The Best Years of Our Lives

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: My professor had us watch this movie in class and I liked it so much I'm going to buy it. It is a classic and should be seen watched by everyone at least once.

Rating:
Summary: "Just as if you'd never gone away..."
Review: Although it may try to pass itself off as merely a romantic wartime drama, that is only the necessary relief for William Wyler's bluntly raw, dark, and very edgy ode to the casualties of the mind and heart after World War II. We watch three families who are reunited with their soldier menfolk, and follow them all as the soldiers try to re-enter the civilian world as if they'd never left, sometimes wishing. The end result is about as effective as mending a deep gash and fractured bone by merely stitching the top layer of skin up. Watching the soldiers looking for something as real as the life they'd known for the past few years in a world trying to forget, watching the families used to loneliness and independence try to fall in love and rearrange there lives with these changed men. It's an emotional balancing act and a struggle that makes for a fine film.

Always preferring the subtle, Wyler doesn't give us a melodrama, but rather tells a deep and sophisticated story about these people. William Wyler never wanted to insert himself into his films but rather let his characters tell their own story at their own pace. Under his masterful and delicate touch, "Best Years of Our Lives" is sweet without being sticky and has an achingly real atmosphere and feel to it, but never once preaches to the audience. Where this approach is fresh and unclaustrophobic, we are aware that the characters are in a free fall without the support of cinematic storytelling...just like real life.

The actors in this film, it's useless to try to pick any one standout as they're all stratospheric, turn in a pack of magnificently real and nuanced performances which were a rarity for pre-Method Hollywood, but also put to stirring use old Hollywood's ease with ensemble work, almost unseen in today's "ready for my close-up" Hollywood. This is one of the best acted films out there.

At the beginning of the war, Wyler gave us another emotional masterpiece in "Mrs. Miniver" about the nobility, strength and decency of human nature in time of tragedy and suffering. And with this, at a time when the country was trying to bundle its broken bones back into order, this film provided, and still does, an unflinching look at the fragility and resiliency of the human soul.

Rating:
Summary: You CAN Go Home Again
Review:

"The Best Years of our Lives" is a "Wartme" classic set in an eponymous Midwestern town immediately after WW2. Firmly directed by William Wyler, it concerns the struggles of 3 returning veterans to readjust to civilian life - and to their families. The leads are Fredric March, Dana Andrews and Harold Russell. Mr. Russell plays a disabled vet who in real life was a disabled Navy seaman. The pace of BY is leisurely, giving the cast time to "adjust" to their surroundings. Viewers should not notice the nearly 3 hour run time. Andrews has the most difficult adjustment, coming home to a wife he doesn't know and who had plainly been unfaithful during his absence. Vietnam era vets will quickly surmise that "Jody" had been around! One aches for Andrews as he returns to work at that cloying drug store, unable to find a better spot. There are few jobs for ex fighter pilots! March has the most nuanced role, since he is an "old married man" with a wife and kids. His wife, Myrna Loy, is strong and faithful. She will have to be! March too, is less than enthusiastic about returning to his bank job. Credit his grandfatherly boss, Ray Collins, for not only holding a job for him but also handing him a promotion! March has a painfully obvious struggle with the bottle and is a lucky man to have such a great boss and patient wife! March needs all the support he can get when the unhappily married Andrews gets involved with his daughter! She is "good girl" Teresa Wright. The most interesting role is Russell's. Wounded in real life when his aircraft carrier was attacked, he was discovered by Director William Wyler at a War Bond rally. The most touching moment in BY is when Russell shows fiancée Cathy O' Donnell how is hand hooks work. BY swept the 1946 Academy Awards winning Best Picture, Director (Wyler), Best Actor (March), Best Supporting Actor (Russell), Best Screenplay, and Best Dramatic Score. Russell was also given a Special Award for "bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans". He remains the only actor to receive 2 awards for the same role. It's too bad that Andrews and Loy went empty handed. Both quietly played their roles to perfection, especially Loy in dealing with a hard husband struggling to settle down. A final compliment should be given to Virginia Mayo, Andrew's bad girl wife. It's hard playing such a witchy woman but she does to virtual perfection. Viewers should observe Wyler's camera work. BY is shot in deep focus: there is almost always action in the rear of a scene, especially in that awful drugstore! Credit goes to Mike Mayo's "War Movies" for that observation and the background on Mr. Russell. BY is highly recommended. It captures the way we were in a very special time in this country's history. Amazoners are encouraged to devote 165 minutes to watching it. The beauty of video is that one can watch over 2 or 3 sittings. This reviewer was tempted to deduct a star for that absolutely hokey fadeout, which is not divulged here. We all like "happy endings" but please! Still, viewers must not let those silly 30 seconds detract from 164.5 minutes of Hollywood gold.


