The Best Years of Our Lives (1946): Shira's Take

Another William Wyler WWII movie. Unlike Mrs. Miniver, though, Best Years followed the intertwining stories of three men who fought in the war (one by sea, one by land, and one by air) coming home to their very different lives. Homer Parrish (played by Howard Russell, who truly was a double-amputee and who Wyler recruited after seeing him in an army training film) has lost his hands, and with them, he assumes, any possibility at a normal life. Frederic March won an Oscar for best actor as Al Stephenson, and my only complaint about that fact is that he was such an underdeveloped character. Aside from telling the viewer he is a drunk and doesn't want his daughter to be a homewrecker, the film really doesn't allow us inside Al's head. The only really great Al-related scene was one in which he is being honored at work (a bank) for being a veteran soon after being criticized for having given a loan to a man with no collateral. He has (according to a tally taken by his wife, Milly, played by Myrna Loy) five drinks under his belt when he gives a speech, saying that a Major during the war told his platoon to take a hill, and Al said in response that the risk is too sufficient to take without the proper collateral. "So we didn't take the hill and we lost the war." Seeing the change in Milly from disappointment at his public drunkenness to pride at his strong morals is really great.

Now we acknowledge the most prevalent, and, in many ways, most annoying plot within the movie. Teresa Wright (also in Mrs. Miniver and still very cute with a smart-beyond-her-years charm) plays Al's daughter, Peggy. She falls in love with the third man coming home from the war, the married Fred Derry. Fortunately, he's married to satan in blonde hair, so we get to see their marriage unravel and Fred and Peggy end up together. But the real problem is, though in the war Fred truly earned everything adorning his air force jacket, he comes home and is still just a soda jerk or construction worker at best. I don't mind, of course, that the nice girl with the rich father marries the guy who got fired from his job at the local pharmacy. I do mind that their interest in each other seems completely fabricated and lame. Still, this was an all-around good movie. Very entertaining throughout, with good acting all around. 8/10