| The Best Years of Our Lives | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
|
| Directed by | William Wyler |
| Produced by | Samuel Goldwyn |
| Written by | Robert E. Sherwood MacKinlay Kantor |
| Starring | Fredric March Myrna Loy Dana Andrews Teresa Wright Virginia Mayo Harold Russell |
| Music by | Hugo Friedhofer |
| Cinematography | Gregg Toland |
| Editing by | Daniel Mandell |
| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
| Release date(s) | November 21, 1946 |
| Running time | 172 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $2.1 million |
| Box office | $23,650,000[1] |
The Best Years of Our Lives is a 1946 American drama film directed by William Wyler, and starring Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, and Harold Russell, a United States paratrooper who lost both hands in a military training accident. The film is about three United States servicemen trying to piece their lives back together after coming home from World War II. Samuel Goldwyn was inspired to produce a film about veterans after reading an August 7, 1944 article in Time magazine about the difficulties experienced by men returning to civilian life. Goldwyn hired former war correspondent MacKinlay Kantor to write a screenplay. His work was first published as a novella, Glory for Me, which Kantor wrote in blank verse.[2][3] Robert Sherwood then adapted the novella as a screenplay.[3]
The Best Years of Our Lives won seven Academy Awards in 1946, including Best Picture, Best Director (William Wyler), Best Actor (Frederic March), Best Supporting Actor (Harold Russell), Best Film Editing (Daniel Mandell), Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert Sherwood), and Best Original Score (Hugo Friedhofer).[4] In addition to its critical success, the film quickly became a great commercial success upon release. It became the highest grossing film in both the United States and UK since the release of Gone with the Wind. It remains the sixth most attended film of all time in the UK, with over 20 million tickets sold.[5] The film had one of the highest viewing figures of all time, with ticket sales exceeding $20.4 million.[6]
Contents |
After World War II, Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), Homer Parrish (Harold Russell), and Al Stephenson (Fredric March) meet while flying home to Boone City, a fictional Midwestern city, resembling Cincinnati, Ohio.[2] Fred was a decorated Army Air Forces captain and bombardier with the Eighth Air Force in Europe, who still suffers from nightmares of combat. Homer lost both hands from burns suffered when his aircraft carrier was sunk, and now uses mechanical hook prostheses. Al served as an infantry platoon sergeant in the 25th Infantry Division in the Pacific.
Before the war, Al was a bank loan officer. He is a mature man with a loving family and comfortable home: Wife Milly (Myrna Loy), adult daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright), and college freshman son Rob. Al has trouble readjusting to civilian life, as do his two new acquaintances, and is showing signs of alcoholism.
Before the war, Fred had been an unskilled drugstore soda jerk. He does not want to return there but cannot find a better job. Fred had met Marie (Virginia Mayo) while in training and married her shortly afterward, before shipping out less than a month later. Marie became a night club waitress while Fred was overseas, and does not enjoy now being married to a soda jerk.
Homer was a football quarterback and had become engaged to Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell) before the Navy. Both Homer and his parents now have trouble dealing with his disability. He does not want to burden Wilma with a handicapped man so pushes her away, although she adjusts best to his changed life.
Peggy meets Fred while bringing her father home from a bar where the three men meet. They are attracted to each other, and Peggy dislikes Marie, believing she is shallow. Peggy tells her parents she intends to end Fred and Marie's marriage, but they tell her that their own marriage overcame similar problems. To protect Peggy, Al asks Fred to stop contacting his daughter. Fred does so, but doing so damages the two men's friendship.
At Fred's drugstore an obnoxious customer, who says that the war was fought against the wrong enemies, gets into a fight with Homer and Fred, who loses his job. Fred discovers his wife with another veteran (Steve Cochran). Marie tells him:
I gave up the best years of my life, and what have you done? You flopped! Couldn't even hold that job at the drugstore. So I'm going back to work for myself and that means I'm gonna live for myself too. And in case you don't understand English, I'm gonna get a divorce.
Fred decides to leave town, and gives his father his medals and citations, saying that they were "passed out with the K-rations." After Fred leaves, his father reads the citation for Fred's Distinguished Flying Cross, and learns of his son's heroism. At the airport Fred books space on the first outbound plane, not caring about the destination. He wanders into a vast aircraft boneyard. Inside the nose of a B-17, he begins to relive intense memories of combat. The boss of a work crew interrupts him. Fred had thought of the aircraft as unwanted debris to be thrown away, like him. When the crew chief says the aluminum is being salvaged to build housing, Fred persuades the boss to hire him.
Homer bluntly demonstrates to Wilma how hard life with him would be, but when Wilma makes it clear that she loves him anyway, he gives in and agrees to marry her. Now divorced, Fred is Homer's best man at the wedding. He later approaches Peggy and holds her. He says that it might be years before their lives become comfortable. She smiles and they embrace.
|
|
Casting brought together established stars as well as character actors and relative unknowns. Famed drummer Gene Krupa was seen in archival footage, while Tennessee Ernie Ford, later a famous television star, appeared as an uncredited "hillbilly singer" (in the first of his only three film appearances). At the time the film was shot, Ford was unknown as a singer. He worked in San Bernardino as a radio announcer-disc jockey. Blake Edwards, later notable as a film producer and director, appeared fleetingly as an uncredited "Corporal". Actress Judy Wyler was cast in her first role in her father's production.
