Utilizing a 14 day free trial period of the streaming service The Criterion Channel I have spent a few days watching in segments the Best Picture Oscar winner for 1946 The Best Years of Our Lives a drama about the troubles of three services men reintegrating into civilian life after returning home from combat in Word War II. The film is on the long side, two hours and 15 minutes but that is because it does try to take a deeper dive into each of its three main characters’ lives rather than focused on a single protagonists with two possible side kicks.
Dana Andrews plays Fred Derry, a captain in the Army Air Forces who served as a bombardier aboard B-17s over the European theater. Married is a party girl, Virginia Mayo Fred’s marriage is one the rocks and he is unable to find gainful employment while struggling with what we now diagnose as PTSD.
Frederick March plays Al Stephenson a platoon sergeant who finds that his children are more adult that he remembers and he struggles with alcoholism. Al is supported by his wife, Myrna Loy as he finds deep conflict between his job as a banker and sympathies for returning servicemen.
Harold Russel plays Homer Parrish a young man who while serving in the U.S. Navy was grievously injured and had both of his hands amputated. Harold’s amputations are not the product of special effects but reality since the actors lost both hands in a training accident. Homer finds it nearly impossible to return to his old life has be perceives everyone around him focusing on his injuries and he’s unable to emotionally open up to his fiancé played by Cathy O’Donnell.
The film is filled with secondary characters, Al’s daughter Peggy, player by Theresa Wright, who develops strong feelings for married Fred. I think in the movie Peggy is suppose to be 21 or so but the actress was 28 the film was released so that threw me off a bit. Homer has his friends at a local watering hole and Fred’s parents give a glimpse at the life Fred came from before the Army made him an officer.
William Wyler, one of classic Hollywood’s most talented director and also a war veteran, directs the film. He used smaller constructed sets, less suited to sweeping camera movements to help capture the feeling of finding home smaller and more constrained for the returning men.
I found it fascinating how some concepts had already pierced the public as early as 1946. In this movie people express the idea that the next war will be atomic and over in a day and that perhaps the US should have waged war against Communism instead of Fascism, two concepts that I would have taken longer to develop in the post war environment.
Overall this was a gripping story, slightly hampered by the production code, about the struggles people live with after experiencing the horror of war.
