Post-War Angst Comes to Smalltown, USA.

Rating: 10/10 (18 December 2005)

Thirty years prior to THE DEER HUNTER came this movie, an excellent meditation on the effects of war inflicted on the American family as seen from both the war heroes and their wives. A truly ironic title, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES is anything but since those times have vanished into still images and all that is left is an uncertain future for those involved.
Truly an ensemble cast despite the top-billing of Myrna Loy, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES focuses more on the stories of the men. Al Stephenson (Fredric March) comes back to a household that has irrevocably changed as his sons have grown although he finds support from his doting wife Milly (Myrna Loy). Fred Derry, upon returning, cannot find a decent job despite being a war veteran and is trapped in a marriage that he does not want to Marie, a happy-go-lucky girl who wants more out of life and who increasingly comes to hate him. Homer Parrish, on the other hand, has greater problems due to his loss of hands at war and feels the entire world -- including the girl he loves and her family -- thinks he is a freak of nature.
At almost three hours of length, the film never seems long and drawn out. There is so much emotions happening even in small moments that the plot breezes by; nothing seems wasted or placed on screen due to a lack of editing. Not a performance rings false, though the standouts are those of Dana Andrews as Fred Derry, Harold Russell as Homer Parrish and Virginia Mayo as Marie Derry. Even then every character has his or her moment on film, and the time was right to talk about all the pain and suffering that until then had not been seen in American films (including the ones made around World War One, which did not dabble in such topics). While there is never any overt violence, it's all there, in the haunted expressions of the three male leads' faces, in the lot where the planes now reside, ready to be turned into junk (and therefore, forgetfulness), in the cynicism of the store owners who couldn't be bothered to employ these shell-shocked men who had seen battle or even worse, to goad them into wondering what was it all worth for. This is the film in which COMING HOME and BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY are indebted to. At a time when America fled from war films, to come up with this when the end of the Second World War was still fresh was a necessity in order to make a more honest film-making.