Ask all your film buff friends what their all time favorite film is, and once you get past The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, and It's a Wonderful Life, don't be surprised to find quite a number of them mentioning The Best Years of Our Lives.
At nearly 3 hours, this is the length of one of those cast-of-thousands Hollywood blockbuster epics. But The Best Years of Our Lives is a warm, sweet, intelligent picture. Despite its length, it seems almost "small". You care about these people and you really get to know them.
The story concerns three soldiers in 1945, returning home after years of serving in the military during WWII. Their names are Al, Fred, and Homer, and their lives are widely varied. Al (Fredrich March) an upper middle class banker with two teenage children and a lovely wife comes home to a warm welcome and a big hug from his family, but learns that his family have really gotten along fine without him. His daughter has a job working in a hospital, his wife has held the family together, his son is completely uninterested in his father's war stories. Going back to work at the bank also proves difficult. He tries to make decisions based on compassion and personal instinct, and learns that in the post war world nothing is more important than "make money".
The second soldier, Fred (Dana Andrews), is an ex-bomber pilot who looks great in a uniform and has been regarded as one of the sexy, glamorous "fly boys" for so long that he can't adjust to the plain old working day life. Unqualified to do much of anything but drop bombs, he takes a low level job at a drugstore. His beautiful, splashy blonde wife is at first thrilled to welcome him home, but when the money runs out and she is reduced to hanging around the apartment all day because there is no money to go out, she starts belitting his low paying job and cheating on him. Dana Andrews plays the role of Fred wonderfully. He is amazingly good lookiing, but he has had the rug pulled out from under him. In the military, being a bomber pilot was about the coolest thing you could be. But it counts for nothing in the real world. Adding to his stress is recurring nightmares and flashbacks of the war. The breakup of Fred's marriage is also shown very realistically. Virginia Mayo plays his sexy trashy wife perfectly. Usually in movies you hope the characters stay together. In this one, from the moment you see her, you hope they break up.
Fred falls in love with Al's warm, kind, and genuinely nice teenage daughter. She's played by Teresa Wright, one of my all time favorite actresses. Unlike most teen girls in movies of the 40s, Peggy is not the usual bobby soxer. She is warm and motherly, kind, and efficient. She loves Fred too. But Fred is married, and Peggy has to try her best to get over him. The story twists and turns beautifully before they both finally get to the right places in their lives.
Which brings me to the last returning soldier of the group, Homer. A Navy man, he has lost both his hands in a shipboard explosion. He has learned to live and work with the metal hooks he has instead. He can strike a match, light a cigarette, pour a drink, anything he needs to do. But he hasn't learned to deal with the stares of strangers or the pity of his own family. He is hostile and resentful when they try to help, and certain that he will never be accepted on his own terms. When his lovely compassionate girlfriend decides to stay with him, even after he has explained to her how her life will have to be devoted to caring for him, it is one of the most truly wonderful moments in American film.
After all is said and done, the characters of The Best Years of Our Lives come out where they should be. But the three hours we spend watching them get there makes for the finest of cinema history.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older