subscribe to this page
Call#: Van Pelt Library D743.23 .D63 1993
Doherty creates a social, historical and cultural context to better understand the production environment in 1946, of which The Best Years of Our Lives could be considered a consequence. Wyler, himself a veteran of the war, sought not to create a classical, heroic depiction of decorated servicemen’s celebrated and joyous return home, but rather, an honest film with rife with social and cultural implications. Rather than giving audiences an idyllic and glorified portrayal of the return home, he recreated the difficult readjustment of veterans back into their “normal lives” at home. That the film was met with wild success is a testament to Doherty’s argument that the postwar American audience found a deeper meaning in film, and sought it as a tool not to escape from, but to address social problems.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.U65 C495 2006
For Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), the masculinity associated with his uniform plays an integral role in his relationship with his wife Marie (Virginia Mayo), who has only known him as an Air Force Captain. This masculinity is what draws Marie to Fred, and she insists he continue wearing the uniform despite his attempts to adjust into civilian life. Military uniform also plays an important role in Fred’s story because of what it represents, which is a glamorous life much separated from his working class existance. Fred himself seeks masculinity through maintaining remnants of his uniform, such as his bomber jacket, especially during a meeting with the upper class Al Stephenson. In this scene, the prestige associated with Al’s civilian suit is countered with the prestige associated with Fred’s Air Force bomber jacket, demonstrating the importance of uniform in equating their masculine status in different domains.
Beidler also examines how the use of cinematography serves make The Best Years of Our Lives as true to life as possible. Most notabely, he delineates the production of “democratic shots,” in which innovative camera techniques allow for the focusing on all subjects and actions taking place in a given scene, allowing the audience to decide what to focus on. These “democratic shots” that encompass all action taking place within a given scene also lend the film the feeling of a home video. This point in particular is emphasized in the wedding scene at the end, where the guests’ mingling beforehand, the feeling of close quarters and sense of intimacy in Homer’s family’s small living room and anticipation of the bride are all conveyed through the filming. These insights into efforts to humanize the film and make it as accessible to audiences as possible plays a large role in understanding how the film was able to suceed in allowing people to relate to it, from plot to prop to filming. These less obvious qualities of the film, though small, contribute to audience’s ability to connect with it and its message, rendering it an effective tool in remembering of Word War II, specifically the profound way it changed everything.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1998.A3 G67 1976
In this book Marx examines the life of Samuel Goldwyn, the Polish immigrant who became one of the most influential producers in film. Chapter 23 focues The Best Years of Our Lives, which won Goldwyn an Oscar. Through its entertaining anecdotal narrative, Marx follows the story of film, which began as an idea that came to Goldwyn as he read an article in Time in 1944 documenting the difficult transition many returning soldiers went through upon their return home. Goldwyn then called upon MacKinlay Kantor, a novelist, to turn the idea into a novel, which he would then adapt into a screenplay. Kantor delivered a short novel called Glory for Me about three men coming back to face civilian life in blank verse, which Goldwyn hated and wrote off as a loss.
It wasn't until Willy Wyler, who in the war, returned that the idea of making a film based on Glory for Me was revisited. Wyler wanted to make a film about the war, and he and writer Bob Sherwood adapted the novel to a screenplay. Goldwyn was never an ardent supporter of the film, and was ready to halt its production at many points. It was not until he consulted the Audience Research Institute (ARI), which gauged the American theatergoer's interest in a film, and received very positive results that he threw his support behind the film. The result was a wildly successful film which enjoyed great success.
This story gives insight to the studio-based methods of production of 1946, before the Paramount Decision, and to the postwar movie-making atmosphere. Goldwyn's doubts initally plagued the production of this film, as he was unsure if a serious, socially critical film was what American audiences really wanted to see after the war. The response he received from the ARI raises the ever-present issue of the divide between what audiences want to see and what Hollywood thinks they want to see. This response represents the readiness of American society to address the problems that postwar life created in 1946. The ability of Goldwyn, Wyler and Sherwood to capture the clearly struck a chord with the American public that wanted to confront the social issues of the day rather than sweep them under a rug.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1995.9.H5 C36 1997
In this book Kenneth Cameron goes through the 20th century, attempting to create an appropriate historical and cultural context for the film produced in each decade. Of particular interest in the chapter entitlted “1940-49: Good War, New World.” Cameron claims that despite war, the forties produced a wide variety of films that were difficult to analyze. Some generalizations he was able to draw were between films made before 1942 and those after 1946. Particularly, the movies made after 1946 and the end of the war tended to be more forward-looking and socially contemplative. Cameron sites The Beginning or the End? as a film that confonts the moral issues of the day, particularly the decision to drop the atomic bomb and its implications. He also praises Pride of the Marines for counterring the prevailing attitude of portraying war as glorious. Though limited by the Production Code, it attempted to reveal the harsh realities of war, in addition to difficult subject of a returning veteran who suffered an injury that made him blind.
