Movie Review the Best Years of Our Lives
Homer thinks peradventure they should stop at his Uncle Butch'south saloon for a drink before they get home. "You're dwelling house at present, kid," the older man Al tells him. Three military veterans accept merely returned to their hometown of Boone City, somewhere in the Midwest, and each in his own way is dreading his budgeted reunion. Al's dialogue brings down the mantle on the apprehensive first deed of William Wyler's "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946), the start film to win 8 University Awards (one honorary) and at the time second only to "Gone With the Wind" at the U.S. box office. Seen more than 6 decades afterward, it feels surprisingly modern: lean, direct, honest nearly bug that Hollywood then studiously avoided. Later the state of war years of patriotism and heroism in the movies, this was a sobering look at the problems veterans faced when they returned home.
The movie centers on the stories of the three men. Al Stephenson (Fredric March), in his 40s, was an infantryman and is now returning to his family and the bank where he worked. Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) was a crew fellow member on a bomber. Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) was a Navy man who lost both easily and at present uses steel hooks. "Yous gotta hand information technology to the Navy," Fred tells Al, as they watch Homer walk slowly from their taxi to his front door, "they sure trained that child how to use those hooks." Al says: "They couldn't train him to put his arms around his daughter, or to stroke her hair."
That's why Homer wanted to finish for the drinkable. When he left for the war, he had an agreement with Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell), the girl adjacent door, but now he fears how she volition react to his artificial hands. The other men have fears, as well. Fred, raised in a shack by the tracks and working as a drugstore soda wiggle when he enlisted, quickly married the sexy Marie (Virginia Mayo), who has stopped writing him. Al has been married for 20 years to Milly (Myrna Loy), and has a son Rob (Michael Hall) and a daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright). They welcome him home with love and hugs, simply he doesn't feel right; his children take inverse, his life has inverse, and afterward Rob goes to bed he suddenly remembers Butch's bar and suggests his wife and girl join him for a celebration.
The other 2 men also turn upwardly at Butch's. Homer couldn't take the exaggerated kindness and suppressed grief he thought he sensed from his parents and Wilma. Fred didn't find anyone at dwelling house at Marie's apartment. The three men get plastered together, with Al's wife looking on with superhuman understanding. That'south the nighttime Fred and Peggy take their kickoff conversation, and begin to fall in love.
The pic'due south screenplay, by Robert Sherwood, moves confidently among the problems faced by the three men; unhurried and relatively low-key, this isn't a fevered docudrama. Information technology becomes clear to Fred that Marie is a party girl who isn't interested in life on his drugstore paycheck of $32.l. Homer coldly tries to force away Wilma because he doesn't want her pity. Al gets a promotion at the bank, and is in charge of giving loans under the G.I. Bill, but rebels when he'due south asked to trust an applicant'due south collateral more than than his grapheme. Al turns to drink, and has a half-sloshed, half-heroic moment when he speaks his mind at a company dinner.
The flick makes no effort to paint these men as extraordinary. Their lives, their characters, their prospects are all more than or less average, and Wyler doesn't pump in superfluous drama. That's why the moving picture is so effective, and possibly why it doesn't seem as dated equally some 1946 dramas. But Wyler employed remarkable visuals to make some of his points. He was working with the great cinematographer Gregg Toland, known for his deep-focus photography on such films equally "Citizen Kane," and often Wyler uses deep-focus instead of cutting, so that the pregnant of a scene can reveal itself to us, instead of existence pounded downward with shut-ups. Consider a scene in Butch'south where Homer proudly shows how Butch (Hoagy Carmichael) has taught him to play piano with his hooks. Al and Fred expect on, then Fred walks to a phone booth in the far background to make a crucial phone call. The camera doesn't motility, but our eyes follow Fred'south motility to the booth, and nosotros focus on a decision he is making.
1 of the film's most famous sequences involves Fred deciding to get out town in search of work, and going to the airport. While waiting for his war machine transport flight, he wanders into a vast graveyard of mothballed warplanes. This scene is heartbreaking. Once Fred flew these planes, and now they, and their pilots, are no longer needed. The payoff of the scene is deeply ironic.
And consider the film'south extended closing scene, when Homer and Wilma get married. Fred and Peggy are among the guests. Earlier they accept told each they they are in love, and Peggy vowed to her parents she would break upwardly Fred's mistaken and miserable matrimony. But Al warned Fred away from his daughter -- one reason he was leaving town, even though the tawdry Marie is filing for divorce.
Wyler shows the entire marriage anniversary, all the mode through, starting with Carmichael playing the hymeneals march, and the lovers exchanging vows. At that place are two parallel lines of suspense. One involves the marriage itself, and whether Homer's hooks can slip a ring on Wilma's finger. The other involves Fred and Peggy on opposite sides of the same room, their eyes locked as they hear the wedding vows being pronounced. Deep focus allows Wyler to testify both of these events at in one case, and his framing draws our eyes to the back of the shot, where Teresa Wright, never prettier or more than vulnerable, doesn't move a musculus.
"The All-time Years of Our Lives" doesn't apply verbal or technical pyrotechnics. It trusts entirely in the strength of its story. 1 of the sources of its power is the operation by Harold Russell, the handless veteran. Producer Samuel Goldwyn was actually criticized at the fourth dimension for his "tasteless" use of Russell, just look at the heartbreaking scene where Homer invites Wilma upwards to his bedroom -- not to make a pass, just to prove her what is involved in getting ready for bed. He thinks mayhap then she'll sympathise why he doesn't think he tin marry her.
Russell was an untrained actor, simply utterly sincere. He says: "This is when I know I'm helpless. My hands are down there on the bed. I tin can't put them on once again without calling to somebody for assistance. I tin can't smoke a cigarette or read a volume. If that door should blow shut, I tin't open up it and get out of this room. I'm every bit dependent as a babe that doesn't know how to get anything except to weep for information technology." WeknowRussell is speaking for himself, and the emotional ability is overwhelming. O'Donnell's response is pitch-perfect.
Russell won an honorary Oscar, "for bringing hope and backbone to his fellow veterans through his appearance." Although he was actually nominated for best supporting actor, the Academy board voted the special award because they thought he didn't have a chance of winning. They were wrong. He won the Oscar, the just time an thespian has been given two Oscars for the same part. The film likewise won for best picture, actor (March), manager, screenplay, editing and score.
Equally long equally we take wars and returning veterans, some of them wounded, "The Best Years of Our Lives" will not be dated. The motion-picture show is available on DVD, but there are no bells and whistles, and it calls out for a special edition or the Benchmark treatment. I agree with Noel Megahey atDVDTalk.com: "Some other studios might regard a film that won eight Oscars every bit a major back-catalogue release just non MGM. The DVD presentation of the movie is barely even adequate as a barebones release, with ... not a unmarried feature to support the film'southward historical and cinematic importance."
Note: The movie is said to accept inspired ane of Samuel Goldwyn's famous Goldwynisms: "I don't care if the moving-picture show doesn't make a nickel. I just want every man, woman, and kid in America to see it."
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert was the picture show critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
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The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
172 minutes
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