Best Picture: #19
Original Release Date: December 18, 1946
Rating: Approved
Runtime: 2 hours, 50 minutes
Director: William Wyler
Quick Impressions:
After loving William Wyler’s Mrs. Miniver so much, my daughter and I were quite excited to see the same director’s The Best Years of Our Lives, also co-starring Theresa Wright. When we discovered the film was nearly three hours long, we decided to watch in three increments, but it turned out to be so entertaining that we finished in two. What a wonderful movie! At this point, I would gladly watch anything directed by William Wyler. In fact, my daughter now wants to have a William Wyler film festival. And I just pitched a Billy Wilder film festival! At this rate, we’ll be watching classic movies together until she goes off to college.
On Tuesday, she starts (virtual) sixth grade, but we’ve decided to extend our Best Picture project beyond the summer and keep watching until we’ve seen all of them. Our (alarmingly nocturnal) schedule is about to undergo massive changes, though. (She’ll be required to stare into her computer’s camera for hours, and I’ll be reminding my son, “We have to wear our pants in kindergarten,” as we proceed asynchronously in the next room.) Pray for us.
The Plot:
In 1946, three American men return from serving in World War II, each with his own battle scars. Fred, an Air Force bombardier has dreams of buying a home with the new wife he barely knows and nightmares of losing comrades in the heat of battle. Homer, a young sailor, worries that his girl-next-door sweetheart won’t be able to reconcile herself to his new life as a double amputee whose hands burned off in action. Al, an Army sergeant misses his children and wife of twenty-two years but feels crushing guilt returning to his comfortable life and high paying job at the bank when he has witnessed so many other veterans lose life, limb, and everything in service of their country. At home, things are different. Al can’t stop drinking. Homer closes himself off emotionally. And Fred’s relationship with his wife goes south fast. This is in great part because he has fallen in love with Al’s daughter Peggy.
The Good:
This film is a true ensemble piece. Talented actors (most of them big-name stars) bring to life complex characters with emotionally resonant story arcs. The three veterans’ parallel stories constantly intertwine, and, as a result, the well-acted film is riveting. Its emotional honesty (in most cases) is moving and hard to look away from.
The film gives us an unflinching look at what it means to return from war. I always find it fascinating to watch a film about a very particular period made at the time when it is set. That lends such authenticity to the story right away. Director William Wyler seems drawn to material like this. First Mrs. Miniver, about the Blitz, released in 1942, and now a story about American veterans returning from war, released in 1946. Are all of Wyler’s films this topical and timely? (Surely not Ben-Hur!)
Perhaps the most authentic aspect of the film is the casting of wounded veteran Harold Russell as Homer Parish. (Well, actually, there’s no “perhaps” about it!) Russell plays a double amputee who lost his hands during the war, and he actually is a double amputee who lost his hands during the war. For his performance, he made Oscar history. Not only did he win Best Supporting Actor, but he also won an honorary award for representing his fellow wounded veterans, making him the only actor ever to win two Oscars for the same performance. Russell’s mastery of his mechanical hands is spellbinding, and the courage and tenacity he brings to Homer is genuinely inspiring.
The other principals are big name stars and well known supporting actors. Frederic March (who won Best Actor playing middle-aged banker, Sergeant Al Stephenson), Myrna Loy (as Al’s charming, supportive, resourceful wife), Theresa Wright (as Peggy, their all-around winner of a daughter), Dana Andrews as bombardier/soda jerk Fred Derry, Virginia Mayo (as Marie, Fred’s increasingly awful wife), Hoagy Carmichael (as Homer’s piano-playing saloon owner uncle), The Maltese Falcon‘s Iva Archer, Gladys George (as Fred’s stepmother) Perry Mason‘s Lieutenant Tragg, Ray Collins (as Al’s boss at the bank), Cathy O’Donnell from Ben-Hur (as Wilma, Homer’s loyal girlfriend).
Everybody’s great in this, but I particularly like Myrna Loy, mainly because I think somebody else could perfectly adequately play her part without being nearly half so charming. She brings so much to the role.
I can see why Frederic March would win Best Actor, and, in fact, I loved his performance, though to me his character’s arc feels incomplete.
I liked Dana Andrews as Fred more than I’ve ever liked him in anything. His loyalty to and respect for Homer is very endearing, and I sympathize with his frustration at not being able to find a job worthy of his merit (though I do have some thoughts on that I’ll mention later).
At this point, I’m starting to think it’s impossible not to love Theresa Wright. She makes being a home-wrecker look so wholesome!
The cast is fantastic, and the film’s great strength is that it feels so natural. Character driven, it draws us into these conversations, human situations that feel real, relatable, and urgent. The urgency comes from the human drama. The situations are ordinary–building a relationship, finding a job, struggling toward self-acceptance. It’s all the stuff everyone has to do in peacetime, but for the protagonists who have just served in World War II, average civilian life is disorienting.
