Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
by William Wyler
List Price:
Our Price: $9.94
You Save: $5.04 (34%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $4.70 (click here)
Category: VHS Video
See more movie releases
Buy this VHS video movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
VHS Tape Cover Information
Actor: Dana Andrews, Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, Virginia MayoDirector: William Wyler
Cinematographer: Gregg Toland
Editor: Daniel Mandell
Producer: Samuel Goldwyn
Writer: MacKinlay Kantor
Writer: Robert E. Sherwood
Edition: VHS Tape
Format: Black & White, NTSC, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
Running Time: 172 minutes
Release Date: 1994-12-09
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Hbo Home Video
Studio: Hbo Home Video
VHS Movie Reviews of Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Movie Review: Before the movie, before the screenplay, a book-length poem
Summary: 5 Stars
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 Phillips' portrayal 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-
Summary of Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Winner of seven Academy Awards, including best picture, director, actor, and screenplay, William Wyler's brilliant drama about domestic life after World War II remains one of the all-time classics of American cinema. Inspired by a pictorial article about returning soldiers in Life magazine, the story focuses on three war veterans (Fredric March, Dana Andrews, and Harold Russell in unforgettable roles) and their rocky readjustment to civilian life in their Midwestern town of Boone City. Capturing the contradictory moods of America in the mid to late 1940s, this three-hour drama spans a complex range of honest emotions, from joyous celebration and happy reunion to deep-rooted ambivalence and reassessment of personal priorities. A movie milestone when released in 1946, The Best Years of Our Lives still packs a punch with powerful, timeless themes. --Jeff ShannonDrama VHS Video
VHS Video Movies
- Action & Adventure
- African American Cinema
- Animation VHS Video
- Anime & Manga
- Art House & International
- Classics VHS Video
- Comedy VHS Video
- Cult Movies
- Documentary
- Drama VHS Video
- Educational
- Fitness
- Gay & Lesbian
- Horror VHS Video
- Kids & Family
- Military & War VHS Video
- Music Video & Concerts
- Musicals & Performing Arts
- Mystery & Suspense
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Special Interests
- Sports VHS Video
- Television VHS Video
- Westerns VHS Video
Movies most talked about in The Academy Collection: The Supporting Actor - 1936-1961
West Side StoryMGM (Video & DVD); Release date: 1992-08-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $0.95
Price in other shops:
SpartacusUniversal Studios; Release date: 2001-02-06; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $4.45
Price in other shops:
Ben Hur (1959)MGM (Video & DVD); Release date: 1996-09-10; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $5.94
Price in other shops:
Big Country (1958)MGM (Video & DVD); Release date: 1998-09-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $9.85
Price in other shops:
SayonaraMGM (Video & DVD); Release date: 2000-01-04; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $12.15
Price in other shops:
Lust for LifeMGM (Warner); Release date: 1998-09-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $14.75
Price in other shops:
Mister RobertsWarner Home Video; Release date: 1998-10-13; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $7.87
Price in other shops:
Barefoot ContessaMGM (Video & DVD); Release date: 1996-06-25; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $1.76
Price in other shops:
From Here to EternityColumbia Classics Tristar Home Video; Release date: 1994-06-22; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $3.95
Price in other shops:
Viva Zapata20th Century Fox; Release date: 2001-06-05; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $65.00
Similar VHS Movies
Marty (1954)Release date: 2001-06-19; DVD
Best price: $5.48
Price in other shops:
The Grapes of WrathRelease date: 2004-04-06; DVD
Best price: $7.08
Price in other shops:
The ApartmentRelease date: 2001-06-19; DVD
Best price: $3.49
Price in other shops:
Sunset Boulevard - The Centennial CollectionParamount; Release date: 2008-11-11; DVD
Best price: $13.99
Price in other shops:
It Happened One NightSony; Release date: 1999-12-28; DVD
Best price: $12.74
Price in other shops:
How Green Was My ValleyRelease date: 2003-01-14; DVD
Best price: $4.80
Price in other shops:
All About Eve (Two-Disc Special Edition)TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT; Release date: 2008-04-08; DVD
Best price: $11.00
Price in other shops:
Since You Went AwayTWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT; Release date: 2004-10-19; DVD
Best price: $7.13
Price in other shops:
From Here to EternitySony; Release date: 2001-10-23; DVD
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops:
Mrs. MiniverWarner Brothers; Release date: 2004-02-03; DVD
Best price: $11.00
Price in other shops: