Oscars Retrospective: The Best Years of Our Lives (19th Academy Awards Review)

  

The Best Years of Our Lives Suite~The Best Years of Our Lives - Hugo Friedhofer

One of the most fun aspects of taking this journey of watching every Academy Award winner, as well as whatever other major, great films came out around the same time, is discovering films that used to be highly-regarded and deemed essential classics but have since been lost to the sands of time. A lot has changed since 1946 and very few movies still endure in the popular lexicon. Some do, some that have been covered in this series, but others remain obscure to the average person, even if they were lauded in their day. It makes you wonder how many of the movies that come out today will escape the public memory in fifty years, Oscar winners or otherwise.

This brings us to The Best Years of Our Lives, a movie that was widely-considered high up there for being one of the greatest movies ever made at the time. It was the highest-grossing movie to come out since Gone With the Wind (1939) (though it didn’t come close to eclipsing the record), the highest-grossing movie of the entire decade, still remains in the top 100 highest-grossing movies of all time once adjusted for inflation and was one of the first films to be added to the Library of Congress. (The Library of Congress is one of many foundations that is devoted to the preservation of cinema as an art form. If a movie is added to the Library of Congress, that means that it’s significant enough for film scholars to decide that it should be functionally immortal. These are movies that will never get lost.)

Yet, despite all these accolades, The Best Years of Our Lives has been largely forgotten, especially compared to the movie that we’ll be talking about in the Success or Snub blog. While it was big enough in its day to clinch 7 Academy Award wins (and many more nominations), it now remains obscure compared to the likes of Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz (1939), Citizen Kane (1941), Casablanca (1942) and the Disney films.

The Best Years of Our Lives is a 3-hour-long film epic that details the intertwined lives of three soldiers who have returned home from World War II to their hometown of Boone City (which is largely based off of Cincinnati, Ohio). Captain Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) was once a respected commanding officer but now returns to work menial retail jobs and endure a loveless marriage with his childhood sweetheart, Marie (Virginia Mayo), whilst suffering PTSD nightmares. Sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March) comes from the more affluent part of town and returns to his old job as a bank manager but finds it very menial and unfulfilling after having served in the war. And Petty Officer Homer Parrish (Harold Russell), who lost both his hands and has replaced them with hooks, struggles to return to normal life despite his disability.

Harold Russell in particular seems to be the standout performance here which is even more impressive considering how he wasn’t a professional actor like the other two leads. Russell was an actual sergeant who served in WWII in the United States 13th Airborne Division and lost both of his hands to an accident while handling TNT. So, in other words, that pair of hook hands his character has aren’t props; they’re real injuries that a real man really had to live with for the rest of his life. His frustration at losing his independence whilst just trying to accomplish everyday tasks must have been easy for Russell to channel and makes his character the highlight of the movie.

The most interesting of the 3 main characters who also happens to be the one with the least amount of screentime.

Russell’s performance led to one of the most bizarre pieces of happenstance in the Academy’s history. Russell was nominated for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor but was widely considered to be a long shot to win the actual award. So, when the ceremony began, he was given an honorary Oscar for “bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans through the medium of motion pictures,” and presumably to thank him for his service to his country. When the night got to the point when the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor was announced, however, Russell ended up winning. This makes him the only person in history to win 2 Academy Awards for the same performance. (Russell would later end up selling one of the Oscars near the end of his life to help make ends meet to pay for his wife’s medical expenses. The fact that this was seen as scandalous in Hollywood circles should tell you a lot about how much worth they put in these awards versus how a war veteran who has actual needs views them. The award was bought by a private collector who then donated it to the Academy.)

For the movie itself, I think you can quickly deduce why this film was so beloved at the time. The Best Years of Our Lives is one of the first “voice of a generation” movies that come around now and then, speaking to the frustrations of the GI Generation of returning home after the war. While stories like the one portrayed in this film have been happening for several years by this point for anyone who was honorably discharged, 1946 was the first year when all the troops had finally come home and had to start readjusting.

It’s easy to see how this could become so identifiable, seeing a movie that genuinely gets how you’re feeling and put it into words. The length of time and different characters allows The Best Years of Our Lives to hit on several different aspects that veterans might have been feeling: nightmares, feeling unfulfilled or being disabled. The Best Years of Our Lives is one of those movies that if it only came out a couple years later it probably wouldn’t have made as much of an impact.

On the movie itself, this is another one of those classic films that, while I think it is good, has shown its age somewhat and that largely comes from its stylistic approach. I’m going to compare this movie to the previous year’s Pride of the Marines which is a film that I think has aged much better. Pride of the Marines is much more melodramatic and really stakes its bones in the conflict of whether or not the main character will be able to see again. He’s whiny, self-destructive and the meat of the film only takes place over the course of about a week or so. But it really keeps its focus on Private Schmid’s difficulties and doesn’t let up.

The Best Years of Our Lives, on the other hand, is a lot more realistic in its style. While it also centers on the three main characters trying to readjust to normal life, it’s much more subdued in nature. It’s just trying to show life for three guys who are back from a war. When Derry suffers PTSD nightmares, many other films of the time would show the nightmares; here, we just see him tossing and turning in his bed. When Parrish has problems holding objects, many other films would really show it, either in montage or with heavy focus on the hooks; here, we just see him getting annoyed with his hooks at times.

