The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

A heartbreaking yet hopeful look at life in post-WWII America.

Intro.
There are war movies and then there are post-war movies - the ones about the men and women of the military coming home after the battle.  I've seen several like The Men and It's Always Fair Weather and even The Deer Hunter (though that's more of a war/post-war film).  Each one focuses on one question - what happens to our members of the Armed Forces when they come home?  It isn't all roses and parades, and there are so many stories we've yet to hear.  I think that's what really drew me to The Best Years of Our Lives.  Not only does it follow three men coming home from WWII, but it also won the Oscar for Best Picture.

Overview
The Best Years of Our Lives opens with three men returning from WWII and sharing a small military plane back to their hometown of Boone City.  There's older sergeant Al Stephenson (Frederic March), bombardier Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) and sailor Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) who has lost both his hands in the war and had them replaced with hooks.  They share a cab together and we get to see how each is received at home.  Homer comes back to a family who, although overjoyed to see him, are unsettled by his missing hands.  Next is Al, who comes back to his high class home and a loving wife Milly (Myrna Loy) and his two now-grown children, Rob (Michael Hall) and Peggy (Teresa Wright).  Finally comes Fred, who goes home to his parents in a very poor neighborhood.  He had married a girl he met just before he left; they had only been married 20 days before he deployed.  However, she's moved out and as it's almost evening, she's at work at a nightclub.  Fred spends the evening trying to find her; finally giving up he goes to a bar run by Homer's uncle.  Meanwhile, Al, Milly and Peggy go out on the town to celebrate his homecoming and also wind up at the same bar.  Homer spends a painfully awkward time at home with his family and their next-door neighbors, which include his girlfriend Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell).  When he just can't stand their staring and sorrow, he leaves and also goes to the bar.  The guys all meet up again, but have to call it short.  Milly drives her family and Fred home.  They stop at Fred's wife's apartment, but he can't get in as she is still not home.  So he goes home with the Stephensons.  Fred has nightmares during the night and Peggy comes to comfort him; the next morning she also doesn't mention it.  Her kindness means a lot to Fred and stands in contrast to his wife, whom he finds that day.  His marriage starts out happy, but his wife Marie (Virginia Mayo) is selfish and upset that he can't find a job.  Quite in contrast to their unhappy marriage is the support that Milly gives to Al, who gets a promotion at his old bank and heads up the small loans department, granting loans particularly to service men.  Homer doesn't want anyone feeling sorry for him, as he is more than capable of taking care of himself.  What's worse is that he keeps pushing Wilma away because he doesn't want her to pity him or to be horrified by him.  The movie is quite long and a lot happens as each of the men try to adjust to civilian life again, including finding a job and reconnecting with friends and family.  To complicate matters, Peggy falls in love with Fred.  What results is a wonderful movie about what happens when our military men and women come home and start living the best years of their lives.

Highlights
I think what makes war and post-war films so powerful is how they draw from real life.  The Best Years of Our Lives does an amazing job of that.  Not only do they feature three men from different backgrounds coming back to different situations, but they don't shy away from the harder parts of returning home.  Homer's disability plays an important part and reminds us of the physical sacrifices, while Fred's troubled dreams remind us of the psychological ones as well.  Al seems to adjust the best, but is nonetheless troubled by the reactions of his bank managers when he gives a service man a loan without sufficient collateral.  Al defends himself in a wonderful speech at a big banquet: "There are some who say that the old bank is suffering from hardening of the arteries and of the heart. I refuse to listen to such radical talk. I say that our bank is alive, it's generous, it's human, and we're going to have such a line of customers seeking and GETTING small loans that people will think we're gambling with the depositors' money. And we will be. We will be gambling on the future of this country."  He also has a lot of trouble accepting how his children have grown and become independent (Peggy in that she is supporting herself; Rob in his new free thinking ways).  Unlike Al, who has a job to come back to, Fred has a lot of trouble finding a job.  Most jobs have been filled by men who couldn't enlist and by women.  He finally lands one as a soda jerk and he and Marie go broke (she still spends as if he's earning his Army pay of $400 a month instead of $32.50 a week).  Their marriage starts to crumble and doesn't get any better when he discovers that she hasn't been faithful (and still isn't).  What really got me was the guy in the drugstore who sits next to Homer while Fred's behind the counter.  The guy looks at Homer and starts to go off about how they fought the wrong people and wrong war.  Fred loses his patience as the guy gets heated about the topic of Communism.  When the guy says that Homer lost his hands for nothing, Fred comes over the counter and decks him.  It's hard to imagine anyone talking like that to veterans of WWII, but it did happen.  What's worse is to think about what was said to veterans from Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf Wars.  I went with a group of people from the American Legion to the airport a few years ago around Christmas to welcome home a bunch of local soldiers returning from Afghanistan.  One of the men I went with was an older veteran himself and in a very quiet voice he told me about how when he came home from Vietnam, there was nothing like this - no fanfare, no support.  I can't even imagine.

