I've been meaning to see THE BEST YEARS OF OUR
LIVES for a long time. This 1946 flick straight out of Hollywood won the
Academy Award for Best Picture and it's easy to see why – the subject matter,
both heavy and timely, is dealt with in a way that was ahead of its time.
The film, directed by William Wyler, concerns
three WWII vets who all return home together to the same small town and must
face the ways the world has changed and the ways the war has changed them.
I don't think they had a name for it then, but
the movie's about PTSD. It's also about alcoholism, and learning how to live
with disabilities. It's three hours long but doesn't feel like it. All three
main characters are well played, and each have their big moments.
Fredric March stars as the eldest of the trio,
a Sgt. 1st Class who returns home to his wife (Myrna Loy) and
two kids who have grown up without him. He turns to alcohol to help him through
the ups and downs of getting reacquainted with his family and finding a job.
Dana Andrews is the highest ranking of the
group, a Captain who is returning home to a wife he barely knows (Virginia
Mayo). His newly found sense of responsibility and leadership doesn't mesh well
with the only job he's qualified for back home: working as a soda jerk and
salesman at a drugstore.
Perhaps most memorable of all is Harold
Russell as a petty officer who lost both his hands in the war and returns home
with a set of hooks. He's quite adept at using them, but is nervous about
returning to his fiancé (Cathy O'Donnell), so much so that he pushes her away
before she has a chance to show the way she feels. Russell actually lost his
hands in real life, so this brings a unique stamp of gritty realism to the
Hollywood-slick production.
A forbidden romance blossoms between March's
daughter (Teresa Wright) and Andrews, as the idealistic young girl vows to
breakup the returning soldier's sour marriage to a materialistic party girl.
Some of the film's most effective scenes take
place at the local watering hole, run by Russell's uncle (Hoagy Carmichael) who
dispenses advice and plays the piano. The three guys who were once kings of
their town and great warriors now retreat to the bar as fish out of water,
outcasts in their own homes, where they only feel at home slapping each other
on the back and only feel like slapping each other on the back when they're
three sheets to the wind.
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