“The Best Years of Our Lives”—one of Hollywood’s best

Spencer Warren writes:

The Best Years of Our Lives is on TCM tonight at 8 p.m. It is liberal on some of the economic issues of the day and was written by Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt’s speechwriter. What would interest VFR readers is the three veterans’ sentiments upon returning home—a concrete place of family and community. When their B-17 flying them home takes off from their U.S. return point, Dana Andrews suggests the three move into the nose, “where we can get a nice view of the good old USA.” (Do people talk like this anymore?) At night we see their view of the road lights down below, as if they are flying by road map.

Then the memorable sequence as the aircraft reaches their mid-America Boone City. As the B-17 begins its descent, they look down on “good old Jackson High” and the golf course, where “people are playing golf, just as if nothing had ever happened.” The next sequence has them in the back of their taxi, as each smilingly looks out at the places they longed for during their years of war service: the ball park (Beavers baseball team still in second division), main street, Woolworth’s, the hamburger stand, the diner, the fire company (not sure on this one), a young mother pushing her baby along in a stroller, Butch’s—the local hangout with its “new neon sign.”

In addition to the sentiments expressed, there is the point that these specific places are vanishing in the suburbanized America of the past six decades. Maybe that has been part of the problem for traditionalism.

If this film were made today, would the three returning veterans instead be admiring all the “diversity” along the highway strip that has replaced main street? Would they be enthusing about how glad they were to be returning to our “good old democracy and all its growing multiculturalism”?

Another thought, stimulated by the comment about the golf course above, is that World War II was total war. America was at its best. In light of Vietnam and now Iraq, we should be discussing the fairness and efficacy of fighting limited wars, by which I mean “limited” so as to exclude the home front from any sacrifice or really any kind of involvement. Such “limited” wars may make fierce domestic partisanship and division, which are greatly weakening our country, inevitable.

These are just some thoughts stimulated by this truly great and timeless film. Timeless, but also a time capsule of 1945 America.

—end of initial entry—

Mr. Warren continues:

Another thought is that this film exemplifies how Hollywood used to memorialize the quotidian, traditional society, the same quotidian for the past four decades it has been relentlessly assaulting.

If you google YouTube, best years of our lives, and go near the end, you can view part of the scene where the character actor Ray Teal, at the luncheonette counter, tells Harold Russell that he lost his hands for nothing, because “radicals in Washington” tricked us into the war to save the “Limeys and the Reds.” I think of Ray Teal playing Pat Buchanan in that scene! (Here Sherwood obviously is taking his shots at FDR’s enemies!)

Teal was a tiny bit player until this part—in which he really is a great louse. Thereafter he got good character parts. Wyler used him again as the sheriff in The Desperate Hours. Later he played the sheriff on TV in Bonanza. He also was a stalwart of Westerns in the fifties.

Watching the clips on YouTube one notes how Dana Andrews wears a tie working behind lunch counter. Harold Russell is just stopping in to say hello, dressed in a jacket and tie. And Teal has his big fedora on throughout the scene.

I love this film very much, not least the magnificent musical score by Hugo Friedhofer. Goldwyn liked to use Alfred Newman, but he was tied up at Fox, where he was music director. So Newman said give Friedhofer a chance—he was an orchestrator for Korngold and Steiner at Warners. I like that story. And Friedhofer belted a long homer, justly winning the Oscar for his first score. I have a wonderful stereo recording issued in 1979, also now on CD.

Mr. Warren adds:

Another point concerns your observation of how films used to have a sense of objective space in which the characters interacted. This is especially true in Best Years. Gregg Toland’s deep-focus photography, which he used in Citizen Kane and only a few other films, gives the film a different look from the flatter appearance of Hollywood films. With Wyler’s long takes (even longer than the norm at the time), this gives the film an unusual verisimilitude.

LA replies:

Here are two VFR entries where I discuss how super-closeups have destroyed a normal sense of space, human character, and human interaction in the movies of recent years:

The tragic war with Mordor (on “The Return of the King”)

How ethnic profiling led to the arrest of a serial murderer (about the movie, “Out of the Darkness”)

Vincent Chiarello writes:

Spencer Warren has provided the details of what makes The Best Years of Our Lives such a compelling movie. There are others that, to me at least, can also be so categorized: Shane, for example, which riveted me in my seat, (admission was 15 cents), and was so enthralling that I returned the next day with my father to watch the George Stevens’s cinematic production of Jack Schaeffer’s novel once again. And with Alfred Newman’s sonorous “Call of the Far Away Hills” as the musical background, coupled with the Grand Teton setting, the movie has remained one of my all-time favorites.

LA has, correctly, I believe, also pointed to the Astaire/Rogers musicals of the 1930’s as similarly delightful cinematic productions. Each time I see that duo dance, I am further convinced that such talent is God given—with, perhaps, a little help from a very demanding director. Say what you will about the talents of Mr. Astaire, Ginger Rogers was a very talented lady, and lovely, to boot. But to return to The Best Years…

Of particular interest to me is one of Mr. Warren’s comment about “The Best Years…”: during World War II, the U.S. waged “total war” against its enemies. Not since has that happened, and not since, although we have been engaged in “police actions” in Korea, preventing a “domino” effect by stopping communism in Vietnam, and fighting “the war on terror” in Iraq, have we declared “war” on the enemy. Except for one family I know who lost their son, I know of no one who has been even mildly inconvenienced by the Iraqi incursion. I am concerned that, Victor Davis Hanson to the contrary, we are developing a mercenary army, whose job it will be to police the nether parts of the budding American Empire. But this is America in 2007, not the America of 1945, which was so successfully captured in The Best Years of Our Lives. That America was secure in its position, mindful of its obligations to its returning veterans, confident of its future, and, to a nine year old, a wonderful place to live.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 08, 2007 04:24 PM | Send