Hi everyone. Welcome to Virtual Appreciation Society.
For those who don’t know me, my name’s Rob Staeger, and I love movies. And music. And comics. And TV and books and theater and burlesque and roleplaying games, and probably a bunch of other stuff that I’m not thinking of right now. (Like food. I love food! How could I forget food?)
And sometimes I want to share what I think of these things. On a recent episode of the Dana Gould Hour podcast, author and film critic Marshall Julius called himself a “professional appreciator,” and it’s a perspective I’ve really taken to heart. Why spend any time or effort tearing down the bad stuff when there’s so much good stuff I can direct people’s attention to? I’m not obligated to chase down new releases here. That’s a trap disguised as a treadmill. Instead, I’ll just drift where the wind takes me, whether it’s an 80-year-old movie (like today), a run of comics from when I was in high school, music from the early 21st century, or a book released last year.
These things won’t all be perfect, and I’ll certainly point out flaws where I see them. But my intentions are to tell you why I appreciate it, and why you might too. Simple as that.
So let’s get to the inaugural film on this journey.
The Best Years of Our Lives
What’s grabbed my attention today is a quieter film, although it made a big splash in 1946, when it took home nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture. I’m talking about William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives, a drama that centers on three servicemen coming home after World War Two. The three men are USAAF captain Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), Army sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredrick March), and Navy petty officer Homer Parrish (Harold Russell). The men are well differentiated—by service, by rank, by age, and by socioeconomic class. These things don’t necessarily line up, and are part of the adjustments the men have to make when they return. As a captain in the Army Air Force, Fred shouldered a great deal of mission responsibility and drew an impressive paycheck. But at home, he was a soda jerk at a pharmacy…and he struggles to find a new job commensurate with his wartime experience. Al, on the other hand, was a segreant, in the grit with the infantrymen—but returns to his lucrative banking career, where his decisions on loans potentially represent one more roadblock in the struggle of people he served with.
And then there’s Homer, the youngest of the three. He’s returning home to a loving family and a devoted girlfriend… but he lost his hands in the war. The Navy has replaced his hands with hooks, and trained him to use them with surprising dexterity. But as comfortable as he is around his fellow servicemen, once he returns home he starts to boil inside, feeling like a burden to his loved ones, acutely aware of his effect on them.
Of course, any coming home story also needs to focus on the people the servicemen are coming home to. Here, we also run the gamut. Al returns to his wife Milly (Myrna Loy) and two children, Peggy (Teresa Wright) and Rob (Michael Hall). Fred’s married too, though only for a couple of weeks before he shipped off; his wife, Marie (Virginia Mayo) is a good-time gal who bristles at his presence—especially once his government salary runs out. Homer returns to live with his parents, brooding and practicing his shooting while girl next door Wilma (Cathy O’Donnell) pines for him. There’s a fleeting moment when Homer is examining his gun after firing it in the garage; he looks down the barrel and Wilma has a moment of horror: “That’s not loaded, is it?” Homer dismisses the question (“I know how to handle a gun”) but given his moods, it was worth asking.
Best Years touches on so many issues with re-assimilation into civilian life, it’s a marvel that the movie is as entertaining as it is. And yet we love these men, even when they misread a situation or make a misstep; their performances convey how out of place they feel, even as the characters try to hide it from their loved ones. The film gallops along, shifting among Al’s and Fred’s and Homer’s stories as they contrast and collide, sometimes bringing out the best in each other, sometimes not. The characters are allowed complex, conflicting emotions— and the situations they encounter at home are commonplace, yet their history means they’re never simple to navigate.
Director William Wyler shoots the film with depth and grace, allowing important moments to take place in the background while other action dominates the foreground. In one tense scene, an important call is made in a phone booth at a bar while we watch Homer play a piano duet with his uncle Butch (Hoagie Carmichael). Or we can’t help noticing the glower of an unnamed bank employee who witnesses Al approving a farm loan for a fellow G.I.
Only rarely does the movie flinch. Fred’s PTSD (called shell shock at the time) has its moments when it comes to the fore, but a sequence toward the end suggests he’s sorted out his feelings of trauma and survivor’s guilt—a moving scene in the cockpit of a decommissioned bomber offers a stiff-upper-lip shorthand for him moving on, an unlikely outcome for handling such things alone.
But in another sequence, the film is bracingly frank. Homer asks Wilma to help him get ready for bed, so she can see for herself what a life with him would require; he removes the harness that holds his hooks onto his arms, and then explains, from that point on, he’s “helpless.” There’s pain in that admission, and heartbreaking honesty.
I could write more about the film, but I don’t want to give up too many of its secrets. Needless to say, I highly recommend this movie. It’s available for streaming on library apps Kanopy and Hoopla, as well as Amazon Prime Video.
And that’s it for this first edition of Virtual Appreciation Society. I’ll be back soon with something new.
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