William Wyler (37 page)

The United States emerged from World War II with its industrial strength and political influence undiminished. The sense of possibility in what Henry Luce famously called “the American Century” is reflected in the film. There is, however, a sense of wariness and foreboding in
Best Years
as well, reflecting both the nation's sadness following the death of Franklin Roosevelt and the growing labor unrest that soon gripped the country. There were strikes at Ford and General Motors, there was a housing shortage, and the economy was in the midst of an inflationary spiral. And worse, it was becoming apparent that the war's end had not brought peace abroad—the alliance with the Soviet Union had unraveled even before Roosevelt's death, there was an impending civil war in China between the Nationalists and the Communists, the collapse of Japan brought political chaos to that country, and Greece and North Korea were being pressured by the Soviet Union.

The most frightening postwar issue, however, was the advent of atomic energy. America was still reeling from the devastation caused by the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan. Everyone understood that the world had changed for the worse, but few were willing to deal with the troubling implications of the new order that was likely to take its place. In
Best Years
, on his first night home, Al's teenage son asks him about the Hiroshima bombing, which Al seems to know little about—certainly not as much as his son knows. It is clear, however, that Al is disturbed by what the postwar world looks and feels like. The price of victory weighs on him.

Best Years
focuses, in part, on how returning soldiers would be assimilated into the workforce and, most pointedly, whether there would be jobs waiting for them. When asked about “rehabilitation” at the start of the film, Fred responds, “All I want is a good job.” Given that the United States had so recently endured a depression, questions about what would happen to the economy at the end of the war—and the employment boom associated with it—were real and frightening. Wilma's father warns Homer, “Hard times are coming, boy”—reflecting many Americans' anxiety about the economic repercussions of closing factories that had manufactured products for the war effort. President Truman's “Full Employment Act” was designed to alleviate these fears, but they persisted nonetheless. There was also widespread suspicion that returning soldiers would take jobs away from workers, a misgiving articulated in Wyler's film.

In addition, many soldiers had been traumatized by their wartime experiences. In their study of American films released in 1945–1946, Charles Affron and Jona Mirella Affron note that “nearly half of the 1.6 million servicemen and women demobilized through November 30, 1945 suffered some degree of impairment.”
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This pervasive legacy is reflected in Wyler's film by Fred's nightmares, Al's alcoholism, and Homer's struggles with not only physical wounds but psychological ones as well.
The Blue Dahlia
, which was released the same year as
Best Years
, deals with the subject of postwar trauma in its treatment of the characters Buzz (William Bendix), who experiences fits of violence as a result of an explosion, and Johnny (Alan Ladd), who, like Fred, discovers that his wife has been unfaithful. Another contemporary film,
Till the End of Time
, follows the same structure as
Best Years
, detailing the stories of returning soldiers: Cliff (Guy Madison) is restless and cannot hold a job until, like the men in Wyler's film, he is healed by the love of his girlfriend (Dorothy McGuire); meanwhile, his two buddies struggle with their disabilities—Perry (Bill Williams) has lost both legs, and Bill (Robert Mitchum) has a metal plate in his head.

The Best Years of Our Lives
is an example of a great film loosely adapted from a crude, formulaic source. Whereas Kantor's novel is written in blank verse with few of the merits of poetry, Wyler's version actually offers a more novelistic treatment—it is firmly grounded in the details of everyday life, which makes it richer, denser, and more vivid. The film's overall achievement is the result of the creative fusion of Sherwood's writing, Gregg Toland's photography, and Wyler's framing and mise-en-scène, coupled with a near-perfect articulation of the script by his actors. (Indeed, Wyler's ability to bring out the best in his actors reaches its apotheosis in
Best Years.)
Because the film reflects many of Wyler's own experiences, he was able to infuse it with a level of realism he had not achieved before—heightened, in this case, by harnessing his pictorial eye to the contours of Sherwood's script. As he told Hermine Isaacs, “A picture of reality alone is nothing. It is dull. Only when reality has been molded into a dramatic pattern can it hold an audience.”
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In the end, Wyler was able to combine this expressive patterning with Toland's vivid pictures—which, according to James Agee, reminded him “of the photographs of Walker Evans”
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—to achieve his most perfect compositions.

