Best Years Of Our Lives

Year: 1946

Grade: B+

Country: USA

Director: Wyler

Review

a damn good movie. cinematically the most prominent feature of the film was the deep focus. there were several scenes where critical action occured in both the front and rear of the frame. the film wasn’t just bells and whistles though, actually it was quite the contrary. it has the second best wedding scene that i can remember in film (the best belonging to the finale of the graduate, of course). and it told a great story about what, in a lot of ways, was a very great time for our country. there are a lot of impacting and affecting scenes and i think that they succeed because the filmmakers kept things as truthful as possible. there are countless memorable and affecting scenes…the wedding scene, the scene where homer shows wilma what it’s like preparing for bed without and hands, fred’s parents reading his letters of commendation, etc. sure the music swells and you know you’re supposed to be feeling something, but as happens in casablanca, we are affected because something touches us, not because the we are told to. each sympathetic character is a real person, with inner conflicts and feelings and that is what adds to the depth of, and our love for, the person. my one complaint might be that while the sympathetic characters were lifelike, the villians of the film were not. fred’s wife, marie, was basically a cardboard cutout of a money-grubbing wannabe socialite. the man who spoke out against the war at the soda bar was also treated rather plainly. good filmmaking and storytelling aside, this film acts as a valuable historical document. if i were a history teacher and i wanted to show a film to segue from WWII to the post-war prosperity, this would be it. not only does it show what we were like as a society at the time, but it provides a good contrast to the post-vietnam era when veterans were spit on and shunned. a necessary film.