Nineteen Forty Six was a pivotal year in the American Century.\u00a0 The United States had won World War II by harnessing the minds and bodies of its people and focusing that output single-mindedly on victory on the battlefield.\u00a0 It had required all its young men to drop their lives and join the most powerful fighting machine ever assembled.\u00a0 But equally extreme was the disruption that this mobilization had on the rest of the population.\u00a0 The industrial capacity of the country was shifted over from producing cars and clothes for the populace to producing battleships, tanks, munitions and supplies needed to maintain millions of men across a far-flung battle field that spanned the globe.<\/p>\n
And those industries had to produce this war-time materiel with almost none of their regular workers.\u00a0 They had to train women and older men to take the places of their husbands, sons and fathers.\u00a0 Other disruptions existed because of the male deployment.\u00a0 Marriage and family growth were often postponed until after the war.\u00a0 But equally disruptive were the last minute marriages and even conceptions that were consummated in defiance of the war\u2019s demands.\u00a0 Many a young woman had to raise a posthumous child to a father who would never return to his family.<\/p>\n
But finally the war was over. \u00a0By dint of the effort of millions and with the help of a couple of atomic bombs the war was won and done.\u00a0 Now these millions of soldiers. sailors, airmen and marines were returning home to their families and friends.\u00a0 But in many ways, the returning men were strangers in a strange land.\u00a0 They were changed and so was the country.\u00a0 Whereas, for the last four years, they had been the focus of all that went on, now they were being deposited back in the country to try and restart their lives where they left off.\u00a0 But things were not where they left off.\u00a0 The jobs they had had before their enlistments were either being done by someone else or didn\u2019t even exist anymore.\u00a0 And the meager but regular paychecks they got from Uncle Sam would soon disappear.<\/p>\n
And finally, many of these men were physically or mentally wounded.\u00a0 In addition to the injured and maimed a great number of them were victims of what today we call PTSD.\u00a0 The experiences they had lived through had left a mark on their minds that only time might heal.\u00a0 The ones that had lost limbs had the added physical and psychological difficulties associated with these losses.<\/p>\n
The Best Years of Our Lives was a movie that ambitiously attempted to portray and speak to these realities.\u00a0 And this was an innovation for the times.\u00a0 Up until this point Hollywood portrayed America\u2019s wartime experience through a patriotic lens that glossed over many of the harsh realities that existed.\u00a0 But this movie cast a veteran who had lost his hands in the war (Harold Russell) as Sailor Homer Parrish one of the returning servicemen.\u00a0 The realities of divorces and unemployment and the depression associated with the alienation and various disruptions impacting the former GIs are openly addressed and nothing is glossed over for the sake of sparing the audience.<\/p>\n
Frederic March and Dana Andrews along with the above-mentioned Harold Russel are the protagonists.\u00a0 They meet on the airplane ride back to their home town of Boone City and the three men bond over the relief and anxiety associated with leaving the service and returning to civilian life.\u00a0 March is a forty-something infantry sergeant named Al Stephenson and Andrews is Army Air Corps Captain Fred Derry.\u00a0 But whereas Captain Derry was a highly paid officer and a gentleman in the service he returns home with his only civilian work experience being a soda jerk at the local drug store.\u00a0 Alternatively, Stephenson trades in his infantry grunt existence for the comfortable lifestyle of a bank officer.\u00a0 Homer Parrish returns home to the pity and awkward glances from friends and family associated with his missing hands.<\/p>\n
Al Stephenson reintroduces himself to his wife Milly and his son and daughter.\u00a0 Milly (played by Myrna Loy) tries to make Al feel at home but they both are ill at ease trying to take up their relationship where it left off.\u00a0 Finally, nervous about heading to bed early he drags Milly and daughter Peggy off to the local watering holes to drink away his nerves with scotch.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Fred Derry reaches his father\u2019s home to discover that his young wife Marie has moved out into her own apartment downtown and is working as a cocktail waitress in a night club.\u00a0 He heads out trying to find out what night club Marie is working at.<\/p>\n
And finally, Homer is home with his and his girlfriend\u2019s families celebrating his return and talking about his future.\u00a0 But he becomes so unhappy with the tense and nervous atmosphere that he leaves to hang out at his Uncle Butch\u2019s bar.<\/p>\n
