one of the all-time great films

Rating: Null/10 (14 February 2001)

More than two generations later it is difficult to imagine how it must have been for the men and women who had so recently won the second World War to come home to an America different from the one they had left behind a few years earlier. This cinematic classic conveys the atmosphere of that poignant time, and even those born years later will easily identify with the joys and heartaches of this homecoming.
During the war years so much of the nation's efforts were put into supporting the fighting men on the frontlines who were, quite naturally, the centre of everyone's concerns. But with the war over, and with the soldiers back out of uniform, they became once again ordinary citizens who had to make their way in life along with everyone else who had stayed behind. In many cases their lengthy absence proved a handicap. Wyler's sensitive direction captures the dilemma perfectly in the lives of the three protagonists. March is a banker who had left behind a family and returns to find his two children grown and thinking for themselves  and not always in ways with which he is comfortable. Andrews is a former soda jerk-turned-bomber who comes home to a crumbling marriage and a wife he barely knows. Russell leaves a fiancée  literally the girl next door  loses both hands in combat, and, assuming he is no longer lovable, cannot bring himself to accept her unwavering devotion.
Although none of the three had known each other before their war experience  mostly, it seems, because they came from quite different social and economic circumstances  their lives are now inextricably interwoven. The principal storyline consists, not of a single main plot with related subplots, as one might expect, but of the three skilfully interconnected subplots themselves, all of which come together in a satisfying way in the final scene. Under a lesser director this might have turned messy. But the result here is a wonderfully rich and moving film.
I've always liked Teresa Wright, whose characters invariably exude warmth and compassion and make the viewer wish she really did live next door. One hardly expects such a wholesome person to announce to her astonished parents that she intends to break up a marriage, but she makes it work. Coming from her it seems like the most logical thing in the world. Loy too has a way of being both sexy and maternal. She's exactly the sort of woman a returning GI would want to find waiting for him.
Two peculiarities do not stand the test of time very well. First, nearly everyone in this film smokes. For better or worse, if North Americans as a whole have become less puritanical about sex, they have become more so concerning tobacco use. Second, it would seem fairly evident to us now that March's character has an alcohol problem. If so, one wonders how he got through the war in one piece. In any event, making light of someone's excessive drinking would not go over very well at the beginning of a new century.
When I first saw this film I missed the name of the score composer and thought it might have been Aaron Copland. Some of the musical phrases and chord progressions seem somehow reminiscent of "Appalachian Spring." Of course, it was Hugo Friedhofer. Like the better known Copland, Friedhofer seems to capture well something of both the expansiveness and the ordinariness of the American heartland, but this time in the lives of the three GIs and their families. The music has a profound emotional appeal without becoming overly sentimental. It communicates simultaneously a nostalgia for those missed years, the unimaginable joy at being home again, and the bittersweet feeling of trying desperately to fit in and make up for lost time.
This is, in short, very nearly a flawless film well worth multiple viewings.