it is. For mainstream entertainment, it's a drama with few conventional confrontations or resolutions. The characters are faced with difficult situations and they resolve them realistically. Physical action is limited to one punch. (It's a good one, but it's completely out of step with the rest of the story.) All of that dubious material is developed at a leisurely pace, and it's told in a visual style that borders on the experimental. In short, The Best Years of Our Lives should never have been made. But it is one of those rare Hollywood films that captures the moment and expresses what large numbers of people were thinking and feeling at the time of its release. In this case, it is a country trying to decide what to do with victory and with itself.

Three returning servicemen meet in a B-17 being used for military transport on the way to Boone City, somewhere in the Midwest. Al Stephenson (Frederic March) was a sergeant with the Army in the Pacific. Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) served aboard a carrier until he lost his hands when the ship was attacked. Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) was the captain of a bomber in Europe. Each is unsure about what he's going find at home. Homer's engaged, but his fiancee Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell) has never seen the hooks he wears. Fred married Marie (Virginia Mayo) after a quickie wartime romance. She's still really a stranger to him. Al and his wife Millie (Myrna Loy) are an old married couple, but he hardly knows his kids.

Beyond the re-establishment of their personal lives, the men aren't certain about what they want to do with themselves. The sergeant was a successful banker before the war; the pilot was a soda jerk. Neither is too crazy about returning to his old job. They congregate at Butch's (Hoagy Carmichael) tavern. It takes Wyler and writers MacKinlay Kantor and Robert Sherwood almost three hours to figure out what happens to them. In cinematic terms, this is an epic film about ordinary people, but unlike most epics, it loses nothing on home video.

The film was made in 1946, before the various widescreen processes came into vogue. The dimensions of Wyler's image match today's video screens without letterboxing. That is particularly important here because Wyler and cinematographer Gregg Toland work with very deep focus in almost every shot, what Wyler called “carrying focus.” Action in the background is just as clear as foreground, in essence doubling the amount of visual information that can be placed in the image. Orson Welles uses similar but much flashier techniques in Citizen Kane. Wyler claimed that he made his film that way for two reasons. First, he wanted the characters to inhabit a more “realistic” world than audiences see in most films. That calls for smaller interiors. By shrinking the rooms and enlarging the focus, the viewer is always aware of walls and ceilings. That's true even in the department store scenes. Second, with that deeper focus he does not have to cut between characters to show their reactions to the situation and to each other, giving the film a much smoother feel. By the time they made the film, Wyler and Toland were seasoned professionals, so the technique never calls attention to itself. As so many critics have noted, Wyler has an “invisible style.” He would use anything that worked to get the emotion across, and this film contains at least three of his finest moments: Al's homecoming and Millie's reaction (said to be autobiographical, at least in setting), Homer's showing Wilma how his hooks work, and Fred's walk through the field of surplus aircraft. Those scenes have an honest poignancy that is almost never found in mainstream movies.

That honesty is followed through in the conclusion. It is enough of a traditional “happy ending” to please a large audience, but it doesn't sugarcoat or ignore any of the serious issues. That's the real source of the film's enduring popularity.

Cast: Fredric March (Al Stephenson), Myrna Loy (Millie Stephenson), Teresa Wright (Peggy Stephenson), Dana Andrews (Fred Derry), Virginia Mayo (Marie Derry), Harold Russell (Homer Parrish), Hoagy Carmichael (Butch Eagle), Gladys George (Hortense Derry), Roman Bohnen (Pat Derry), Steve Cochran (Cliff Scully), Charles Halton (Prew), Cathy O'Donnell (Wilma), Ray Collins (Mr. Milton), Victor Cutler (Woody), Minna Gombell (Mrs. Parrish), Walter Baldwin (Mr. Parrish), Dorothy Adams (Mrs. Cameron), Don Beddoe (Mr. Cameron), Ray Teal (Mr. Mollett), Howland Chamberlain (Mr. Thorpe); Written by: Robert Sherwood; Cinematography by: Gregg Toland; Music by: Hugo Friedhofer. Producer: Samuel Goldwyn. Awards: Academy Awards '46: Best Actor (March), Best Director (Wyler), Best Film Editing, Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Russell), Best Original Dramatic Score; British Academy Awards '47: Best Film; Golden Globe Awards '47: Best Film—Drama; National Board of Review Awards '46: Best Director (Wyler), New York Film Critics Awards '46: Best Director (Wyler), Best Film; American Film Institute (AFI) '98: Top 100; National Film Registry '89; Nominations: Academy Awards '46: Best Sound. Running Time: 170 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta, LV, DVD.