The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)

[The following is my June entry for Blind Spots.]

More than one person has referred to William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives as the "best" Best Picture winner. What many failed to mention is that it is also the "most" Best Picture winner. It resembles almost the quintessential essence of the ideal Oscar movie: socially conscious but inoffensive,  heart-wrenching on a surface level, and beautiful without being a true aesthetic marvel. But if the film represents the non plus ultra of Academy-pleasing filmmaking, it is also a demonstration of how great that kind of movie can be. Wyler's direction, aided by the great Gregg Toland, may not be fussy, but its framing offers direct snapshots of character insight that never let the pace lag on this three-hour extravaganza of post-war moralism.

The Best Years of Our Lives opens at a military post on an airstrip that houses soldiers, seamen and pilots waiting in limbo for an open plane seat to take them back home after the end of World War II. As they all wait for the chance to finally go home, rich civilians continue to fly undisturbed, not one inconvenienced for the sake of sending America's heroes back to their loved ones. At last, Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), an Air Force captain, manages to get his ride back to the Midwestern Boone City along with a sailor named Homer Parrish (Harold Russell). But the jovial, amusing tone of this cramped purgatory and the promise of a return to normalcy dies when Parrish goes to sign his name to get on the plane and reveals two prosthetic hooks where his hands used to be. The medium long shot remains unbroken as both Fred and the man in charge of scheduling instantly shrivel with pity, and the tone of the film, only subtly undermined to this point, instantly changes. Homer and Fred meet the last lead, Army sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March) on the plane ride home, and despite their rapport, it's clear that all three are as nervous to go home as excited.

This hesitance comes out in the taxi ride the three share to their respective destinations. Homer's house comes first, and the disabled sailor's can-do attitude dissipates as he nears his family's porch. He suggests they all go back to his uncle's bar and have a drink first, said in the tone of a man casually seeking a way out of his certain death. Even Al, older than the others by more than a decade, asks for Fred's stop to be the second destination to put off his own return. The three men feel so uncomfortable back in their respective haunts that before the day is done, all of them find themselves belatedly taking Homer's suggestion and ending up in that bar.

The rest of the film weaves in and out of the men's lives as they attempt to rejoin a society that seems so different to them now. Fred stops in for a quick visit at his parents' working class hovel of a home and leaves just as fast, having no desire to endure his father's inability to talk to his son or his mother's oblivious questions about what he had to do to get all those medals and ribbons. Suffering from PTSD, he tacitly wants financial compensation for his trauma in the form of a better lot in life. But with so many soldiers returning home, a bum resumé looks only marginally better for a war record attached, and Fred must go back to his prewar job as a soda jerk. His own anger over this insult is nothing compared to the outrage of his wife, Marie (Virginia Mayo), who clearly enjoyed herself in her husband's absence and chafes under his presence.

Al also resumes his old job, though he works at a bank. But if Al at least gets to come home to a fat paycheck, he expresses as much enthusiasm for his position as Fred does for his. "Last year it was kill Japs. And this year it's make money," he tells his wife, Milly (Myrna Loy), ruefully encapsulating the unwritten, unspoken social directive to move past the war as quickly as possible. Of the three main characters, Al has the easiest life ahead of him. Not only does he have a cushy job guaranteed, Al also enjoys the support and devotion of his wife and two children. Yet his relative comfort may be a source of guilt; when a Navy man applies for a small loan to buy a farm, Al reviews his lack of collateral and funds and seems about ready to deny the request, only to be overcome by a sense of duty to a fellow veteran. Furthermore, Al flirts most dangerously with alcoholism, dragging Milly and even his young daughter for a night of drunken carousing visualized by a slurred montage of superimposed nightclubs and later nearly botching a big speech at a company banquet by inadvertently criticizing banks' greedy impulses.

But the best and most affecting story is Homer's. Wyler cast Russell, a nonprofessional actor, because he really did lose his hands during the war. To have lived that sacrifice does not necessarily mean one can portray it on the screen, however, yet Russell's performance pulls together the naturalistic style of the cinematography and editing. Wyler and Toland place Russell center-frame and nearly alone in his distance plane in long shots of Homer sitting with his shoulders hunched and his face drawn in shame as his family and that of his girlfriend, Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell), speak about him as if he were not there, either ignoring him or conversing with each other about what Homer can or cannot do. On the plane home, Homer showed off his ability to light a match with his claws, as much a feat to put the other two men at ease as himself. But sitting miserably in his parents' home, Homer literally jumps at the chance to light Wilma's father's cigar, but the man, not realizing the offense, politely refuses the lad's help. As the film wears on, Russell's jocular forthrightness regarding his disability gathers a rougher edge, a sardonic bite seeping into his conversation. Before one man can even asked what happened, Homer cuts him off with a sarcastic response. In one of the film's most striking moments, Homer grows so paranoid and self-conscious about his looks like the rams his hooks through a window to scare his little sister and her friends peering in at him. Even this outburst, though, is handled with considerable believability and humanity by Russell.

