Happy Days

Rating: Null/10 (5 November 2012)

Regarded by William Wyler fans as one of the director's best films, "The Best Years of Our Lives" is a fine but somewhat over-long melodrama which charters the lives of three American military servicemen who struggle with post-war civilian readjustment. The film pre-dates "The Men", a similar film by Fred Zinnemann and starring Marlon Brando, by almost four years.
Our trio of veterans are Fred Derry, Homer Parrish and Al Stephenson, all of whom return from WW2 to their homes in Boone City, Ohio. The men belong to different military branches (Airforce, Army, Navy) and different social strata. Their early scenes are powerful. Wyler watches as the trio, who've never met one another before, share a military transport plane back home. Their journey takes them over an airfield packed with hundreds of disused aircraft, the machines discarded and dilapidated, echoing their own bodies. Later they fly over cities, towns and the American corn-belt; normalcy looks so far away from up here.
The trio struggle to readjust to civilian life. Derry's wife no longer loves him and he resents his new job. Homer has it even worse. He's lost both hands in the war and now uses a pair of augmented hooks. Ashamed of these hooks, much of the film watches as Homer's family and sweetheart struggle to accept his disfigurement. Interestingly, Homer's played by Harold Russell, a real life veteran who really did lose his hands in the war. The film somewhat exploits him, too proud of Harold's hooks, his mutilated body, even as Wyler warmly bring us close to the kid. But a little goes a long way. While early scenes with Homer are powerful, by the 90 minute mark Wyler has lingered salaciously on these hooks far too long, treating them more as a special effect, novelty icon or freak show attraction.
The film's last subplot involves Al Stephenson. He's given a job at a bank but is reprimanded because of his over eagerness to grant loans to retuning soldiers. But rather than fire him, Stephenson's boss compassionately schools the veteran; he teaches Stephenson how to properly function in the workplace.
All three veterans are thus presented as outsiders (early shots show them sitting in B-17 observation bubbles, taxi cabs or dark corners, always cut off from others) who eventually learn that others are willing to accept them. The trio's perception that they are "no good" (Derry), that their masculinity has been shattered (Homer), that they are too old or out of touch (Stephenson), is thus shown to be "all in their head". Veterans, in other words, are accepted by all, it's up to them to accept themselves.
The film was praised in the 40s and later by a whole new generation of critics in the 60s and 70s, for "deglamourising war" and pointing out how servicemen are effectively "used, mauled and discarded by the state." Overall, however, it's a very comforting film. Wyler's tone is one of piety, state, military and family units are all shown to be reassuring and willing to lend helping hands, America combs over its scars and moves on, family and work life go on uninterrupted and all problems are solved with relative ease. Wyler goes into some dark terrain – he came back from the war a wounded man and was determined to get this film right – but mostly reassures; roll up your sleeves and get back to business.
The film sports some superb black-and-white cinematography by Gregg Toland. Its structure is also interesting – first act: men as outsiders observing the inside, second act: women as outsiders shut off from and watching men, third act: men and woman sharing the same conciliatory space – and works well whenever Wyler's not laying on thick domestic melodrama. The film ends powerfully at an aircraft scrapyard.
8/10 – Worth one viewing. See the similarly ironically titled "The Lucky Ones" and "Paths of Glory".