The Best Years of Our Lives 1946 BrRip Mp4 Lee1001 Pt2

The Best Years of Our Lives 1946 BrRip Mp4 Lee1001 (Part 2)

Part 1: http://kickasstorrents.ee/the-best-years-of-our-lives-1946-brrip-mp4-lee1001-pt1-t8885339.html



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036868/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_Years_of_Our_Lives

One of the few films that deserved all the awards heaped on it from the Oscars.



Samuel Goldwyn’s “The Best Years of Our Lives” is one of the best pictures of our lives. It’s the type of film production which belies Goldwyn’s own well-publicized interview of last week that the British would soon seriously challenge America as pacemakers in motion picture production because of what he terms the Britishers’ more realistic approach to films.



Ballyhooey or otherwise. Goldwyn fundamentally doesn’t need any spurious spotlighting on his “Best Years.” In the MacKinlay Kantor novel, as dramatist Robert E. Sherwood has transmuted into a screenplay and director William Wyler has vivified it, the producer has a fundamental story which will sell around the world. As the postwar saga of the soda jerk who became an Army officer; the banker who was mustered out as a sergeant; and the seaman who came back to glory minus both his bands, “Years” is right out of your neighbors’ lives. Or, maybe, even your own.



Inspired casting has newcomer Harold Russell, a real-life amputee, pacing the seasoned trouper, Fredric March, for personal histrionic triumphs. But all the other performances are equally good. Myrna Loy is the small-town bank veepee’s beauteous wife. Teresa Wright plays their daughter, who goes for the already-married Dana Andrews with full knowledge of his wife (Virginia Mayo, who does a capital job as the cheating looker). Both femmes in this triangle, along with Andrews, do their stuff convincingly.



Cathy O’Donnell, newcomer, does her sincerely-in-love chore with the same simplicity as Harold Russell, the $200-a-month war-pensioned hero, who, since he has lost his hands in combat, spurns Miss O’Donnell because he never wants to be a burden. That scene, as he skillfully manages the wedding ring, is but one of several memorable high spots.



March’s forthright stance as a banker, father and free-and-easy bourbon drinker makes his performance easily one of the year’s cinematic outstanders. Given a v.p. title and a returning war hero’s salary boost as the bank’s officer in charge of small loans to Gis, he tells off the smug doubletalking bankers about “secure collateral” by exercising innate judgment, predicated on human values and faith in the American future. In a couple of scenes which by their very underplaying hit hard he scores a single-handed thespic triumph.



Then there is Hoagy Carmichael as the laconic piano-playing tavernkeeper who teaches the amputated ex-seaman how to play the ivories with those trick lunch-hooks. The songsmithing actor has become quite a trouper. Gladys George does well as blowsy stepmother to Dana Andrews, whose pop (Roman Bohnen) lives in frowzy gin-reeking existence down by the railroad tracks, only suddenly awakening to the boy’s military prowess which has made the kid from the wrong side of the tracks emerge an officer. It takes Andrews a little longer to find himself but he does in that telling final scene which augurs well for him and Miss Wright.



The pace of the picture is a bit leisurely. Almost a full hour is required to set the mood and the motivation, but never does it pall. Not a line or scene is spurious. The people live; they are not mere shadow etchings on a silver sheet. The realism is graphic; the story compelling; the romantic frailties and the human little problems confronting each of the group are typical of the headlines in stressing the impact of postwar readjustment and faith in the future.



THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES



Homer thinks maybe they should stop at his Uncle Butch's saloon for a drink before they get home. "You're home now, kid," the older man Al tells him. Three military veterans have just returned to their hometown of Boone City, somewhere in the Midwest, and each in his own way is dreading his approaching reunion. Al's dialogue brings down the curtain on the apprehensive first act of William Wyler's "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946), the first film to win eight Academy Awards (one honorary) and at the time second only to "Gone With the Wind" at the U.S. box office. Seen more than six decades later, it feels surprisingly modern: lean, direct, honest about issues that Hollywood then studiously avoided. After the war years of patriotism and heroism in the movies, this was a sobering look at the problems veterans faced when they returned home.



The movie centers on the stories of the three men. Al Stephenson (Fredric March), in his 40s, was an infantryman and is now returning to his family and the bank where he worked. Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) was a crew member on a bomber. Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) was a Navy man who lost both hands and now uses steel hooks. "You gotta hand it to the Navy," Fred tells Al, as they watch Homer walk slowly from their taxi to his front door, "they sure trained that kid how to use those hooks." Al says: "They couldn't train him to put his arms around his girl, or to stroke her hair."