Russell's performance is indicative of Wyler's quest for naturalism, which does not entail strict realism so much as an honest, giving style that lets his actors ease into what might have been an overbearingly preachy script. Long takes generally placed at some level of critical distance emphasize the waves of alienation and uncertainty emanating from the returned soldiers. Toland's deep focus is used exceptionally throughout: when Al embraces Milly after years apart, the camera remains in its original position adjacent to the door as Al walks back down the hallway; the shot is crisp, but its distance makes the audience feel like an eavesdropping spectator, gawking along with the kids at a private exchange. Back at the drugstore, Toland and Wyler routinely place the callous boss in a transparent office high above the showroom floor, constantly watching as if looking for an excuse to sack Fred. Most stirring of all are the shots of an airplane graveyard that look almost surreal as propellors and fuselages stretch in perfect formation to the farthest distance of the frame. The stacked engines resemble their own tombstones as they lie vertically on the ground, while the gutted plane husks produce a cognitive disconnect between the neat, disciplined arrangement of the aircraft and their tattered, stripped look. But even this scene feels real because it is, shot at an actual field breaking down derelict and excess aircraft after the war. This field even connotes its own sense of beauty, the planes being torn down to build VA housing in a modern take on beating swords into plowshares.

Supporting performances aid the overall mood of somber humanity as well. Hoagy Carmichael does a great deal with the handful of lines he receives as Uncle Butch, urging his nephew to be patient with his loved ones in a tone of considerate advice between relatives who see each other more as pals the way aunts and uncles so often do with nieces and nephews. Minna Gombell has even less to work with as Homer's mother, but she instantly makes an impression upon seeing her mangled son and only just managing to transform an unstoppable sob into a cough before the sound fully escapes her throat. The finest of the supporting players is Teresa Wright, giving characteristically unimpeachable work as Al's daughter and a love interest for Fred. She takes a part that could have shattered the low-key, realistic narrative and turns it into the most believable character in the film, or at least no less natural than Russell. Both naïve and wise, Peggy realizes how ridiculous her crush on the married man is, but when she announces to her parents her intentions to break up Fred and Marie, Wright delivers the line with casual conviction she might as well be listing her errands for the day.

Released so early after World War II, The Best Years of Our Lives proves prescient in its sober appraisal of the uncertainty created by the war and its discomfort by the speed with which American society covered up the realities of war to bask in the country's new position as an undisputed economic and military superpower. Here, Wyler shows the audience some of the cracks in that damn of obliviousness. Rob, Al's son who has already become obsessed with the implications of The Bomb, receives spoils of war from his father in the form of a sword and flag taken from a dead Japanese man. Rob thanks his father the way someone thanks their dog for bringing a dead bird into the house, clearly horrified at these tokens of death. Elsewhere, the instantaneous push for enmity with the Soviet Union leds to an infuriating exchange between a clueless old pre-McCarthyite and Homer: the man tells Homer he lost his hands to the wrong enemy, as if somehow his sacrifice would have meant more had he given his hands to Stalin instead of Hirohito. These fears for the world's future only make the title further ironic, which could make the relative happiness the characters find by the end of the movie seem contrived. But Wyler makes their satisfaction and successful readjustment hard-won and muted, offering a rare Hollywood ending that follows logically from an emotionally harrowing story.

Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943)

The theme of duality runs indirectly through many Hitchcock films, with the ironic alignment of two individuals in his wrong-man thrillers and the fetished quasi-double (who is really just one person period) in Vertigo. In films such as Strangers on a Train and Psycho, however, that theme has come more prominently to the fore, examined in moral terms in the former and ludicrously psychosexual in the latter. Shadow of a Doubt, Hitch's 1943 thriller widely considered his first masterpiece, is the director's purest exploration into this minor theme. Featuring matched action and edits, suggestive character unity and clashing moralities, Shadow of a Doubt is one of the director's more immediately guessable mysteries even as it is one of his most surprising pictures.

Hitchcock establishes his darker tone instantly, opening on shots of urban decay in Philadelphia. And when his camera makes its way to a neighborhood where kids innocently play ball in the streets, the camera suddenly moves in a series of dissolves and low-angle Dutch shots upward into the no. 13 building nearby, finally moving inside an apartment where Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten), going by an alias, lies on his bed with liquor and money casually placed on the bed table. Cotten looks like a vampire, an image strengthened when the landlady arrives and closes his blinds, the darkness cause the man to rise with a jolt. The woman acts like a chiding mother, lovingly cleaning up the place and speaking to him sweetly without picking up on the harshness of his answering tone or properly paying attention to the implications of his littered alcohol and cash. She notes that two men came by looking for him earlier, and when she leaves, Charlie downs his last bit of whiskey and flees. Hitchcock was the master of paranoia, and the speed with which he undermines any expectation gives Shadow an edge that clearly announces the second stage of his career.