A word about the acting and other film stuff: The acting is great in this movie.  Everyone is well cast and does a great job - I loved Myrna Loy as Milly and her relationship with Frederic March as Al.  I also really loved watching Dana Andrews, who just blew me away with his character.  I need to see more of his films!!  Finally, I loved Homer.  Casting real life veteran Harold Russell was a brave and wonderful choice that adds a lot to the film.  Again, the strain of truth throughout the film is what makes it so powerful and deeply touching.  It's even in the details.  There's one scene where Al mixes an alka-seltzer drink in two cups and then drinks from the empty one - they left it in because it's honest and real.  To top it off, you really can't get any more nostalgic than to see what the guys see in their cab - all the sights of main street America, from kids laughing on the corner to a sale at Woolworth's.  The movie captures the heart of America in the 1940s and a definite must see.  


Review and Recommendation
Watching this film next to a later film about veterans, say another Best Picture Winner like The Deer Hunter (1978), it's easy to say that The Best Years of Our Lives is too optimistic.  But I'd argue it isn't.  While it has a happy ending and hope for these people of our Greatest Generation, these men face a lot of difficulty and still have a lot of work ahead of them.  It was a different time and a different world.  A fascinating look at not only the lives of these veterans, but also a slice of life from post-WWII, I really enjoyed this movie and highly recommend it to everyone.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Was it the sun, the war or the addictive theme song that drove them all mad?
Intro.
I'm breaking one of my blog rules today, but for good reason.  I've seen The Bridge on the River Kwai many times already; there was a time when, as a teenager, I would watch it every day.  I'm not sure what it was about the movie that had such drawing power for me.  Maybe it was something about the utter futility of war that resonated with some of the usual teenage angst.  But that's a story for a whole other blog.  This weekend, after I realized that September had been turning into William Holden month, I decided to watch it again.  As I curled up to watch, I thought about how funny it seems that some actors become identified with one specific role.  Yul Brenner is a good example - for years he played The King in The King and I, and had a lot of trouble being cast outside of that role.  William Shatner is the same way; I just watched his new sitcom and yup, the thought was first "Captain Kirk" not William Shatner.  In much the same respect, watching from my generation's viewpoint, Alec Guiness was not known to myself or any of my friends as anyone but Obi-Won Kenobi.  That must have been awful for him, especially since he was first in such amazing films as The Bridge on the River Kwai, and gave what could be argued as the performance of a lifetime.

