Old Stories: The Best Years of Our Lives
Freddy, Homer and Al return from the war, to lives that no longer fit
You are reading False Choices. Every Friday I publish a review of an older cultural artifact, music, TV, film, novels, short stories, etc. that may spread some new light on the present. Enjoy, and leave a comment, we welcome the good, the bad and the ugly.
Three men return to ‘normal’ life from WWII. Freddy, from the Air Force returns to his new bride he hasn’t seen in years; Al, an Army infantry sergeant, returns to a wife and two nearly grown kids; Homer, a sailor, still a ‘kid’ himself, returns to his family and the girl next door. It’s a simple premise for a movie, and handled with a little class, as they used to say, it could be a solid entertainment. But that’s where it gets interesting.
William Wyler directed the film. He was one of five Hollywood directors who volunteered for duty after Pearl Harbor. You may have seen Wyler on the Netflix documentary “Five Came Back” about the directors who went to the war to document it for the folks at home and for posterity. Wyler was in the Army Air Force during the war and actually flew live missions over Germany in order to make the first of two documentaries about the war: The Memphis Belle, A Story of A Flying Fortress. After the war he released a second documentary about the Thunderbolt fighter bomber and the campaign to break Mussolini’s Italy in half from the air.
The Memphis Belle, in particular, linked above, is a masterful piece of work. Released in 1944, it gives the viewer a first hand look at how the Air Force operated during WWII, and how its men managed their lives as bombers over enemy territory. It’s far more honest portrait in my view than, for example, Catch 22, a novel published in 1961, with a movie following in 1970. Catch 22 was far more popular among the boomer generation because it conflated the anti-war sentiments of its age with WWII. As a result, it does not depict WWII accurately, as both The Memphis Belle and The Best Years both do.
It would have been all too easy for Wyler’s The Best Years to fall into maudlin story telling about three returning vets, but instead we see a film that will make you tear up but without pandering, and without the wise guy cracks to break the heartfelt sadness. It’s a film that could not have been made without the real life experiences of the director and the actors. The man who plays Homer, Harold Russell, was not actually an actor, just a serviceman who had seen the worst of the war. He won two Academy Awards for his work, Best Supporting Actor and an Honorary Award for his service in the war. The movie itself won six other Oscars, including Best Picture, in 1946. Overall the performances are very good, including Dana Andrews who plays Fred Derry a returning airman who is still working through the trauma of the war. Fredric March won Best Actor, and also notable is Hoagy Carmichael, one of America’s great 20th Century song writers, as Butch the club owner.
The film never wavers from its main theme - the difficulties of bringing home hundreds of thousands of men, and some women, who have known the brutality of battle, to a peaceful, appreciative society that lived their normal life, day to day, with a ration book and the news as the only reminders the country was at war. There is an excellent scene where Homer and Fred get into a scrape with a wiseguy at the drugstore lunch counter about the politics of the war. They can’t help but take the man’s comments personally.
The film is a very sympathetic portrayal of the life of service men after the war, without falling into cheap melodrama. This we can attribute to Wyler’s own participation in the war.
The film surpassed Gone With the Wind as the most popular movie ever in both the US and England, proving the gratitude both countries felt for their returning veterans. It’s impossible to live a life of grievance and victimhood that still holds a space for gratitude. To bow one’s head in thanks, much less prayer, has become a vanishing act in American life. Wyler’s great picture reminds us that we live in a special country, with special neighbors from all over the world, who came together to save the The Best Years of Our Lives.
It’s viewable on Youtube, though you’ll have to put up with a few ridiculous adverts, just hit Skip as soon as it appears! And enjoy!
Stellar Sir