Best Years of Our Lives, The [Blu-ray]

Many viewers of this great American movie -- it won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, for 1946 -- are unaware that it was based on a most unusual book-length narrative poem by MacKinlay Kantor, "Glory for Me," published in 1945. In 1970, I was a lieutenant working at the Air Force Historical Research Center. The older historians told a word-of-mouth story how the book and the movie came to be. No doubt the story had been embroidered over many years of retelling, but here's the way I heard it. In 1944, movie titan Samuel Goldwyn knew that whether the allied victory in World War II would come sooner, or later, millions of American veterans would return home. Many -- especially those with physical and psychological wounds -- would have trouble finding jobs and "readjusting." Goldwyn knew that journalist and playwright MacKinlay Kantor, who had flown missions with the 305th Bomb Group from England earlier in the war, had gotten to know American servicemen in combat at first hand. Goldwyn asked Kantor to write a screenplay for a planned movie on the veterans returning home. According to the story, Kantor had driven up to a Tennessee mountain retreat to work on the screenplay. He took his typewriter and a case of bourbon. He emerged some months later with empty bottles and "Glory for Me," written in the form of a narrative poem, not a screenplay. Goldwyn was not pleased, and he eventually gave Kantor's poem to Robert Sherwood to reshape for the screen. When the film finally appeared, Kantor was given a minimum of credit. Sherwood -- deservedly -- won the Oscar for Best Writing. If you like the movie, you will be richly rewarded by reading the poem. Kantor's and Sherwood's treatments of the same characters and the same American town ("Boone City") shows two gifted men working the same basic story in different literary forms, poem and screenplay. Reading the book allows one to discover how, here and there, they made some different creative choices. In Kantor's poem, Homer's disability is spasticity, which makes for some painful reading. Sherwood gave Homer a physical disability -- loss of hands and the use of prosthetic hooks. Sherwood's choice was a wise one for the moviegoing public, and few are the hearts not moved by Harold Russell's ortrayal of Homer in the film. But Kantor's portrayal of Homer and his girl Wilma are equally moving, perhaps because the poem gave more room for character development. When Frederic March played Al Stephenson -- the older sergeant returning to his prewar life as a banker at the Cornbelt Trust Company -- he masterfully compressed much of Kantor's material in eloquent but short scenes. In Kantor's fuller telling of the story, Al was the son of a pioneer banker who had made loans to farmers a generation earlier. The poem has more social and historical texture. In Kantor's poem, Homer's uncle Butch (Hoagy Carmichael's character in the movie) provides a vehicle to explore class feelings in pre- and post-war America. This was one of Kantor's themes that Sherwood could not fit into the film. Similarly, Kantor told his readers more about Novak (the veteran asking for a loan to open a nursery) and his experiences as a Seabee in the Pacific. Kantor's use of lilacs as a metaphor for peace and normality could not be picked up in the film. On the other hand, Sherwood changed the story line to say more about wartime marriages. Marie (Virginia Mayo in the film) proves shallow and unfaithful when Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) returns home. The movie's title, not found in Kantor's poem, came from a scene when the two argued. The book was published in January, 1945, months before the war ended. Kantor well anticipated the major contours of veteran adjustment, but there was more to his foresight. On the final page of the poem he showed real prescience when he alluded to the unresolved social tensions that all Americans, not just the veterans, would confront in the coming years. Reading habits have changed in the six decades since the book was published, and readers may now find that it takes some pages to adjust to the poetic form. Kantor's poetic shortcomings earned some dismissive reviews. Poems similar in form by Kantor's contemporaries like Stephen Vincent Benet are now dismissed as middlebrow when they are read at all. I am confident, though, that with each page the reader will find new lines and new scenes to savor and treasure. "The Best Years of Our Lives" is a truly great American movie. "Glory for Me" deserves equal recognition. Kantor recognized the coming drama of the returning veterans. He dignified their individual struggles in a literary form that recalled the great epics and placed the American veterans among mankind's heroes. He gave an immortal film -- a film that affected tens of millions -- its basic structure, plot, characters, tone, and feeling. Not a bad result for a few months of solitude with a case of bourbon. -30-

This is one of my all-time favorite movies & still relevant today. I love the authenticity & what it has to say about life, love and the challenges facing veterans.