Though The Best Years of Our Lives is never explicitly mentioned in the chapter, one can easily see how it fits into Cameron’s perception of what films were trying to do after the war. Rather than a nostalgic and glorious rendition of the return of war heroes, it examines the lives of three more or less ordinary men, who in their diverstity represent the socio-economic and age spectrum. The film concerns itself not with their heroes’ reception, but with the difficulties and harsh realities to adjusting to life at home, accompanied by alcoholism, adultery, ostracism, and alienation. It is also a socially conscious film, containing cultural critique and commentary in its exploration of questions such, should we have dropped the bomb?, or, did we really fight the good war? Though patriotic in nature, the film does not shy away from interjecting the varying ideas of Americans regarding the war.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN56.W3 V57 1992
This book examines the portrayal of the war at different stages in books and movies of the time, and draws a correllation between the movie and the purpose it was considered to serve. In the essay “New Heroes: Post-War Hollywood’s Image of World War II,” Philip Landon strives to characterize the common war film of postwar period. He claims that “war films of that time shared a myth essentially similar to the western,” films that lacked critical acclaim due to their uniformity and generic context in portraying the war. As Paul Fussell wrote, “Hollywood shared the mass media’s aversion to examining the actual horrors of the War’s mechanized battle fronts.” The attempts of these war films were not to push any limits as far as conventions, depth and complexity of story, and level of provocation, but rather sought to create a “mythic hero remarkably well-suited to the mood and circumstances of post-war America,” as it was perceived by the studios.
This observation raises an interesting point touched upon in the biography of Samuel Goldwyn. During the war, Hollywood naturally made heroic war tales to instill sentiments of hope and pride in American citizens. However, Hollywood generally tended to apply this same belief to the immediate post-war period, Goldwyn included. Any actual dramatic portrayal of the war and its negative effects was considered a risky bet, especially casting a real-life double amputee with hooks for hands. But as the ARI analysis and the film's wild success both demonstrated, Americans were no longer disillusioned about the war, and in some way, shape or form, were seeking an outlet for this. The war had profound and negative effects on their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons who brought these effects home with them. The ability of The Best Years of Our Lives to translate the true-to-life experiences of returning veterans from all ages and socio-economic levels to film was groundbreaking at the time, and was what the American public wanted to see.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1995.62 .L4 2001
This book deals with Joseph Breen, head of the Production Code Administration, his interpretation and strict adherence to the Production Code, and the effect it had on the film industry at the time. The Production Code was a set of guidleines governing the production and content of motion pictures, spelling out what was and was not considered morally acceptable in film. Adopted in 1930, it began to be enforced in 1934 by Breen, and this changed the way film looked. Risque material, including toilet humor, sexual explicitness and gratuitous violence, was often cut from films. Breen’s approach to film directly conficted with that of screenwriters and directors. He “tended toward the literal…and he had a dollars-and-cents approach to the movies: they were more entertainment than art.”
Jeff and Simmons point out that it is for this reason that Wyler worried Breen, for Breen perceived him to be “a new kind of Hollywood filmmaker, independent, uncompromising and fiercly committed to cinema as an art form.” Wyler resented the Code and saw it as an impediment to making mature, realistic films that deal with examine adult themes. Wyler’s original ending to The Best Years of Our Lives as an ambiguous one, with Fred (Dana Andrews) frustrated and disillusioned, wandering alone among the old planes in the airfield. Due to Samuel Goldwyn’s, the producer, insistence, it was changed to a more positive ending, with Fred finding love and hope, and this change was heavily supported by Breen. Though the ending still has an ambiguous sense of openness (it leaves one feeling that though the protagonists have found momentary relief and happiness, but real life will continue), the information in this book demonstrates the limitations of the time period on creative expression. Even though the movie deals with adult themes such as alcoholism and adultery, it does so in a somewhat subtle manner, and even the message of the film conveyed by the film was altered due to standards of the the time. Depsite all this, however, the The Best Years of Our Lives is still a powerful and moving film, a testament to its expressiveness and timelessness.