If you’re looking for a comfortable place to stop watching the film, you won’t find it. If you’re like me, each scene will draw you in completely, and while you’re thinking about it, the next scene will start, and suddenly you’ll be drawn in all over again. The 2 hour, 50 minute runtime passes very quickly. The film feels an hour shorter than it is. Still, nothing much happens. This is a movie about reassimilating into ordinary, mundane life after experiencing a brief period of terrifying intensity. It’s not what happens that matters, it’s to whom it’s happening. In most stories, you watch until something happens. In this one, the something has already happened. The difficulty the returning veterans face is processing (emotionally, mentally) what has happened to them. Theirs is a journey of recovery and adaptation.
For me, much of the suspense in watching came from my feeling that for one character in particular, the “mundane” story would end dramatically as either a comedy or a tragedy (in the Shakespearean sense). And it does, but I was on the edge of my seat the whole time worrying which it would be, marriage or death.
Best Action Sequence:
You wouldn’t think of this as a traditional action sequence in a war-related movie, but I love the way Al drags his wife and daughter all over town on a drunken escapade. This sequence is particularly captivating because of Myrna Loy’s and Theresa Wright’s characters’ behavior and ability to take the situation in stride. We’re introduced to two strong, resilient, charming women. We get such a sense of them so quickly, and they are so winningly virtuous with strengths so glaringly obvious that not even their highly intoxicated companions fail to notice their charms.
Best Scene Visually:
My daughter reported that her favorite scene is the one in which Homer removes his prosthetic hooks in front of his girlfriend Wilma. She likes it because it’s a big reveal for the audience, too. We see this for the first time along with Wilma (though we’ve gotten a tease before with Homer’s pop).
Homer is incredibly adept with those hooks but so vulnerable without them. It’s a very moving scene. In fact, every scene featuring Homer seems effortlessly moving. His performance is very natural, and for the audience, the psychological complications of his wounds are so easy to understand.
Best Scene:
I love it when any of these men sticks up for the others. It’s hard not to feel immense satisfaction when Fred loses his job for punching out the guy who’s bothering Homer.
The Negatives:
I don’t like the way the film handles the character of Fred’s young wife Marie. Her descent into complete moral bankruptcy (or, at least, strongly implied turpitude) feels forced and unfair.
It reminds me (fondly) of an episode of Murder, She Wrote I once watched with my mother. (Well, probably more than once. My grandma was obsessed with the show and would cagily pretend not to remember every rerun, so we watched Murder, She Wrote an awful lot.)
There’s an episode fairly late in the show when Jessica goes to help a friend who’s an artist. At the end, she exposes the murderer, who is living under a false identity, pretending to be a very dignified young woman of immaculate comportment.
Gravely, Mrs. Fletcher proclaims, “You’re not really Frances [Somebody] from [Wherever]. You’re Wanda Ray Skutnik from Kansas City.”
Immediately, the character’s stance and diction change. It’s an Eliza Doolittle/Hungarian Countess level change, but it happens in the blink of an eye. Right away, she snarls back, “That’s right Mrs. Fletcha,” (or something to that effect), just like she’s been hanging around with Edward G. Robinson in a black-and-white gangster movie.
My mom and I found the lack of subtlety so comical (and perhaps it was intended to be, to make the moment more fun for the audience).
But the same kind of change happens to Marie (played by Virginia Mayo, herself a guest star on Murder, She Wrote). Now, I will concede that with Marie, the change is more gradual. Also, from practically the first time we hear anything about Fred’s young wife, the film gives us reason to doubt her character. So the discovery of her flaws doesn’t come out of the blue.
But I still think the way the movie vilifies her is sad. It sets her up to be thrown away. In order for Fred’s romance with Peggy to pan out, Fred’s wife has to disappear from the picture. Once Fred and Peggy cross a certain line, it becomes clear that Marie must then do something really bad. They’ve done something wrong. So she must do something worse. I feel like the character is made a sacrificial victim to appease the Hays Code. For Fred and Peggy to get their happily ever after, Marie must disgrace herself totally.
Now, I’ll grant you, Marie and Fred are wrong for each other. They’re a bad match, and their relationship is practically doomed from the start. But that is not entirely Marie’s fault. They barely know each other when they marry, and then he immediately goes off to fight in a war that permanently changes him. It doesn’t help that before reconnecting with her, he accidentally falls awfully hard for someone else.
In the end, the movie writes her off as a crass, unfeeling, insensitive, adulterous gold digger. I just don’t think that’s really fair. A kinder reading of the character is that she comes from a background of impoverishment, maybe abuse. She loves to show off Fred in his uniform, but that may come from a desire for respectability. She is drawn to his money and ability to be a high earner, but to me, this makes her seem immature and naive, the type with White Knight fantasies, someone with few opportunities who longs for security. Clearly she is trying to use what she does have (her looks) to gain upward mobility, to secure herself a comfortable life.
Now, she’s a horribly bad fit for Fred. She’s looking for a strength and stability that he can’t provide. But I don’t see any real evidence that she’s just using him the whole time. She seems overjoyed to see him when he first comes home. Yes, she no longer lives with his parents, and yes, they could probably have used some of the pay that he’d been sending home to her. But maybe she’s already tried being poor, and it did not agree with her. She strikes me as someone deeply traumatized by more-humble-than-average origins. She just wants to have nice things. (And she’s willing to work for them, too. He just won’t let her work.)
