William Wyler (38 page)

That scene is preceded by Fred's return to Bullard's Drugstore, which has been taken over by the Midway chain. Here, Wyler pictures the sleek new bastion of American consumerism that seems to belie Milton's sour evaluation of the economy. Wyler's deep-focus shots take in counters of perfume, toys, and cosmetics. Hanging from the ceiling are countless signs advertising prices and sales, counterpointed by the din of cash registers, chatter, and children firing cap pistols. The manager, Mr. Thorpe, looks down on the store from a windowed office above the ruckus; he tells Fred that his experience as a pilot does not qualify him for a job. Sherwood pointedly uses modern business lingo, having Thorpe ask Fred whether, during the war, he had any experience in “procurement.”

The drugstore scene visually parallels various scenes involving Fred, Peggy, Al, and Milly in nightclubs, which are also crowded—as if the modern world, let alone Wyler's frame, cannot contain all the people. It is small wonder that the returning veterans cannot fit in: there is barely room for anyone else. As the drugstore's assistant manager (who once worked under Fred), comments, “Nobody's job is safe with all these servicemen crowding in.” Fred, like so many veterans, is now seen as an inconvenience, and an unqualified one at that.

Al gets in trouble for approving a loan to a veteran who wants to buy a farm but lacks collateral. At a banquet to honor his military service, Al gets drunk because of his growing dissatisfaction with the bank's insensitive policies and, in his acceptance speech, bitterly and sarcastically insists that the bank is “alive, generous, and human” and that its loan policies are a sign of belief in “the future of this country.” Wyler films Al at the front of a banquet table from a medium-far distance. He seems alone and isolated, as what he is about to say will require courage; here, his frankness is abetted by alcohol, which lends the scene a comic touch. His speech is a somewhat toned-down version of an earlier rendition by Sherwood that made Al sound more like Tom Joad: “Am I my brother's keeper? Who is my brother? I'll tell you who he is. He is anyone who is sick—anyone who is broke—anyone who is in danger. You all remember about the Good Samaritan?”
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As if to support Al's endorsement of the bank, Wyler cuts to a high-angle shot of a crowded dance floor at a nightclub where Peggy and her date have joined Fred and Marie for a night out. Peggy has arranged this get-together because she is in love with Fred and wants to find out if he still loves his wife. In a scene in front of a mirror in the ladies' room, Marie drools over money and encourages Peggy to marry Woody (her date) because he is rich—she claims that love will come if a man has money. Wyler films the women along with their reflections—Marie wearing black, and Peggy in white. Marie is loud and crass, Peggy demure and ladylike. Wyler wrote of the two women's allegorical significance: “Marie…stands for the kind of fellow Fred Derry was, prior to his going into the Armed Forces. Ignorant, insular, and selfish…. On the other hand, Peggy…is knowing, aware of the larger world about her, interested in problems beyond her own.”
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Wyler emphasizes this contrast visually. At first, we see and hear Marie, who is filmed in front of the mirror along with her reflection. All we see of Peggy is her reflection as she begins to grasp the degree of Marie's selfishness and materialism. As Peggy listens, Marie turns toward her, and Wyler shows Peggy looking somber and solemn as she is reflected in the mirror. Caught with her in the frame is the image of the black restroom attendant—Peggy's worldview, apparently, takes in others. Peggy, less concerned than Marie about Fred's salary, has faith in his character and his ability to grow along with the nation.
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Homer's story is handled with delicacy and restraint. Having introduced Homer's proficiency with his prostheses early in the film, Wyler relegates this subject—potentially charged with emotion—to only a secondary concern in Homer's relationship with Wilma. Harold Russell, who was expert in the use of his hooks, delivers a believable and affecting performance, contributing greatly to the effectiveness of Homer's story. Homer never feels sorry for himself, and neither does the audience. Homer, however, has a hard time dealing with his family; they all try entirely too hard to please him and pretend that he does not have a disability. Wyler's depiction of Homer's first night at home, when the Parrishes entertain Wilma's family and serve lemonade, neatly illustrates the director's handling of domestic scenes. As Wilma's father speaks about the poor economy, Wyler centers Homer in a tight frame, as if he is on display; with the exception of a few brief cuts to other family members, he maintains this basic composition throughout the scene. While Homer answers banal questions and everyone tries to make him feel comfortable, Wyler's tight framing emphasizes the feeling of being hemmed in by both families. When Homer finally escapes to Butch's bar, the audience experiences his relief as well.

