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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 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.