After skipping another week - my job was annoyingly and perfectly calibrated to cause posting any of these at night to be either impractical or literally impossible - I'm back this week. And I'll have to delay my Orson Welles marathon once again, because I have once again watched an older movie that has inspired me to write about it.
In this case, it's an acknowledged classic, The Best Years of Our Lives. Unlike Freaks, which went unappreciated in its time, The Best Years of Our Lives could literally have not been more appreciated. It won seven Oscars and was the highest grossing film of the 1940s. Critical and commercial success does not even begin to describe this film's reception.
Does it hold up is the question. It was made 74 years ago - I doubt anyone reading this actually watched it in theaters when it first came out. And it tackles what was then not really that well-known. That veterans have a lot of trouble when they return home from war.
And the answer is yes and no. I'll say this for the movie: given the time period and what the movie is tackling not to mention the Hays Code, I don't actually think it was possible for this movie to hold up completely no matter what they did, given how much more knowledge we have about veterans. Like I think it holds up as well as you can reasonably expect.
I'll share my specific gripe, and while I say gripe, I don't actually know if the movie had a choice in this respect. But first, the good parts: Harold Russell. Just like Freaks, this movie benefits heavily from some serious realism and casting a man who had his hands blown off and has to function with hooks is one of the movie's greatest benefits. What's it like to come back to war with literally a part of your body missing? That's Harold Russell and the character he plays here's story.
Also, Fredric March plays Al Stephenson, and in his case, I actually think it benefits from being in 1946. Because a more modern movie would make a much bigger deal about his alcoholism. This movie just has it be a thing. It doesn't comment on it. He's just heavily drinking in just about every scene. His wife is a goddamn saint, and given that the movie doesn't cover that much time, it's reasonable to think she will have put up with it for that long - but it won't be forever.
Then there's Captain Fred Derry, played by Dana Andrews. He impulsively marries a woman 20 days before he has to leave for the war and he pays the consequences. He barely knows the woman and they run into issues pretty much immediately. And while they don't exactly make the wife particularly likable, I will say that her comment that he came back a different person is probably true and a reason for their struggles.
However, to my gripe. The romance with Stephenson's daughter, Peggy, as played by Virginia Mayo. First off, for me anyway, it gets off to a rough start. Derry is immediately aggressively pursuing her, and yes he's drunk, but he hasn't even seen his wife yet. When he's sober, he's more reticent, so you can safely blame the booze, but uh, I can tell you that if booze will so easily have him attempt to cheat on his wife, he's definitely going to cheat on Virginia Mayo at some point.
Secondly, it's very much not clear how old Peggy is supposed to be. She lives with her parents and it's at least somewhat of a surprise she's not married yet, but since this is 1946, that could very well be "she's 20." Dana Andrews looks 40, although I think he was in the late 30s and is meant to playing someone younger than that. So I spent a good portion of the movie wondering if this movie was being creepier than intended. I think this might just be a weird convergence of "Dana Andrews doesn't look young, Virginia Mayo looks young, and also I'm very used to people in Hollywood at 24 playing teenagers."
The age thing, whatever, that comes with the territory with older movies and I acknowledge I'm reading too much into it. My problem is that this movie is trying to reflect reality - and it accomplishes that with the alcoholic and Harold Russell. With Andrews, it's Hollywood. A true reflection of his story is more bleak. He impulsively married someone he didn't know, that should absolutely not have a happy ending. The romance is there purely because he needs a happy ending and for some reason, having her be Al's daughter is the most convenient for plot-reasons.
So when I say it does age well and it doesn't, that's what I mean. I think a bleaker ending for Andrews' character would have made this movie absolutely perfect. You have the purely happy ending, the marriage, the not really but seems like a happy ending with the alcoholism, and then the not so good ending. Instead the scale is off. And I get why. It was made in 1946 and I'm not even sure if director William Wyler was allowed to make a sad ending about World War II veterans because of the Hays Code.
Speaking of Wyler, he absolutely earned that Best Director win. It's a very long movie that deserves its length. He made the decision to cast non-actor, Russell, in a part for authenticity. Russell rewarded him by winning an honorary Oscar, because the Academy thought he had no shot to win, and then he won for Best Supporting Actor too, making him the only person to win two Oscars for the same movie. It's well-paced and he is able to utilize access to an abandoned strip of fighter jets late in the movie.
Gregg Toland was the cinematographer, who might be one of the greatest of all time in his field. He unfortunately died very young two years later, but he had built up quite the resume even before this movie, such as Citizen Kane and The Grapes of Wrath. He was nominated for six Oscars, winning one, but he didn't even get nominated for his work here.
All in all, like I said, I wish one of the stories got a sad ending and the most obvious route is the guy who knew his wife for two seconds before he got married, but I don't think it's realistic to expect that given the time period so it's stupid to blame them for that. And otherwise, it holds up, which is an incredible achievement by itself.
3.5/4 stars
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