Rating:
Summary: The Best Years of Our Lives
Review: Director William Wyler takes the viewer through an emotional story of 3 men returning home after WWII. Even today the movie holds up and is one of the best war time movies made. I highly recommend it to anyone. It won 7 Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actor for Fredric March (Al Stephenson), Best Director for William Wyler, Harold Russell, who played Homer Parrish, won 2 awards, Best Supporting Actor & an honorary Oscar "For bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance in The Best Years of Our Lives." Harold Russell who lost both of his arms in the war was not an actor when asked to play this role. Myrna Loy is wonderful as Milly Stephenson and Teresa Wright fresh off her Oscar win for Mrs. Miniver delivers another stand out performance as Peggy, Al & Milly's daughter. Dana Andrews is wonderful as is Virginia Mayo. Best Years is just under 3 hours, but it moves at such a great pace that it doesn't feel like three hours has passed at the end.


Rating:
Summary: Best Years of Our Lives
Review: A winner of seven out of the eight Academy Awards it was nominated for, 1946's THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES was the biggest box-office draw since 1939's GONE WITH THE WIND. Unlike many old hits, though, BEST YEARS holds up remarkably well.
It's hard to know where to begin when you want to praise everything. The script is honest, and in its honesty avoids some obvious dramatic highpoints. There are times when most movies would have troubled characters, and the three returning vets are all working through complicated readjustments, collide and explode in a Big Emotional scene.
For instance: infantry sergeant/civilian banker Frederic March returns to a wife he loves and two children who have grown into young adults in his absence. He gives his teenage son a Japanese flag and samurai sword, but the son is more interested in atomic energy and jet propulsion and whether the world is going to be blown to smithereens in the next war. The maid left three years ago and daughter Teresa Wright has replaced her after taking a few domestic science classes. It's not the family he left, and he registers his distress by pacing, smoking. Sit down, dear, wife Myrna Loy says. You'll be more comfortable. I'm comfortable enough standing, March says. Say, can't a fellow get a drink in this house?
It was right around then, early in the movie, that I thought the film would deliver the first Big Emotional scene. A fight between Loy and March, perhaps. And then it fooled me. March suggests Loy and Wright and he paint the town red to "Let me know I'm alive." And away they go, visiting one nightclub after the other, March's character getting tipsier and tipsier. The opportunity for the BE scene continued to build.
Then they enter Butch's (Hoagy Carmichael) café. The inebriated March asks Hoagy to play an old tune and asks his wife to dance and the scene series ends with shots of them dancing, cut with medium close ups of the actors' faces radiating quiet bliss.
Frankly, I think this is a brilliant movie that is almost perfectly constructed.
One oddity. Harold Russell, a real life war veteran who lost both hands in the war, won two Oscars in 1947 (the only time that's ever happened, by the way); one for Supporting Actor, and an honorary one "For bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance in The Best Years of Our Lives." Russell is a very good natural actor, and the scene in which he shows his fiance, played by Cathy O'Donnell, how he has to prepare for bed that is as moving as anything I've ever seen.
The oddity - the extra on this disk is a theatrical trailer and Russell's character doesn't appear in it. The trailer was probably made before the movie was released, but it seems strange that they wouldn't have included him at all.


Rating:
Summary: An American Classic
Review: Just as important as GWTW, Citizen Cane, and films of that ilk. You already know the basic story from the 1,001 other reviews, so I won't repeat it. This remains one of March's and Andrews' shining moments. Loy is also very good, though, truth be told, not her very best performance. Russell is nothing short of phenomenal. Yes, it gets a hair overbearing and sappy at times, but this is eclipsed by the breadth and message of the film overall. A true must-own.