{"id":2850,"date":"2005-05-16T01:14:19","date_gmt":"2005-05-16T08:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2005\/05\/16\/2850.html"},"modified":"2005-05-16T01:14:19","modified_gmt":"2005-05-16T08:14:19","slug":"review-the-best-years-of-our-l","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2005\/05\/16\/review-the-best-years-of-our-l\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Best Years of Our Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rob recently recommended The Best Years of Our Lives<\/a><\/cite>, and I think someone else had recommended it not long before, so I rented it from Netflix in mid-March. But it's nearly three hours long, and I didn't know enough about it to recommend it to anyone, so nobody expressed much interest in seeing it with me, so I didn't get around to seeing it 'til now. Also, I was a little worried, 'cause it's a movie about three guys who've come back from WWII, and I wasn't sure whether it was going to be depressing and\/or violent.<\/p>\n

I needn't have worried. The movie, made in 1946, is kinda heavy-handed and predictable and sentimental, but also funny and romantic and utterly charming and even moving.<\/p>\n

Myrna Loy is probably the best part of the movie, but isn't that true for just about anything she was in? I especially like the interplay between Milly (Loy) and her daughter Peggy in the first third or so of the movie. Charming and funny. (And Loy gets a couple of really good serious moments later on, too.) And a lot of good stuff goes on in this movie in silent facial expressions and body language; some of the best moments have no spoken dialogue.<\/p>\n

Hoagy Carmichael is also great, as usual. I liked pretty much all the other actors too. I gather that Fredric March and Dana Andrews and Teresa Wright and Virginia Mayo either were fairly big names at the time or became fairly big names later, but I couldn't quite place them. (I had seen March only in Inherit the Wind<\/cite>, I think; turns out I saw Andrews recently as the male romantic lead in State Fair<\/cite>; not sure if I've seen Wright or Mayo in anything else.)<\/p>\n

Anyway. Good stuff, especially if you have any interest in either soldiers-returning-from-war stories or disability stories.<\/p>\n

And btw, I'm not the only person who liked it: it won seven Oscars in 1947 (including Actor, Supporting Actor, Director, Screenplay, and Picture), and was nominated for another. And one of the actors received a special honorary award, but I think it's interesting to see the movie without knowing the details of that.<\/p>\n

They really weren't afraid to praise movies in trailers in those days. (Nor to show scenes from the end of the movie; half the trailer comes from the final scene.) Here's the text that appears on the screen at the beginning of the trailer:<\/p>\n

\n

THROUGH THE YEARS Great<\/em> MOTION PICTURES HAVE BEEN MADE...<\/p>\n

BUT NOW Samuel Goldwyn<\/em> PRESENTS ...<\/p>\n

THE BEST THING that ever happened!<\/em><\/p>\n

His Masterful Production<\/em> OF THE LOVE STORY OF TODAY<\/p>\n

... THAT WILL LIVE WITH YOU THROUGH ALL YOUR TOMORROWS!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Also probably the only trailer I've ever seen that shows a page from the script (albeit briefly and without any spoilers). Anyway, in case it's not obvious, I recommend waiting to see the trailer until after you see the movie.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rob recently recommended The Best Years of Our Lives, and I think someone else had recommended it not long before,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}