Shortly after this opening, Hitchcock begins mirroring shots and characters. Looking for a place to hide away, Charlie sends word to his family in Santa Rosa, California, and Hitchcock moves to that house using the same nearing dissolves to move inside the Newton home. Inside, he makes his way to the bedroom of Charlotte (Teresa Wright), who also goes by the name Charlie. Her introduction roughly matches her namesake uncle's, but some details reverse in the reflection. Where the landlady made a matronly figure, the well-meaning fool speaking to Young Charlie is her father, and where Uncle Charlie lounged in loose bills of cash, Young Charlie speaks of matters of the soul.

This is but the first example of doubling and reflection, and soon the film suggests an outright psychic link between Young and Uncle Charlie when the girl's sudden thoughts about her uncle and her subsequent discovery of a telegram saying he will be coming to visit. Wright, who never looked more innocent, greets her uncle's arrival with pure elation, oblivious to just how sinister, angular and harsh Cotten's leering Uncle Charlie looks to her sweet, giddy energy. The contrast is so marked as to be perverse, which is exactly what Hitchcock wants. Where Young Charlie sees her oneness with her uncle as a charming example of spiritual fulfillment, both Cotten and Hitchcock depict Uncle Charlie as desiring a oneness of a more physical kind. When the uncle arrives, the father superstitiously asks him not to throw his hat on the bed, but Uncle Charlie barely waits for his brother-in-law to leave the room before chucking it on his niece's mattress. It's not only a moment of defiance and deliberate antagonism, it has the feel of a predator marking one's territory.

Though Hitchcock had been in America since 1940's Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent, but Shadow of a Doubt feels like his first resolutely "American" film, the first time the national backdrop became part of the story and part of the psychological framework of the themes. Undoubtedly, the director owed this to Thorton Wilder, that master of small-town America who wrote the film's original script. Of course, this being Hitchcock, Wilder's gift for finely observed portraits give way to rigid types that play with American clichés. This is quaint, small-town Americana, a place where the people are neither gibbering yokels nor refined intellectuals; the townsfolk are generally simple, a bit ignorant and if they do not seem as fresh-faced as Wright, that is only because Wright's radiance outshines all.

By setting up Santa Rosa as typical Americana, Hitchcock makes Uncle Charlie's arrival all the more unsettling. Cotten's vampiric shadow hangs over this movie, rage erupting behind his cold exterior in his attempts to keep his true identity from his family. Even Young Charlie cannot maintain her enthusiasm when her uncle shames her father at the bank where he works, loudly joking about embezzlement as co-workers begin to eye the hapless Joseph. When the two ostensible reporters make their way from Philadelphia to continue investigating Charlie, his niece must confront the truth of his character, a revelation long ago figured out by the audience. Her understanding allows the film to travel in even darker directions, such as a centerpiece scene of Cotten freezing over in cold fury at a dinner where he goes off on a calm but forceful rant about rich widows, his measured tone not even remotely masking the sadism of his words.

It's important to note that Hitchcock does not particularly structure this film as a mystery; Uncle Charlie's identity as the Merry Widow Murderer is obvious as soon as we learn that a serial killer is on the loose, and Cotten does nothing to disguise Charlie's true self. Instead, Hitchcock uses his clear evil as a bouncing-off point for his aesthetic duality. Hitch juxtaposes innocent with perverse, humble with arrogant, plain with preening. Wright's radiance illuminates even her low-lit scenes, while Cotten casts all into shadow. Hitchcock was always evoked emotion with ruthlessness, and the manner in which he upends Young Charlie's world is heartbreaking in its cruelty: the poor girl is so flabbergasted to see that her unity with her uncle is one of horrifically diametric opposites that she almost cannot see how Jack, the detective pursuing the killer, forms a reflection of her goodness, not its inverse like Uncle Charlie. Of course, it also wouldn't be a Hitchcock film without jokes, and the director here delights in gags involving twos. The best of which, surely, is the scene inside the 'Till Two club where doubles are ordered.

When the two detectives posing as reporters come to Santa Rosa, they con their way into the house by saying they want to do a story on a typical American family, to which the mother, Emma, ironically replies that she doesn't think they're typical. Yet the suggestion under Hitch's use of broad types and unforgiving humanity is that the twisted, Freudian incest of this family and the seedy elements lurking under pre-fab suburban cleanliness and conformity is common to all such towns. Hitchcock would only delve further into such perverse, paranoid matters after the war ended, but Shadow of a Doubt is not only his first major consolidation of such issues but one of his best. It shows a director in complete control of his look and tone; no wonder, then, that his trademark cameo in this feature is a shot of him at a bridge table literally holding all of the cards.