This kind of realistic style that you see in some Golden Age of Hollywood movies, especially ones that came out before the big Neorealist movement that took place in post-war Europe, I usually find don’t age the best. It might just be a personal preference at that point, since I didn’t like Mrs. Miniver (1942) or How Green Was My Valley (1941) either while still enjoying the movies that try to go more stylized. Though, I will give The Best Years of Our Lives credit; unlike the other two films I just mentioned, it doesn’t try to have it both ways by including movie clichés in a realistic setting. It keeps it very honest and unvarnished. It just also means that the story can feel very boring for a generation that didn’t live through World War II.

Though that’s not to say that The Best Years of Our Lives doesn’t have some style that’s worth mentioning. What this movie pioneered, and part of why it’s still respected by modern cinephiles, is the usage of deep focus. The best scene in the movie is a great moment about halfway through where Stephenson, Derry and Parrish all meet up in a bar and manage to forget about their troubles for a few moments over the piano. At some point, however, Stephenson has to take a phone call. Thus, we’re treated to a long shot wherein Stephenson is in the background talking on the phone while in the foreground, the other two blissfully play on the piano.

I can’t find a clip of this scene so this screenshot will have to do.

For those who don’t know anything about cameras, the ability to keep both the foreground and the background in focus at the same time is a very impressive feat. This also creates an interesting piece of framing as the contrast between the joy of Parrish is offset by Stephenson’s troublesome phone call. While this could be accomplished by cross-cutting, keeping them both in the same frame accomplishes the scene equally well. We see Parrish’s joy of just living in the moment dominating the frame as the burden of trouble to come lurks in the background.

While the performances are great all around and the story is a nice slice of life, the thing that brings down The Best Years of Our Lives, at least for me, is just how long it is. The movie hovers around the 3-hour mark and easily could’ve stood to trim about 30-40 minutes. I am aware that length is kind of a tricky subject to discuss in filmmaking, even to this day, as film critics and aficionados debate the worth of having a 3-hour movie. Is brevity the source of wit or is a spectacle and great story worth taking its time?

This is a discussion that we can go back and forth on but I do think it’s worth homing in on for The Best Years of Our Lives in particular, especially compared to other movies that we’ve reviewed before that I’ve also criticized for its length. At least for me, I feel a long movie can be worth it if it’s making a spectacle or has a truly great story that is worth taking the time. And The Best Years of Our Lives falls into neither of those two categories. To compare and contrast, Gone With the Wind was 4 hours but it’s transporting the audience back in time to Civil War-era Georgia and showcases the death of innocence against the fall of a way of life. The Great Ziegfeld (1936) is 3 hours but it’s a visual feast for the eyes, showcasing some of the most impressive song and dance numbers at the time. The Best Years of Our Lives is set in contemporary suburbia and shows three guys going through relationship issues. See the difference?

This is a very difficult movie to review because I should preface that this is a well-made film that did make a splash at its time and you can easily understand why it was called movie of the year but I personally am pretty ambivalent towards it. Don’t hate it, don’t love it, overall “meh” towards it. Its subject matter kinda lends itself poorly to age as well since it’s about the difficulty of readjusting to life after war and this has been done much better in later movies following far worse wars. Though I would be very curious to ask any veterans of present-day wars if they still enjoy this movie and if its portrayal of the psychology of adjusting to life after a war is timeless or comes off as dated.

In conclusion, great movie at the time, but not really worth going back to today. But could it be called movie of the year though?

In case you missed it:

1st Academy Awards (1927/28): Wings/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans: Part 1, Part 2

2nd Academy Awards (1928/29): The Broadway Melody: Part 1, Part 2

3rd Academy Awards (1929/30): All Quiet on the Western Front: Part 1, Part 2

4th Academy Awards (1930/31): Cimarron: Part 1, Part 2

5th Academy Awards (1931/32): Grand Hotel: Part 1, Part 2

6th Academy Awards (1932/33): Cavalcade: Part 1, Part 2

7th Academy Awards (1934): It Happened One Night: Part 1, Part 2

8th Academy Awards (1935): Mutiny on the Bounty: Part 1, Part 2

9th Academy Awards (1936): The Great Ziegfeld: Part 1, Part 2

10th Academy Awards (1937): The Life of Emile Zola: Part 1, Part 2

11th Academy Awards (1938): You Can't Take It With You: Part 1, Part 2

12th Academy Awards (1939): Gone With the Wind: Part 1, Part 2

13th Academy Awards (1940): Rebecca: Part 1, Part 2

14th Academy Awards (1941): How Green Was My Valley: Part 1, Part 2

15th Academy Awards (1942): Mrs. Miniver: Part 1, Part 2

16th Academy Awards (1943): Casablanca: Part 1, Part 2

17th Academy Awards (1944): Going My Way: Part 1, Part 2

18th Academy Awards (1945): The Lost Weekend: Part 1, Part 2