The Best Years of Our Lives

Rare is the movie that gets everything right, and when you find it, you can't praise it enough. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) is one such film. What ought to be a gloppy, sentimental melodrama is truly remarkable, poignant and touching, and certainly among the best American films ever.

At the end of World War II, three American servicemen - Army Sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March), Air Force Captain Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) and double-amputee sailor Homer Parish (Harold Russell) - find themselves on a home-bound plane. They learn that they're all from the idyllic small town of Boone City, and strike up an instant rapport. However, integrating back into civilian life proves problematic. Al, a bank executive, hits the bottle hard and butts heads with his boss (Ray Collins); Fred has nightmares about his experiences, struggles to hold down a job and runs into trouble with his spend-a-holic wife Marie (Virginia Mayo); Homer grows estranged from sweetheart Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell), thinking she won't love him now that he has hooks for hands. Things become more complicated still when Al's daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright) falls in love with Fred.

The Best Years of Our Lives succeeds on every level. With the great William Wyler at the helm, and a vast array of talent in front and behind the camera, the movie is a treat to watch. The movie runs close to three hours but doesn't feel like it, its complicated character arcs perfectly intersecting. It's emotional but never maudlin, earning its sentiment with Robert E. Sherwood's excellent script and well-rounded, believable characters. The drama is in deadly earnest, perfectly reflecting the uneasy post-war period, where victory over Fascism led to a downturn in jobs, millions of displaced servicemen, moral ambiguity and fear of nuclear Armageddon.

Our protagonists try to rejoin society with varying success: jobs aren't there any more, scars of war still haven't healed, and their emotional grounding is out of whack. Al runs into trouble for giving a loan to a down-on-his-luck serviceman; Steve's wife Marie is disappointed to find him an unskilled soda jerk out of uniform; Homer can't stand his friends and family pitying him. Nor is everyone thrilled about their homecoming: department-store manager Norman Phillips Jr. resents that Steve take his job, while a Red-baiter badgers Homer, telling him he lost his arms for nothing. There is a wonderfully happy ending, but the road getting there is difficult and often grim. And even then, Steve's final line indicates that the problems might just be starting.

William Wyler was one of the all-time greats, with a truly daunting CV: Jezebel, Wuthering Heights, Mrs. Miniver, Roman Holiday, The Big Country, Ben-Hur, The Children's Hour. Wyler does an excellent job turning the material into something grand and poignant, with simple but effective direction. Cinematographer Gregg Toland makes remarkable use of deep-focus rivalling his work on Citizen Kane - the bar scene, where Fred makes a phone call in the background of an action shot, is truly remarkable. Perry Ferguson and George Jenkins's art direction is equally remarkable, using space (the huge supermarket, Fred's cramped apartment, the "boneyard" of moth-balled bombers) to emphasize our protagonists' unease. Hugo Friedhoffer contributes a beautiful score that tugs at the heart strings without being intrusive.

Fredric March (Inherit the Wind) convincingly makes Al both a solid father figure and a troubled veteran. Myrna Loy (Manhattan Melodrama) is excellent as his wife, and Teresa Wright (Shadow of a Doubt) is luminous and endearing. Harold Russell won two well-deserved Oscars; his plight is truly heart-breaking, with a tremendously moving big scene with Cathy O'Donnell (The Man From Laramie), showing her what marrying him will entail. Dana Andrews (The Ox-Bow Incident) has the most complex character and pulls it off well; Virginia Mayo (White Heat) makes Marie hateful but somehow sympathetic.

The Best Years of Our Lives is one of the best films ever made. Virtually flawless, it is no less powerful or heartfelt sixty-four years after its release, the mark of a truly great film.