Homer Parrish (played by Harold Russell): “I was afraid you wouldn't be able to stand up for me.”
Fred
Derry (played by
Dana Andrews): “I'd stand up for you, kid, till I drop.”— The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), screenplay by Robert E.
Sherwood based on the novel Glory for Me by
MacKinlay Kantor, directed by William Wyler
The
Best Years of Our Lives won
seven Oscars (including Best Picture) and was the most successful American film
since Gone With the Wind seven years
before. In contrast to the Civil War epic, William Wyler’s film concentrates
wholly on the aftermath of WWII, through three soldiers suffering, in one form
or another, dislocation as they re-adjust to civilian life.
The men’s alienation from their environment is enormous.
It’s not just that they themselves have been changed by their experiences
abroad, but the home front has been altered in ways that profoundly discomfort
them. Al (played by Fredric March, far right in the picture) finds his job at
his bank, once so important, now utterly meaningless. Homer (played by Russell, an actual disabled vet),
burnt during an attack at sea, wonders if his fiancée will stay with him
because of their prewar love or because she pities his prosthetic hooks. And
Dana Andrews’ Fred may face the most complicated set of emotions: a wife who he
discovers really doesn’t love him, his old job as a soda jerk that offers no
advancement, and nightmares that remind him of his terrors as a bomber pilot.
Al, Homer and Fred are so different that there is a
real question whether they would co-exist in the same realm under normal
circumstances. But the war was anything but normal. Their experiences have so
seared them that they must reach out to each other for support amid a world
that, no matter how hard it tries, cannot imagine what they have endured. I can’t
think of a better film to watch this Veterans Day.
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