Call#: Van Pelt Video Collection; ask at Circulation Desk. DVD PS3521.A47 G562 2000
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.
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 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.