Wyler handles Homer's difficulties with his hooks in two bedroom scenes, both combining disability issues with domestic ones. In the first scene, as Homer's father helps him undress for bed, the emphasis is placed on Homer's dependence and helplessness. Throughout this scene, Wyler focuses on Homer's face; we do not see what the father does or the actual removal of the hooks. Homer's brooding, serious expression recalls both the long close-up on the plane and the cut to his face when Wilma first hugs him. Later in the film, Homer asks Wilma to come to his bedroom and watch him get ready for bed. That scene was crucial because, as Wyler explained, “We wanted to have a scene in which Homer tells Wilma the reason he has been avoiding her is not that he doesn't love her, but that he doesn't feel it fair to her to marry her.” The difficulty in doing a bedroom scene was to avoid violating the Production Code. Wyler continued: “There were delicate problems in bringing a boy and a girl to a bedroom at night, with the boy getting into his pajama top, revealing his leather harness, which enables him to work his hooks, and finally taking the harness off. We solved the problems without the slightest suggestion of indelicacy, and without presenting Homer's hooks in a shocking or horrifying manner. As a matter of fact, we felt we could do quite the opposite and make it a moving and tender love scene.”
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The scene is indeed tender and moving. The sequence begins with Homer walking home. He stops and looks toward Wilma's house and sees her through a window, her figure made a bit hazy by the white lace curtain. Wyler cuts again to Homer's face, emphasizing his realization that she is his “horizon,” and the bedroom scene quickly follows this revelation. By the time this scene takes place, Homer has become more adept in getting himself ready for bed. Wyler films much of the scene in a medium two-shot as Homer demonstrates the process of taking his hooks off and wiggling into his pajama top. The camera focuses closely on Wilma's reaction: she is unfazed by what she sees and declares her love for Homer. As she tucks him into bed, we see Wilma's picture by the lamp. Before Wilma's arrival, while Homer is alone in the room, Wyler films him looking at pictures of himself playing basketball and football in high school; now the focus is on Wilma. After she turns off the light and leaves, Wyler cuts to Homer's face again, this time in shadow, as a tear falls to his cheek. He has accepted Wilma's love and is ready to move on.

In many respects, Fred Derry is the film's central character. He is the first person the camera focuses on, and his story directly intersects the narratives of the other two. By the end of the film, it is clear that Fred will marry Al's daughter Peggy, and in the concluding scene, Fred is the best man at Homer's wedding. Before being drafted and going to war, Fred was a soda jerk at the drugstore, of an age to start thinking about choosing a career, getting married, and putting down roots. The war interrupted those plans, however, and in the speeded-up, hectic life of a conscripted soldier, Fred hastily married a cocktail waitress who looked like a Hollywood pinup girl; she, in turn, fell for a man in uniform. After the war, it is apparent that they are unsuited for each other. Fred has matured; the attractions of a superficial blonde no longer interest him. It is clear that Marie has been unfaithful to him, and when Fred later finds her with another man, he asks her to leave. Marie's inability to love Fred once he is out of uniform symbolizes her inability to make the transition to a more adult and lasting relationship. Peggy Stephenson, in contrast, is the kind of woman who, Richard Griffith notes, Fred can reach only “after a long struggle.”
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Fred's story thus implies that one of the tragedies of war is the blighting of lives by the loss of all those years—“the best years”—and that one needs to rediscover and reclaim them, if possible.

Kantor's novel and earlier versions of the script gave Fred a more elaborate backstory, indicating that while in Europe, he had an affair with an English society woman. Part of Fred's maturation process was his exposure to European society, a rather heady experience for a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Sherwood and Wyler eliminated this problematic history in order to make Fred a more wholesome character. In the film, he remains patient with Marie, even as it becomes increasingly clear that she does not love him. (It is left to Peggy's date in the nightclub scene to point out that Fred and Marie “can't stand each other.”) Fred finally walks out only when he discovers her with another man.