And so, all three ex-servicemen coincidentally meet up at Butch\u2019s Place.\u00a0 And there we see Al and Fred get royally drunk to distract themselves from their domestic issues.\u00a0 And in this impaired condition Fred flirts mildly with Peggy Stephenson.\u00a0 Finally, Butch tells Homer his family wants him home and Milly and Peggy manage to drag Al and Fred into the car and after Fred fails to gain entry into Marie\u2019s apartment building, they drive both men back to the Stephenson apartment where the fall-down-drunk men are bedded down.\u00a0 During the night Peggy hears Fred Derry crying out.\u00a0 He was reliving a nightmare where some of his comrades were shot out of the air.\u00a0 The next morning, he apologizes for waking her and she sympathetically assures him that she didn\u2019t mind.\u00a0 Peggy gives Fred a lift to his wife\u2019s building and this time he gets in.\u00a0 Now we meet Marie.\u00a0 Fred married a very beautiful woman (played by Virginia Mayo) whom he had only known for days when he was deployed to Europe.\u00a0 Now we see that Marie is a selfish, materialistic woman who expects to be supported in the style she has been accustomed to as a night club denizen.\u00a0 While Fred has a thousand-dollar severance payment from the service they live it up.\u00a0 But when the money runs out the couple begin to battle over Marie\u2019s dissatisfaction.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Al and Milly reconnect and talk about their children and Al\u2019s future with the bank he left when he enlisted.\u00a0 Al tells Milly that he feels responsible to help all the other veterans who didn\u2019t come home to a good job and need some help to get their lives back on track.\u00a0 He uses his position as a loan officer to help fellow veterans who need GI loans to try to catch up with the new world they find themselves in.\u00a0 This puts him at odds with the bank president but Al perseveres to champion his fellow vets.<\/p>\n
At Homer Parrish\u2019s house we meet Homer\u2019s sweetheart Wilma and find that although she is demonstrably in love with Homer, he is withdrawn and morose.\u00a0 She asks him why he hasn\u2019t asked her to marry him.\u00a0 But he tells her he doesn\u2019t want to ruin her life by tying her down to a helpless cripple.\u00a0 Homer is so unhappy that he explodes in frustration when he thinks his little sister and her friends are gawking in a window at his prosthetic hands. \u00a0Finally, Wilma tells Homer that her parents want her to leave town to forget him but she wants him to marry her.\u00a0 Homer decides to let her see just how helpless he is when he removes his prostheses.\u00a0 But instead of recoiling from his injuries she embraces him and proves to him that she wants to be with him.\u00a0 They set the date for their wedding.<\/p>\n
An additional story line involves a romantic attachment that grows between Fred Derry and Peggy Stephenson.\u00a0 When Al finds out about his daughter\u2019s romance with the married Fred, he angrily confronts him for involving his daughter in an extra-marital affair and Fred stoically agrees to break it off.\u00a0 But even with Peggy out of the picture Fred and Marie fall apart and he leaves home while she declares her intention to get a divorce.\u00a0 When he leaves, he intends to leave town and start his life over somewhere else.\u00a0 But while waiting for a flight at the airport he roams through the warplane graveyard and climbs into a bomber.\u00a0 While reliving some disturbing memory from the war he is discovered by a man who is reclaiming the old planes for construction scrap materials and is told to get out of the plane.\u00a0 Fred asks if he has any jobs available and manages to convince the man that he is a good prospect and so Fred restarts his life again in his home town.<\/p>\n
Now the three ex-servicemen meet up at Homer\u2019s wedding where Al, Milly and Peggy are friends of the groom and Fred is the best man.\u00a0 Now that Fred is no longer married, he and Al no longer have a reason for fighting and at the end of the night Fred and Peggy come back together and decide to marry.<\/p>\n
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Back in 1946 when winning an Academy Award actually meant the movie was good, The Best Years of Our Lives was competing against It\u2019s a Wonderful Life.\u00a0 And I think The Best Years of Our Lives won because America needed to move beyond the simplified vision of life represented by It\u2019s a Wonderful Life and recognize the harsh realities and ugly side to life that came along with the changes that the war generated such as the liberation of women and the choice of some of them to embrace a life style that did not value a traditional family role.\u00a0 But acknowledging the problems facing the returning vets made this movie resonate with the American people.<\/p>\n
In my opinion it is one of the best films ever made.\u00a0 The acting by March and Loy is exceptional and Andrews, Russell and several other players are also excellent.\u00a0 It captures the feeling of the time and who the American people were back then.<\/p>\n
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