The film, like the novel, is structured around the difficulties encountered by the three returning servicemen as they strive to pick up their lives after the war. Each of these protagonists is etched as a believable individual, but as a group, they are representative of the experiences of all servicemen as they tried to readjust. They come from different branches of the service: Al was a sergeant in the army, Fred a bombardier in the air corps, and Homer a sailor. Each also embodies a different social status: Al, the upper middle class; Homer, the middle class; and Fred, the lower class. Even though Fred is from the other side of the tracks, he was an officer, the highest ranked of the three. The film's structure is more fluid than that of the novel, however, because of Sherwood's changes—making the courtship of Fred and Peggy more central to the story and using Butch Engle's bar as a regular meeting place for the three men.

Best Years
begins at Welburn Air Terminal, where we are immediately introduced to Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), who is trying to get a flight to Boone City. In the first of the film's deep-focus compositions, Fred is placed in the middle of a scene that differs widely from the close-knit corps of soldiers he fought with—here, he is just one of many, a position analogous to what he will find in the indifferent world he is about to officially enter. At the commercial airline desk, he is told that there will be a considerable wait and that he should try the ATC (Air Transport Command) desk instead. Standing next to Fred is a businessman in a suit, who gets his flight and happily pays for his excess baggage. The two-shot at first seems unimportant, but this man's weight, accented by his large cigar, and his smug expression mark him as the first of a number of self-satisfied, crass businessmen who will be juxtaposed to the returning servicemen throughout the film. By contrast, the soldier standing next to Fred at ATC is friendly and personable. Like Fred—and unlike the businessman—he is having trouble getting where he wants to go.

Wyler introduces his other protagonists with a degree of economy that becomes typical of the film. The name of Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) is called along with Fred's when a flight to Boone City becomes available. Homer's prostheses are presented without any dramatic flair: when, like Fred, he is asked to sign a boarding form, he grips the pen in his hook without any problem. The two then join Al Stephenson (Fredric March), who is already on the plane. As Homer tells his new friends about the accident that cost him his hands, Wyler films the scene in a tight three-shot in a single take, without emphasizing Homer over the other two. The implication is that while Homer's wounds are the most dramatic and overt, all three suffer from emotional wounds that will unite them throughout the film. The constriction of space, a common Wyler preoccupation, also emphasizes their shared dilemma.
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Shots of the soldiers are then intercut with shots of the American landscape and two shots of the horizon. The second is more poignant, as Fred and Al talk about their marriages: Al reveals that he has been married for twenty years, while Fred's prewar marital experience was less than twenty days. This second horizon shot is Wyler's reminder (like the bucolic shots recalling happier days in earlier films) that these men's lives as returning citizens and their dreams for the future (rehabilitation) will be difficult to reconcile. The shot is repeated a third time with Homer alone: the camera stays on Homer's face in close-up for about fifteen seconds after he looks at the horizon, his dream of marrying Wilma seemingly a distant memory.

There is a swift transition to the three men in the back of a cab—again in a tight three-shot—as Wyler cuts from them to a series of evocative traveling shots of Boone City. Then, in a rare display of artful composition, Wyler's camera seemingly imprisons the men in the car's rearview mirror, reaffirming their separation from the world (both new and old) they are joining. When they pull up to Homer's house, Wyler repeats the shot twice, reaffirming visually that what Homer is about to experience will be shared by Fred and Al.

The scene in which Homer is greeted by his family is justifiably famous—even Billy Wilder claimed that it made him cry. The camera views Homer through the screen door of his house as he stands before it. Seeing him, his sister runs next door to tell Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell), and the camera pans with her, temporarily leaving Homer. His parents' greeting is framed through the window of the cab, seemingly from the point of view of Fred and Al—this is Wyler's second use of a frame within a frame to enclose his characters in space. The meeting between Homer and Wilma, who is first seen from the porch of her house, roughly anticipates the Al-Milly reunion a few moments later. Wilma stares at Homer as Wyler cuts to a close-up of her beaming, loving face. She runs into his arms and hugs him, but he remains stiff, not returning her affection. Wyler then cuts to Homer's face, again reflecting the fear and ambivalence seen in the extended close-up on the plane, but the following cut to Wilma's face, still full of joy, suggests that perhaps Homer's “horizon” will be realized after all, though not without struggle and hardship.

