I’d been hearing great things about The Best Years of Our Lives for years. It’s gotten a little bit of a bad rap in some circles as the movie that beat out It’s a Wonderful Life for best picture in 1947, but that shouldn’t take away from what is a classic in its own right.
Inspired by a story in Life magazine, The Best Years of Our Lives is about three veterans who return from World War II and have trouble re-adjusting to civilian life. One is a captain in the airforce (Dana Andrews), one is an older man, a sergeant in the Army (Fredric March), and the other is a young kid, a former Navy man who lost his hands in a ship fire (Harold Russell). They meet on a military plane flying them from Long Beach back home to Boon City, one of those make-believe Hollywood cities that probably was shot on the same lot as It’s A Wonderful Life. You know the kind–it has an airport, numerous bars, a bustling downtown, rich areas and poor areas, but somehow, whenever you walk down the street, you bump into somebody you know. Small-town intimacy with big-city amenities. God bless Hollywood.
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Posted by myownworstcritic 