That's why Homer wanted to stop for the drink. When he left for the war, he had an understanding with Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell), the girl next door, but now he fears how she will react to his artificial hands. The other men have fears, too. Fred, raised in a shack by the tracks and working as a drugstore soda jerk when he enlisted, quickly married the sexy Marie (Virginia Mayo), who has stopped writing him. Al has been married for 20 years to Milly (Myrna Loy), and has a son Rob (Michael Hall) and a daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright). They welcome him home with love and hugs, but he doesn't feel right; his children have changed, his life has changed, and after Rob goes to bed he suddenly remembers Butch's bar and suggests his wife and daughter join him for a celebration.



The other two men also turn up at Butch's. Homer couldn't take the exaggerated kindness and suppressed grief he thought he sensed from his parents and Wilma. Fred didn't find anyone at home at Marie's apartment. The three men get plastered together, with Al's wife looking on with superhuman understanding. That's the night Fred and Peggy have their first conversation, and begin to fall in love.



The movie's screenplay, by Robert Sherwood, moves confidently among the problems faced by the three men; unhurried and relatively low-key, this isn't a fevered docudrama. It becomes clear to Fred that Marie is a party girl who isn't interested in life on his drugstore paycheck of $32.50. Homer coldly tries to force away Wilma because he doesn't want her pity. Al gets a promotion at the bank, and is in charge of giving loans under the G.I. Bill, but rebels when he's asked to trust an applicant's collateral more than his character. Al turns to drink, and has a half-sloshed, half-heroic moment when he speaks his mind at a company dinner.



The film makes no effort to paint these men as extraordinary. Their lives, their characters, their prospects are all more or less average, and Wyler doesn't pump in superfluous drama. That's why the movie is so effective, and maybe why it doesn't seem as dated as some 1946 dramas. But Wyler employed remarkable visuals to make some of his points. He was working with the great cinematographer Gregg Toland, known for his deep-focus photography on such films as "Citizen Kane," and often Wyler uses deep-focus instead of cutting, so that the meaning of a scene can reveal itself to us, instead of being pounded down with close-ups. Consider a scene in Butch's where Homer proudly shows how Butch (Hoagy Carmichael) has taught him to play piano with his hooks. Al and Fred look on, and then Fred walks to a phone booth in the far background to make a crucial call. The camera doesn't move, but our eyes follow Fred's movement to the booth, and we focus on a decision he is making.



One of the movie's most famous sequences involves Fred deciding to leave town in search of work, and going to the airport. While waiting for his military transport flight, he wanders into a vast graveyard of mothballed warplanes. This scene is heartbreaking. Once Fred flew these planes, and now they, and their pilots, are no longer needed. The payoff of the scene is deeply ironic.



And consider the film's extended closing scene, when Homer and Wilma get married. Fred and Peggy are among the guests. Earlier they have told each they they are in love, and Peggy vowed to her parents she would break up Fred's mistaken and miserable marriage. But Al warned Fred away from his daughter -- one reason he was leaving town, even though the tawdry Marie is filing for divorce.



Wyler shows the entire marriage ceremony, all the way through, starting with Carmichael playing the wedding march, and the lovers exchanging vows. There are two parallel lines of suspense. One involves the marriage itself, and whether Homer's hooks can slip a ring on Wilma's finger. The other involves Fred and Peggy on opposite sides of the same room, their eyes locked as they hear the wedding vows being pronounced. Deep focus allows Wyler to show both of these events at once, and his framing draws our eyes to the back of the shot, where Teresa Wright, never prettier or more vulnerable, doesn't move a muscle.



"The Best Years of Our Lives" doesn't use verbal or technical pyrotechnics. It trusts entirely in the strength of its story. One of the sources of its power is the performance by Harold Russell, the handless veteran. Producer Samuel Goldwyn was actually criticized at the time for his "tasteless" use of Russell, but look at the heartbreaking scene where Homer invites Wilma up to his bedroom -- not to make a pass, but to show her what is involved in getting ready for bed. He thinks maybe then she'll understand why he doesn't think he can marry her.



Russell was an untrained actor, but utterly sincere. He says: "This is when I know I'm helpless. My hands are down there on the bed. I can't put them on again without calling to somebody for help. I can't smoke a cigarette or read a book. If that door should blow shut, I can't open it and get out of this room. I'm as dependent as a baby that doesn't know how to get anything except to cry for it." WeknowRussell is speaking for himself, and the emotional power is overwhelming. O'Donnell's response is pitch-perfect.



Russell won an honorary Oscar, "for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance." Although he was actually nominated for best supporting actor, the Academy board voted the special award because they thought he didn't have a chance of winning. They were wrong. He won the Oscar, the only time an actor has been given two Oscars for the same role. The film also won for best picture, actor (March), director, screenplay, editing and score.



Note: The film is said to have inspired one of Samuel Goldwyn's famous Goldwynisms: "I don't care if the film doesn't make a nickel. I just want every man, woman, and child in America to see it."ma



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