The released film also spends less time on Fred's job search. Whereas earlier versions show his increasing frustration as he is turned down for a variety of jobs, the released film includes only a brief scene of Fred reading the want ads while on line at an unemployment office; any actual job hunting goes on behind the scenes. Instead, we are made aware of Marie's frustration over Fred's lack of money, and we learn that he finally settles on a job back at the drugstore for $32 a week.

In an earlier version, Fred—long after separating from Marie—tells Peggy that it is wrong of him to continue seeing her because he cannot give her the material comforts she has come to expect. His despair becomes apparent as he exclaims, “It's the lack of something in me—the feeling that I'm not going anywhere—that maybe it would have been better if I had gone down in flames over Berlin.”
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In a later draft, he is offered a job in Alaska but he must travel to Seattle to claim it. He decides to take the job and tells Peggy that he is leaving, but then he declares, “I don't care what the job is—or how long it lasts. I've shot the best years of my life already.” Peggy is livid and calls Fred's remarks “disgusting.” She replies, “If you had any sense—any guts—you'd know that the best years of our lives are still ahead of us.” As she drives away, Fred's face “breaks into a broad, slow grin.” He realizes that she loves him and decides to stay.
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Fred's story concludes with a sequence that was Wyler's invention. Sherwood's final script has Derry leaving town discouraged and defeated, unable to find a job, about to be divorced from his wife,
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and having broken off his relationship with Peggy. He goes to the airport to hitch a ride on an army plane to anywhere. While waiting, he wanders over to an enormous military scrap heap composed of rows and rows of dismantled bombers. (Wyler discovered this evocative site in Ontario, California, and used it as the location for the scene.) Sherwood's script has Derry climb into an abandoned B-17 and then simply defaults to the director: “here Mr. Wyler will have to invent something cinematic.”
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At first, Wyler was concerned about inventing something without Sherwood's assistance. He telegrammed the writer on June 6:

I want to make one last effort to sell you the idea of coming here for a few days in order that you may see the film we have shot so far. I sincerely believe that you will agree that the picture creates a great amount of expectancy and that after seeing it you will have considerably less difficulty in writing something that will meet this expectancy. Naturally I will do everything I can with the scene in the B-17 but frankly I am terribly worried that the last part of the picture may be a let down…. Sorry to sound a little desperate but perhaps we here are not completely clear on all your ideas.
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Despite these qualms, Wyler eventually invented one of the film's best sequences:

We did nothing in the interior of the B-17 except show Fred Derry seated and staring out through the dusty Plexiglas. Then we went to a long exterior shot of the plane, in which we could see the engine nacelles, stripped of engines and propellers. We panned from nacelle to nacelle, as though there really were engines in them, and the engines were starting up for takeoff. Then we made another long shot, on a dolly, and also head on. We started moving our dolly in toward the nose of the B-17, through which we could see Fred seated at the bombardier's post. This shot created the illusion of the plane coming toward the camera, as if for takeoff. To these shots we planned to add sound effects of engines starting and then let the musical score suggest flight. We then cut inside to a shot of Fred's back, and as we moved in, we saw his hand reach for the bomb release. We continued moving until we reached an effective close-up of Fred, framed against the Plexiglas nose of the bomber.”
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To amplify the illusion that Fred is reliving his war experiences, Sherwood wrote a scene in which Fred's father reads his son's citation for the Distinguished Flying Cross to Hortense, thus supplying Wyler with an ironic counterpoint to Fred's current situation.

The filthy Plexiglas window also offers an ironic reminder of the three soldiers looking out the window of the plane as they return home, with views of rolling fields, sports stadiums, and highways. As Fred relives the takeoff of the B-17, Wyler offers an extended close-up of his agonized, sweating face, followed by a cut to the back of his head. We then see Fred from the front, his eyes closed as if in reverie, through a fogged and filthy window. It is one of the most beautiful and suggestive shots in the film. Wyler employs mirror shots liberally throughout, but here, Fred is almost cut off from view, seemingly invisible to the country he has served.