I absolutely LOVE this film! My father is a WWII veteran. I think of him and his peers when I view this movie. So many aspects of coming home from war are touched upon in this film. When I see it, I wonder sometimes if we have really changed so much. Here is why I say this...The soldier longs for home, for his family, for his girl. And then when the day finally arrives that he is actually going home, the uncertainty sets in. I know I've changed. Will my family understand this? What will they think of me? Will I be able to relate to them? Or the soldier who suffered the loss of his hands. How will people treat me? Will I be able to function as a man and provide for my family? Or will people feel sorry for me/pity me? The soldier who comes home only to find that his wife has moved on. That she is selfish, only thinking of herself and the next good time. The realization that the relationship was superficial from the beginning. That just when he needs support the most, it is not there. As well, the family who waits for the returning soldier. They have been dreaming of this day for a long time. But when he finally is home, he is somewhat like a stranger. They know that he has been through experiences that they will never fully understand. The wife's desire for things to "get back to normal." The reality that things can and never will completely be the same. The returning father who tries to relate to his children. He remembers as they were when he left, but they have grown up now. They can't fully relate to what their father has been through. Then there is the "cluelessness" of the folks in the community who wonder where the soldier has been all this time. They have no understanding of what the soldier has been through or how they have changed...nor do they want to hear much about it. The performances in this film are stellar and the musical soundtrack really captures the heart of the film. One of the most telling scenes is when Dana Andrews (who played a former tail gunner) climbs into a junked bomber parked in a field. As he looks out the dirty windshield with the sweat running down his face, he starts to imagine, once again, that he is in the heat of battle. The music reaches a crescendo that transports us into the battle with the loud and unwavering hum of the bombers as they enter a dangerous confrontation with the enemy. The fact that an actual veteran, played by Harold Russell, with a real disability is in the movie helps make it the classic that is truly is. He was basically untrained as an actor, which contributes to the everyman appeal of this film. You couldn't ask for a better cast in this film, Frederic March, Myrna Loy, Virginia Mayo, Teresa Wright, Cathy O'Donnell, Dana Andrews, and Harold Russell. I hope that MGM, or whoever the distributor is, will come out with a fully restored version and a documentary that talks about the making of and legacy of this wonderful film.

I had to have this in the house. A masterpiece that caught a moment of time and history.

Great movie - happy to add this movie to our DVD collection. Played great in our DVD player.

This is a wonderful movie about returning war veterans struggle to rejoin society and lead a normal life after the trauma of war. A must see!

Best Years of Our Lives ASIN: B009L147EE (Edición USA) Gran película con una imagen excelente. Aunque según la información de Amazon es región A, (Estados Unidos y Canada) es perfectamente visible en Europa con reproductores convencionales. Como extra, únicamente el trailer. Audio: inglés. Subtítulos en inglés, español latino y francés. Muy recomendable.

WWII to many is a distant memory. If you want to know what it was like for those who fought and returned home back then, this film is a must! It reminds us the PTSD is not new, it just wasn’t an available condition.

史上名高い本作はブルーレイでの発売がなく、観ることがないまま過ごしてきた。 いつまでも待てなくなり、思い切ってエー・アール・シーのDVDの購入に踏み切った訳だが pressed in Taiwanで、「一部見苦しい部分、聞き苦しい部分あり」との注意書きがあった。 従って画質に対しては全く期待していなかったが、見始めると傷･汚れは全く無く画像は鮮明。 更に、モノクロの階調も滑らかで、台詞も聞きやすく、一部にフィルム粒子がみられるが ７５年前の作品としては上質なもので、大変驚かされた。 すっかり嬉しくなったので2時間50分の長尺を一気に見ることが出来た次第。 この高画質があったればこそ、グレッグ・トーランドの有名なパンフォーカス画面が 堪能できると言えるだろう。 価格は550円でとてもお得だし、日本語字幕・吹き替えと英語字幕・音声が 切り替え可能なのも有り難い。唯一の問題は字幕・音声の切り替えが メインメニューの戻らないと出来ないことくらいだろう。 作品評価は多くの方々が発表しており、名作であることが確認できたので 言及は必要ないと思い割愛する。なお、若き日のホーギー・カーマイケルの姿と 歌声が聞けたのは収穫であった。

Si vous ne connaissez pas ce film, vous n'êtes pas excusable ! Le récit se déroule dans l'immédiate après-guerre quand les héros... disons les combattants rentrent au pays et doivent se réhabituer à une vie qu'ils avaient totalement oubliée. Pendant qu'ils étaient au front, se révélant différemment de ce qu'ils pouvaient être dans la vie civile, les évènements continuaient dans un pays où l'économie était essentiellement tournée vers l'effort de guerre. On évoque beaucoup les deux acteurs principaux mais il ne faut surtout pas oublier le personnage du marin, estropié et sur qui les plus beaux aspects humains vont se concentrer. La morale de cette histoire est à tirer par chacun d'entre nous ! L'image a peut-être vieilli mais les faits demeurent toujours d'actualité car la paix depuis 1945 n'a pas rêgné partout dans le monde !