The Best Years of Our Lives Review

Samuel Goldwyn commissioned it after reading a Time article about veterans struggling at home, and William Wyler, who had flown combat missions over Europe making Memphis Belle, directed it with a returning soldier's impatience for fakery. He cast Harold Russell, a veteran who had lost both hands in service and had never acted, as the sailor Homer, and the scene in which Homer shows the girl next door what happens when the hooks come off at bedtime is one of the most quietly devastating in American film.

Gregg Toland's deep focus does the storytelling André Bazin wrote about: in the bar, Homer and his uncle play the piano up front while Fred makes the call that matters from a phone booth at the back. Fredric March won the Oscar as the banker who drinks, Dana Andrews gives his best performance as the bombardier back behind a soda fountain, and Myrna Loy makes a good marriage look like the work it is. Russell won two Oscars for the one role.

Pauline Kael found it schematic, and at 172 minutes the three stories resolve a shade too neatly. The details carry it, like Fred walking through a field of bombers awaiting scrap, shot among real surplus aircraft. It won seven Oscars including Best Picture.