Overview (with a possible spoiler - sorry!)
The Bridge on the River Kwai begins with a company of British soldiers surrendering to the Japanese during WWII, somewhere in the thick Burmese jungle.  The men are marched into a prisoner-of-war camp, where the last two surviving members of the original camp are digging graves.  One of these men is Commander Shears, US Navy (William Holden), cynical and certain that everyone in the camp will eventually die.  Commanding the British troops is Lt. Col. Nicholson (Alec Guiness), and with him is medical officer Maj. Clipton (James Donald), who knows more about compassion than about the rules of war.  The Japanese commander is Col. Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), who advises the men to "be happy in their work." He is much like Nicholson in that both men will stick to their principles and refuse to lose face.  This stubborness leads to a difficult battle of wills when Saito orders that officers will do manual labor in his camp.  Nicholson refuses on the grounds that it is against the Geneva convention.  For that, he and all of his officers are shut up in small metal huts (called "the ovens") on the compound, right in the blazing heat.  Meanwhile, Shears, his fellow gravedigger, and one of the young men from the British soldiers decide to escape.  Only Shears makes it away from the guards alive, but he is hurt, lost and in the middle of nowhere.  He barely makes it into a village alive, where he recovers and then makes his way to a hospital on the coast.  Back at the camp, though, things do not bode well.  Clipton acts as a go-between for Saito and Nicholson, only to find that the men are close to identical and neither one believes in compromise.  In the end Nicholson prevails, and sets out not only to build a bridge in the allotted time-frame, but to build a better bridge that will stand the test of time.  As they push towards the short deadline, Nicholson begins to employ some of the measures threatened by Saito, but under Nicholson's direction, they pass as reasonable means.  So back to Shears in the hospital.  It turns out that an Allied team is being assembled to go and blow up the bridge.  Shears winds up volunteering (more like blackmailed into going).  It's rather difficult traveling, with the leader, Major Warden (Jack Hawkins), getting shot in the foot and then Japanese patrols showing up and such.  If you hadn't guessed it from the film's beginning, yes the bridge blows up.  But who does it and what is destroyed in the process is what ends the film with an even bigger emotional blow.

Highlights

You really can't get any finer acting.  Alec Guiness won an Oscar for Best Actor, and it was richly deserved.  Likewise Holden and Hayakawa give strong performances too.  However my favorite character, and one that really holds the heart of the film, is James Donald's Maj. Clipton.  We see a great deal as he does, as he is the only one to have conferences with both Saito and Nicholson during the standoff.  After seeing them both, stubborn and unwavering, he says "are they both mad?  Or am I going mad?  Or is it the sun?"  He reminds me a bit of Horatio in Hamlet in that he is very close to all of the proceedings, but most importantly he is alone, on a hillside, watching the horror of the bridge's explosion.  He is the only one left who can put words to it all - "Madness."

The film's construction was remarkable too, especially the bridge itself.  Filmed on location in Ceylon, some of the scenes with Shears and the Allied party are beautiful.  It's so well written too; I loved how they paid attention to both what was said and what was left unsaid.  In particular, Nicholson's speech at the end of the film about what a man leaves behind him when his life is through is both touching and yet still reserved, in keeping with his character.  That speech alone and how Guiness delivered it earned those Oscars.  On a side note about the Oscars, the film won for best Screenplay.  The writers were Pierre Boulle, who wrote the original book, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson.  Foreman and Wilson had been blacklisted, so at the time of the film's release, only Boulle was listed as the writer, despite the fact that he didn't know much English.

Speaking of the book, I'd like to bring up what is often a debate between film scholars and literature scholars - book versus movie.  Usually I'm on the side of the book, with some exceptions (I liked The Godfather film better than the book).  In this case, I think it would be a tie.  What really struck me about the novel was just how similar Nicholson and Saito were.  They echo each other.  In the scenes where Clipton first talks to Saito and then immediately afterward talks to Nicholson, I thought I was reading the same pages over again - that's how close these two men were.  That parallelism comes across better on the page than on screen, though they do a very good job in the film.  I also started to think about what war films were truly about - the lower layer, if you will.  Specifically POW escape movies - is it something to do with bucking the system?  An escape from not only a physical prison, but an emotional one too?  The idea of an individual making it out to safety, the lone man against the world? (Think of Steve McQueen on that motorcycle in The Great Escape.)  I don't know enough about war genre studies, but I still think it's an interesting idea to keep in mind while watching.