Also, though Fred’s struggles to find the right job resonate with me, I’m confused about why (when he’s so willing to learn) he feels he should be given any job without first training for it. He keeps saying he’s a quick learner. Well, okay, go learn something. Why does he resent being asked to be an apprentice? I understand that he showed character, valor, grit, and resilience in his military career, but if you want to be say, a plumber, you have to learn the trade. If you want to be a doctor, you have to study medicine. Nobody says, “I like your grit and can-do attitude. That’s why you’re the perfect person to play this violin concerto tomorrow night. Now get in there, slugger.” I think he blames too many of his problems on his wife. (Granted, she makes it easy.) Marie becomes the focus of all of Fred’s woes. She wants a certain lifestyle, so she becomes the focus of all of his resentment and angst about not finding good work. I think his biggest problem is that he married too hastily. The movie sets up Marie to take all the blame for that.
Don’t get me wrong. From my point of view, Peggy is by far the better catch. She’s more mature, more stable, less materialistic, far kinder, and arguably even more fun at parties. But must Marie be totally vilified? Why can’t the character be explored with more charity, more honesty. Why can’t Fred and Marie just say, “Look I guess we made a mistake. We married too quickly before we really knew each other. Then because of the war, we grew even further apart”?
Why does Marie have to turn into Wanda Ray Skutnik from Kansas City? I know why. It’s the Hays Code. I’m sure of it. Fred and Peggy can’t fall in love while he’s married and have it work out unless his wife firmly establishes herself as the bad one.
But why does anybody have to be the bad one? What’s wrong with saying, “This didn’t work out,” or, the harsher, but honest, “I’m sorry. This marriage will not work because I don’t love you.” Marie begins as someone with great potential for complexity, but she devolves into a brash, two-bit floozy whose character can be immediately ascertained from her low class speaking voice, just like Wanda Ray Skutnik.
Fred lashes out at her. He’s physically violent toward her. We forgive him because we know he’s been through hell, and he’s a good guy at heart, a man in pain. Where’s the forgiveness for her?
The war irreparably damaged all three of the male protagonists, but the film portrays them with great sympathy. Why can’t Marie be shown a little sympathy, too? Everyone is damaged.
And speaking of damaged, I wish we got more closure about Al’s drinking problem. He does have a very serious drinking problem. I suppose just as Fred has PTSD driven nightmares, and Homer has lost his hands, Al will continue to drink too heavily at times. The implication seems to be that his wife and his boss will protect him from embarrassment, shield him from harm. They will continue to support him because they can see his merit, and they appreciate the sacrifice of his service. Well, okay, but surely all that drinking is not good for his liver. Nobody could ask for a better wife than Myrna Loy or a more gracious employer than Lieutenant Tragg from Perry Mason, but Al needs some therapy, some medical help. I don’t like the way this is left hanging.
My daughter takes this further. When I asked her what she thought the film’s weaknesses were just now, she answered, “I feel like nothing really happened with Al. He had a character, but nothing got resolved with him. He had a drinking problem, but that never got seriously addressed. He seemed like his role was to bring Peggy into Fred’s life, but other than that, why was he a character? Some characters’ flaws never get fixed, okay, but it doesn’t feel like anything happened with Al. There was no ending for him.”
I do see that the scene at the company banquet brings Al’s story to a kind of conclusion. It makes the point that you trust a man because of the good you see in him. Just as he took a risk on the hopeful farmer, his boss and wife must continue to embrace Al, despite his “risks” because his merit is too great to be ignored. He is a risk that will pay off. We must be grateful to our veterans. We must remember their service and honor their strengths, propping them up, if necessary, in their moments of weakness. I get all that, but I agree with my daughter. Al’s story needs more resolution. It’s unfair to expect Nora Charles to spend her golden years as the designated driver.
Maybe we are supposed to believe that Al’s problems are being solved because he has his boss’s support to help the other veterans he feels so guilty about. But I’d still like a stronger finish. Yes, he’s drinking non-alcoholic punch at the end, but that’s only because (as he’s disappointed to discover) the punch available contains no alcohol.
I actually think the last moments of Fred’s story are rushed, too. But I acknowledge that the film was already almost three hours long. It had to end some time.
Overall:
This movie is so compelling and easy to watch. In fact, for me it was almost impossible to stop watching. The first night, we kept looking for a comfortable stopping point, and I kept pushing it. “Let’s just find out what happens at the end of this scene,” I’d say, but then another, equally compelling scene would start immediately, and I would wait in suspense again.
My daughter ranks this #6 after The Lost Weekend and before Going My Way. At this point, we’ve seen so many excellent movies that there isn’t room for all of them in her top five. Though the writer in me prefers the profound neatness of Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives is an equally moving film full of compelling scenes and excellent performances. You should watch it.