Skip to main content

Best Years of Our Lives

By



This being V-E Day, I thought it would be nice to remember our troops from World War II through one of the best movies made in their honor, The Best Years of Our Lives.  Unlike the many other war films of the era, William Wyler chose to deal with the aftermath of the war and how difficult it was for many of these former soldiers to readjust to civilian life.

As Bosley Crowther wrote in a review from 1946, the film "honestly and sensitively images the terrible loneliness of the man who has been hurt -- hurt not only physically but in the deep recesses of his self-esteem."  Most veterans got past these anxieties and adjusted to everyday life, but many fell through the cracks of society, as we have seen with each war.  Just as importantly, the film deals with the women in these former GIs' lives.

As we look at a united Europe today, we can say that the soldiers and the many, many civilians who died during this brutal war did not do so in vain.


Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 8, 2015 at 5:43 PM

    As I drove to work this morning, the radio station I was tuned into commemorated VE Day by playing the recording of the British radio broadcast announcing the end of the war. The announcement was celebrated in London, New York, and cities around the world with wild jubilant celebrations in public squares. But it’s important to remember that many of the men who fought those wars came home broken men, broken in body, mind, and spirit. The Best Years of Our Lives stands out for not glamorizing history’s most horrific armed conflict. Very fine movie. One of the best.

    Craig

    ReplyDelete
  2. TripplerMay 10, 2015 at 6:32 PM

    The return to society was often worse for men from minority groups. My dad (a Puerto Rican) tried to get a job as a dock worker in Brooklyn but is told "NO SPICKS!" and has the door slammed in his face. His brother was killed in the European theater so that he died for nothing.

    There are an infinite amount of stories just like that and worse with innocent blacks still getting lynched in the South for imaginary crimes.

    All this is something historians like Doris Kearns Goodwin (someone who applauds the military draft) and others refuse to discuss openly.

    While the movie did take an honest look at the problem faced by some vets, we need other films we show how terrible it was for others like my dad.

    ReplyDelete
  3. James FergusonMay 11, 2015 at 8:06 AM

    World War II did lead to the integration of the military with Truman's executive order in 1948. Unfortunately, our society was slow to follow suit.

    ReplyDelete
  4. TripplerMay 12, 2015 at 11:54 PM

    So true.

    By the way, if I may be permitted to go off topic, as a matter of important history, today is,

    HAPPY 90th BIRTHDAY TO YOGI BERRA!


    A true American icon!

    ReplyDelete
  5. James FergusonMay 13, 2015 at 9:24 AM

    Great to see Yogi is still going strong.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more