The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
97 %
Reviews Counted: 32 Fresh: 31 Rotten:1 Average Rating: 8.6/10
Runtime: 2 hrs 52 mins
Synopsis:
Perhaps the most memorable film about the aftermath of World War II, it unfolds with the homecoming of three veterans to the same small town. The leads all touch emotional truths: Myrna Loy seems able to express longing, joy, fear and surprise--mostly with her back turned--in a particularly... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Hoagy Carmichael
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Reviews
Although it contains moving passages, Best Years is not much more than a conventional drama on the problems of servicemen attempting to adjust to life in postwar America, well served by an all-star cast and Toland's ingenious deep-focus setups.
02/19/08 05:33 PM
Top Critic It may be corny, but you'd have to be a real cynic not to be drawn in.
02/19/08 05:31 PM
Top Critic Surprisingly modern: lean, direct, honest about issues that Hollywood then studiously avoided.
01/04/08 11:10 AM
Top Critic One of the few films that deserved all the awards heaped on it from the Oscars.
03/17/07 12:56 PM
I'd call this the best American movie about returning soldiers I've ever seen -- the most moving and the most deeply felt.
12/12/06 09:50 PM
Top Critic The film is very proud of itself, exuding a stifling piety at times, but it works as well as this sort of thing can, thanks to accomplished performances by Fredric March, Myrna Loy, and Dana Andrews, who keep the human element afloat.
12/12/06 09:50 PM
Top Critic A biting look at the devestation caused by war on returning soldiers.
10/24/06 02:33 PM
Overlong, perhaps, but this tender and occasionally tough look at the plight of returning war veterans is one of Wyler's best films.
06/24/06 03:37 AM
The film captured the mood of post-WWII America so well that even harsher critics like James Agee failed to see the film's dramatic flaws, instead stressing its realism and black-and-white deep focus photography by Gregg Toland.
07/22/05 12:28 PM
Wyler and Goldwyn have made a glorious 'intimate epic,' one worthy of every honor bestowed upon it.
02/10/05 01:40 PM
This is intelligent, admirably unsentimental and utterly involving for its full three-hour running time.
07/07/04 08:17 AM
The Best Years Of Our Lives is a wonderful character study, and touches on points of humankind's psychiatric makeup that are so obvious they are rarely discussed in cinematic form.
10/01/03 10:52 AM
It is seldom that there comes a motion picture which can be wholly and enthusiastically endorsed not only as superlative entertainment but as food for quiet and humanizing thought.
05/20/03 05:16 PM
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