Al lives in a fancy apartment building, complete with a concierge to announce visitors' arrival and an elevator man. Wyler, whose comfortable, successful prewar lifestyle most closely resembled that of Al, based the Stephensons' reunion on his own with Talli:

It happened when I returned home from the war and my wife met me in New York. It was at the Plaza Hotel…. I went to the hotel and looked for her, got the room number and went up to whatever floor it was, and I looked around for a while, couldn't find her. Finally, I saw her at the end of a hallway, a long hallway, and it was just a little unusual. We had to run to each other. So, I thought I would repeat it, do the same thing…. It's no great invention, but it made the scene very effective.
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The Stephensons' reunion scene also emphasizes space. Al enters the apartment and signals his two children to keep quiet. Wyler then cuts to Milly (Myrna Loy), who is in the kitchen. She asks twice who rang the doorbell, and when she gets no answer, she suddenly realizes that her husband is home. She turns, looks out into the hallway, and sees Al. They move slowly toward each other, then embrace and kiss. Wyler keeps them in the middle distance as viewed by the children, allowing them some privacy from the audience until he cuts to a close-up. This couple's warm embrace contrasts with that of Wilma and Homer, but Wyler's decision to keep them at a distance from the camera conveys that they, too, have adjustments to make.

Fred's homecoming illustrates his different socioeconomic status. He lives in a shantytown in a shack that he can barely fit into. He is met by his stepmother, whom he calls Hortense (Gladys George), and shakes hands with his father (Roman Bohnen), who must put aside his bottle to greet his son. Fred's father is obviously overcome with emotion, but in the Derry home, there is little of the familial warmth that characterizes the Parrishes and the Stephensons. Unlike the other two families, the Derrys clearly cannot offer Fred much support. Troubled that his wife, Marie, is not at home, Fred is told that she has moved out and now works in a nightclub, and he hurries out to find her.
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On their first day home, all three men find themselves at Butch's, the bar owned by Homer's uncle. Fred goes there because he cannot find his wife, Homer because he finds his family's concern overbearing, and Al because he cannot seem to adjust to being with his wife and kids. Wyler and Sherwood use Butch's as a haven for the men, who meet there often. It is one of the film's accomplishments that their frequent resort to this locale never seems forced or manipulated.

The difficulties of “rehabilitation” occupy the main narrative thrust of the film. Al is welcomed back to the bank by Mr. Milton and given a promotion, but he finds himself unable to resume his old business outlook. He says to Milly, “Last year it was kill Japs; now it's make money.” In an earlier version of the script, Al complains to Fred about the bank: “Cobwebs. Oh—you can't see them. But they're here.”
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In another version, he tells Milly that he wants to quit his job; in another, he complains about having to fight for approval of every loan he makes and refers to his fellow bankers as zombies.

Al's attitude anticipates that of Chris Keller in Arthur Miller's
All My Sons
, which opened on Broadway in January 1947, just a few months after Wyler's film. Talking about his own postwar adjustment, Chris says, “And then I came home and it was incredible. I…there was no meaning in it here; the whole thing to them was a kind of a—bus accident. Like when I went to work with Dad, and that rat race again…. Because nobody was changed at all.”
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Wyler effectively illustrates that sense of disillusionment in the film. Businessmen and banking executives are presented negatively. Al's boss, Mr. Milton, looks very much like the businessman who boarded the plane ahead of Fred in the opening scene—he is pompous and large in his double-breasted suit. As he lights Al a Cuban cigar (another link to that businessman at the airport), Milton complains about economic uncertainty and taxes. He is confident, however, that there will be a recovery. Wyler emphasizes Milton's large chest in the front of the frame as he squeezes Al between Milton and the wood-paneled wall.