well written, acted, designed, directed, shot, edited and scored

Rating: 9/10 (25 February 2007)

A daring film in an old-fashioned way: rather than flout social convention for shock value, this picture risks absurdity by its very wholesomeness. It lives and breathes Americana and celebrates the most obvious of values. Its greatest asset is blatancy. And yet it is a very, very good movie.
"The Best Years of Our Lives" succeeds at dramatic hokum that Capra and Spielberg would find difficult. The wedding scene is preposterous: Harold Russell has to put the ring on Cathy O'Donnell's finger, a delicate operation with brutal-looking hooks; she's terrified he'll drop it; her parents are against the wedding anyway; Dana Andrews has his back but he's on the skids himself - and the sailor not only performs, but soothes Wilma's trembling hand with his grim prosthetic. This should not work. This should be ridiculous. But the thrill is genuine, because the trick is delivered with an absolutely straight face. We're watching a moment that is essentially mundane, executed with grace and simple efficiency, and we realize a kind of zen. There is only this moment, and this moment can be beautiful.
Beyond its politics, the picture has technical excellence of various stripe, and many of the scenes are so well constructed as to transcend genre and propaganda. The slow rekindling of Frederic March and Myrna Loy's love and faith, from drunken jitters on his first night home to the hopeful center of the movie by the third act, is as human and believable a story as Hollywood had produced by 1946, heroically realized by William Wyler, Robert E. Sherwood and the two actors. The bedroom scenes hum with nervous exhilaration. When March, fed-up and drunk, starts to blunder his way through a business dinner, then pulls off a crashing victory of a speech, it's not just the high-wire act that amazes: it's word, gesture, nuance, angle, a confluence of competencies. This movie is a little like the San Francisco 49ers of the 1980s - everybody's on top of his game, nobody's too flashy, and so the vehicle inexorably gains one advantage after another.
Myrna Loy gives one of the choicest readings of a brilliant career, enjoying dialogue that seems written for her alone of all the actresses in the world. March never was more complex and true. Dana Andrews surprises with his range and gravity; the ingénues are sweet and sympathetic; and what one might have thought was a sympathy Oscar for Harold Russell turns out to be the reward for a supporting performance akin to the best of Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen or Wallace Beery.