Additional uncredited cast members include Mary Arden, Al Bridge, Harry Cheshire, Joyce Compton, Heinie Conklin, Clancy Cooper, Claire Du Brey, Tom Dugan, Edward Earle, Billy Engle, Pat Flaherty, Stuart Holmes, John Ince, Teddy Infuhr, Robert Karnes, Joe Palma, Leo Penn, Jack Rice, Suzanne Ridgeway, Ralph Sanford and John Tyrrell.[7]
Director William Wyler had flown combat missions over Europe in filming Memphis Belle (1944) and worked hard to get accurate depictions of the combat veterans he had encountered.
For The Best Years of Our Lives, he asked the principal actors to purchase their own clothes, in order to connect with daily life and produce an authentic feeling. Other Wyler touches included constructing life-size sets, which went against the standard larger sets that were more suited to camera positions. The impact for the audience was immediate, as each scene played out in a realistic, natural way.[8]
The movie began filming on April 15, 1946 at a variety of locations, including the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, Ontario International Airport, Ontario, California, Raleigh Studios, Hollywood and the Samuel Goldwyn/Warner Hollywood Studios.[8] Many scenes were also filmed in Phoenixville, PA, most notably the banking scenes using the Farmers and Mechanics Bank located on Main Street and various other scenes showing Bridge Street and Main Street in Phoenixville, PA. The Best Years of Our Lives is notable for cinematographer Gregg Toland's use of deep focus photography, in which objects both close to and distant from the camera are in sharp focus.[9] For the passage of Fred Derry's reliving a combat mission while sitting in the remains of a former bomber, Wyler used "zoom" effects to simulate an aircraft's taking off.[10]
The "Jackson High" football stadium seen early in the movie in aerial footage was Corcoran Stadium, the home of Xavier University's (Cincinnati) football team from 1929 to 1973.
After the war, the combat aircraft featured in the film were being destroyed and disassembled for reuse as scrap material. The scene of Derry's walking among aircraft ruins was filmed at the Ontario Army Air Field in Ontario, California. The former training facility had been converted into a scrap yard, housing nearly 2,000 former combat aircraft in various states of disassembly.[8]
Big-band jazz drummer Gene Krupa briefly appears in a montage of nightclub performers.
Upon its release, the film received extremely positive reviews from critics. Shortly after its premiere at the Astor Theater, New York, Bosley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, hailed the film as a masterpiece. He wrote,
It is seldom that there comes a motion picture which can be wholly and enthusiastically endorsed not only as superlative entertainment but as food for quiet and humanizing thought... In working out their solutions Mr. Sherwood and Mr. Wyler have achieved some of the most beautiful and inspiring demonstrations of human fortitude that we have had in films."[11]
He also said the ensemble casting gave the "'best' performance in this best film this year from Hollywood."
A contemporary critic, Dave Kehr, wrote,
The film is very proud of itself, exuding a stifling piety at times, but it works as well as this sort of thing can, thanks to accomplished performances by Fredric March, Myrna Loy, and Dana Andrews, who keep the human element afloat. Gregg Toland's deep-focus photography, though, remains the primary source of interest for today's audiences."[9]
David Thomson offers tempered praise: "I would concede that Best Years is decent and humane... acutely observed, despite being so meticulous a package. It would have taken uncommon genius and daring at that time to sneak a view of an untidy or unresolved America past Goldwyn or the public."[12] Manny Farber called it "a horse-drawn truckload of liberal schmaltz."[13][14]
In July 2010, the film has a 97% "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 36 reviews.[15] The film enjoys a 100% "Fresh" rating on the site's "Top Critics" section, based on 8 reviews. Chicago Sun Times film critic Roger Ebert put the film on his "Great Movies" list in 2007, calling it "...modern, lean, and honest."[16]
The film was a massive popular success. When box office prices are adjusted for inflation, it remains one of the top 100 grossing films in U.S. history. Among films released before 1950, only Gone With the Wind, The Bells of St. Mary's and four Disney titles have done more total business, in part due to later re-releases. (Reliable box office figures for certain early films such as Birth of a Nation and Charlie Chaplin's comedies are unavailable.) [17]
1947 Academy Awards
The film received seven Academy Awards. Fredric March won his second Best Actor award (after winning in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). (Dana Andrews' brilliant performance turned out to be overshadowed by the acclaim Fredric March and Harold Russell received.)
Despite his Oscar-nominated performance, Harold Russell was not a professional actor. As the Academy Board of Governors considered him a long shot to win, they gave him an honorary award "for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance". When Russell won Best Supporting Actor, there was an enthusiastic response. He is the only actor to have received two Academy Awards for the same performance. He later sold one of the awards for $50,000, first claiming it was to pay his wife's medical bills. Later he said it was to pay for a cruise for her.[18] He often quipped, "I can pick up anything but the check!"
| Award | Result | Winner |
|---|---|---|
| Best Motion Picture | Won | Samuel Goldwyn Productions (Samuel Goldwyn, Producer) |
| Best Director | Won | William Wyler |
| Best Actor | Won | Fredric March |
| Best Writing (Screenplay) | Won | Robert E. Sherwood |
| Best Supporting Actor | Won | Harold Russell |
| Best Film Editing | Won | Daniel Mandell |
| Best Music (Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture) | Won | Hugo Friedhofer |
| Best Sound Recording | Nominated | Gordon E. Sawyer Winner was John P. Livadary - The Jolson Story |
| Honorary Award | Won | To Harold Russell |
1947 Golden Globe Awards
1948 BAFTA Awards
Other wins
In 1989, the National Film Registry selected it for preservation in the United States Library of Congress as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
American Film Institute recognition
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Going My Way |
Academy Award winner for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor | Succeeded by Ben-Hur |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||
|
|||||||||||