OK, here’s a challenge of a sort, the first of about thirty for this particular challenge: writing up an essay for a film I covered before when I did the AFI list back in 2018. In this case, it’s the 1946 postwar drama The Best Years of Our Lives, a nearly three hour look at the lives of three servicemen coming back from the second World War. As I see it, I could probably just as easily reuse the original write-up. That would be the easy thing to do, but I don’t think there’s much of a “challenge” in the Stacker Challenge if I just reuse nearly a third of the entries. So, with that in mind, I’ll be doing new write-ups for the movies on both lists, trying to find something new to say about the ones I covered before. I just need to find a new angle for the chat.
For The Best Years of Our Lives, I want to look into how the film handled the postwar reintegration, or, more accurately, how the film treats the returning veterans both in the film and as characters.
I noted in the previous write-up that, in many ways,The Best Years of Our Lives has a plot that isn’t all that necessary for postwar characters. This time, I made special notice of how much the fact that Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), Al Stephenson (Frederick March), and Homer Parish (Harold Russell) were veterans actually played into the plot. It does, perhaps more than I gave the film credit for before, but I stand by my original assessment that by the time the end of the film comes along, the main plot line deals with Fred’s marriage to his terrible wife Marie (Virginia Mayo), one who would have been terrible even if Fred hadn’t been gone for the war, and a burgeoning romance with the much better match, Al’s daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright). Homer, meanwhile, is more of an agreeable guy who pops up once in a while that everyone seems to like except for that one fascist jerk in the drugstore who suggests Homer lost his hands for a bad cause when the real enemies were Great Britain and the war-happy American government as opposed to the Nazis and Imperial Japan.
In fact, it seemed to me that most of Homer’s scenes seemed to be there mostly to show how good Harold Russell was using the hooks that replaced his hands. There are some things he can’t do, but at the same time, the film shows him counting cash and putting it into a wallet that he then slips into an internal pocket of his sport jacket, signing his name, and pouring himself a glass of milk. Russell, like Homer, did lose his hands in the war, and even though he wasn’t really an actor, he gives a really winning performance here. It helps that Homer does have moments of pathos and he isn’t just an agreeable, friendly guy who even learns a bit about playing the piano with his Uncle Butch (musician and composer Hoagy Carmichael). The loss of his hands is bothering him, and it’s mostly because he doesn’t want to saddle his girlfriend Wilma (Cathy O’Donnell) with having to take care of him for the rest of her life, never mind that she clearly wants to be there for him.
It’s nice, but there was a part of me wondering why Homer was included in the film the way he was. Even as Al and Fred have a falling out over Peggy’s falling for the married Fred, something family man Al won’t stand for especially because it’s his daughter, Homer seems like an afterthought who only popped up occasionally. Was Homer there to show how a veteran who suffered such a horrendous injury could still be a productive member of society and do many of the things he used to be able to do, or is it to show off what a guy like Russell can do in a more exploitative way? I am inclined to think the former, but that didn’t mean the latter wasn’t a possibility or just something that happened unintentionally.
But as far as Al and Fred go, the two of them seem to have gotten by more or less fine. The film opens with Al’s desire to go out and get rip-roaring drunk with his wife (Myrna Loy) and daughter, but if he has a drinking problem, it is maybe implied and doesn’t appear to be much of a factor in the film. If anything, Al comes back and finds himself better off. Already a well-off banker, he gets a promotion and successfully lobbies the bank to give potentially risky loans to fellow veterans. Fred has a nightmare about the war and wakes up screaming, but that only happens on-screen the one time. Fred’s problems are more that his wife wants to live it up every night, and he’s barely getting by as a soda jerk, now working under his own former assistant, an uptight man who will not be called by his old nickname…not that I blame a grown-ass man for not wanting to be called “Stinky,” but the point stands.
As it is, I think what the film does best is show the people who understand on some level what the veterans went through or at least try to help them end up being the better characters. Al’s family–save perhaps the teenage son who more or less disappears after a few early scenes–all seem to be there to help Al and Fred, and Homer’s family, including his eventual wife Wilma, are very compassionate people. Fred’s new boss can’t or won’t offer him anything better though his job-screening process makes sense. He needs someone who can do certain jobs, and Fred doesn’t really have skills that work in a drug store aside from his old job as a soda jerk. Even the fact he was an officer doesn’t seem of much use.
OK, admittedly, I don’t know how becoming an officer worked in the time of the second World War, but it does seem odd to me that the older, better off man was a sergeant while the guy who was barely getting by was a captain. These days, my general understanding is an officer usually needs some kind of college degree or equivalent. But what do I know?
Regardless, the film also suggest veterans will look out for each other. While Fred’s former assistant ruefully says that veterans will be claiming all kinds of jobs held by people who didn’t serve in the months and years to come, when Fred finally does find work that probably suits him better, his new junk man employer was himself a veteran. Al is more than willing to bend the rules to make loans to veterans who lack collateral, and his superiors ultimately agree because he’s convincing or something.
It’s not many films that make bankers the good guys.
So, my initial assessment that this film’s plot wasn’t something that was all that dependent on the fact the three main male characters were returning veterans is perhaps not as true as I had thought, but I will say that given the main conflict is Fred married a “bad” girl in a hasty manner while a “good” girl was living just across town, that’s something that isn’t necessarily dependent on the fact he was a veteran. His problems aren’t related to his veteran status, not really. And Al? His life seems to be going all right in the end. But this was still 1946, and I suspect that the sort of film that would, say, dive deeper into PTSD or something was just not going to happen. I mean, I wasn’t expecting The Deer Hunter or anything along those lines, and this was probably a bit more revolutionary than a lot of other films on this subject might have been at this time if for no other reason than the presence of the Homer character stands out in many, generally good, ways. For all that the film might be suggesting there will be difficult adjustments made for the three veterans, it didn’t seem particularly insurmountable. Granted, this was 1946, and the idea of seeing a psychiatrist was actually considered shameful and embarrassing, so that sort of help was unlikely to be shown. But for what it is, The Best Years of Our Lives actually does a very good job of depicting what it may have been like for men coming back from the war. I know my own grandfather and some of my mom’s uncles fought in that war, and none of them really wanted to talk about it, but likewise, they fought in a different time, and this film reflects that as much as Hollywood would have been allowed to back then.
NEXT: It looks like I’m back to Akira Kurosawa again, with The Best Years of Our Lives acting as the meat in a Kurosawa Sandwich. Be back soon for 1952’s Ikiru.
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