Review and Recommendation
The Bridge on the River Kwai may be my favorite war film.  It's a classic by every standard.  I know a common downside people seem to cite is that it feels a bit long, but all of the details in writing and acting make it worthwhile.  All this time after I first saw the film and then picked up the book, I still recommend both the film and book very highly.

P.S. I forgot to mention that the theme song, "Colonel Bogey March" really is addictive.  I'm whistling it now just writing about it.  

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Intro.

Lately I've been in the mood for musicals and luckily, TCM has been airing plenty for me!  I was about to watch On the Town, which I had recorded, but when I turned on my television, Meet Me in St. Louis was about to start.  As I had not seen it before, I decided to sit back and enjoy this delightful Judy Garland film.

Overview
Meet Me in St. Louis is a tribute to simple family life at the turn of the century.  It opens in 1903 in the small but growing town of St. Louis.  The World's Fair is seven months away, but that doesn't stop everyone from talking (and singing!) about it.  We hear the second eldest daughter, Esther (Judy Garland) sing it as sweeps into the house where her mother (Mary Astor) and the maid Katie (Marjorie Main) are cooking supper.  Soon eldest daughter Rose (Lucille Bremer) comes home and we learn that she is expecting a call from her boyfriend in Yale and also that Esther is stuck on the boy next door.  The rest of the family includes two young sisters, Agnes (Joan Carroll) and Tootie (Margaret O'Brien), their grandfather (Harry Davenport), teenaged brother Alonzo (Henry Daniels) and the father and head of the household (Leon Ames).  Sadly, Rose does not get a proposal from her Yale beau like she expects, but that doesn't keep her from enjoying a going away party for college-bound Alonzo.  Nor does it keep Esther from having any excuse not to meet boy-next-door John Truett.  Esther and John start a sweet romance that only improves with time (including a horrible misunderstanding caused by the troublesome Tootie!).  Just as everything looks rosy, Dad announces that the family is moving to New York city just after Christmas.  A few heartbreaking scenes later, he must come to terms with the fact that his family's hearts as well as his own will always be in St. Louis, with or without the beautiful Fair.

Highlights

I loved everything about this film - the set designs, the acting, the careful pacing and sentiment are all wonderful.  What makes it work so well is that it is just a simple story about one year in the life of one family.  Sometimes the simplest plots yield the deepest stories and that's what happens on screen with this gem.  The songs are unforgettable; the feeling warm and nostalgic.

Judy Garland is a true standout in this film.  It's also the first one she made with Vincent Minelli, whom she later married, and one of their finest collaborations.  Judy is not only a scene-stealer, but a careful balance of excited, infatuated girl and refined, graceful woman.  Her songs alone could carry the film - she has such wonderful ones (apart from the title song) as: "The Trolley Song", "The Boy Next Door" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (yes, it's from this movie!).  All of that and some great dancing too!

I realize now, after I've watched, that this film was made in 1944.  I wonder if it too was part of the Hollywood war effort - not necessarily in the same way as Thousands Cheer, but with the same feeling of simple American values.  It captured the best part of our innocent past - a part that could still inspire hope for those involved in World War II both at home and abroad.  It reminds viewers (even today) of the youthful optimism of our past, perhaps in an effort to encourage a return of that same spirit.  Think about how powerful that message is in Judy's final song.  It's as if she is speaking to those men and women in the war: "Have yourself a merry little Christmas / Make the Yule-tide gay / Next year all our troubles will be miles away / Here we are as in olden days / Happy golden days of yore [...] / Through the years we all will be together / if the Fates allow."  Not only is she singing about Christmas, but about what we as a nation were feeling.  Now that's what I call a movie.

Review and Recommendation
Truly one of the best films I've ever reviewed for this site.  This film is sweet, simple, beautiful.  A romanticized notion of America perhaps, but a heartfelt one nonetheless.  An interesting reflection not only of 1900's America, but also of 1940's America, Meet Me in St. Louis is a definite must for your list of must-see musicals!