Movie Review: The Bridges At Toko-Ri (1954)

Genre: War Drama

Director: Mark Robson

Starring: William Holden, Grace Kelly, Fredric March, Mickey Rooney

Running Time: 102 minutes

Synopsis: During the Korean War, Lieutenant Harry Brubaker (William Holden) is a Navy pilot serving on the USS Savo Island aircraft carrier. Returning from a mission, Brubaker has to ditch in the ocean and is rescued by helicopter pilot Mike Forney (Mickey Rooney). While on leave in Tokyo, Brubaker enjoys a reunion with his wife Nancy (Grace Kelly), but his commander Admiral Tarrant (Fredric March) then selects him for a dangerous mission to bomb the strategically important but well-defended Toko-Ri bridges.

What Works Well: James Michener's story is loosely inspired by actual events, and director Mark Robson seeks balance between the mechanics of aircraft carrier operations and fatigue with a far-away war failing to captivate the home front. The military hardware glistens in the sun and the engines roar with satisfying thrust, but the toll on the human psyche and the anti-war message also surface with blunt eloquence. The tone builds on elements of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and Twelve O'Clock High before delivering a wallop-packing final chapter.

What Does Not Work As Well: The first two thirds are patchy and meander in search of a direction, too many shots invested in aircrafts maneuvering on, off, and around the carrier deck. The performances are perfunctory at best, the humans taking a back seat to the equipment. The mission planning details are hard-boiled and delivered with notable disinterest.

Conclusion: Just as men can plot to damage bridges, war can damage men.



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Movie Review: Nothing Sacred (1937)

A bland screwball comedy, Nothing Sacred offers cynical commentary about journalism but is otherwise constrained by a thin premise and delivers few good laughs.

New York City newspaperman Wally Cook (Fredric March) needs a good story to repair his damaged reputation. He convinces editor Oliver Stone (Walter Connolly) to send him to the small town of Warsaw, Vermont, to cover a human interest sob story about Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard), a young woman who is apparently dying due to radium poisoning.

Just before meeting Wally, Hazel learns she is fine and healthy, and was just misdiagnosed by Doctor Enoch Downer (Charles Winninger). She hides the good news from Wally and instead accepts his invitation for an all-expenses-paid trip to New York, with Enoch tagging along. The newspaper pumps Hazel into the sad darling of the social scene, but the truth threatens to come out when expert doctors from Europe arrive to examine her.

Despite a running time of just 77 minutes, decent technicolor vibrancy and good shots of the Manhattan skyline, Nothing Sacred runs out of steam early and ends in a mess. The idea of Fredric March and Carole Lombard trading punches must have seemed funny to someone at some point, but it's just a ghastly and desperate ploy to inject life into a moribund plot. 

By the time the supposedly funny climax rolls around, the one-joke premise of Hazel using her fake ailment to milk a good time away from the rural doldrums has run its course, Ben Hecht's script stumbling into repetitiveness (Hazel fakes another illness) and absurdities (a half-hearted phoney suicide attempt). A lukewarm romance between Hazel and Wally is a clunky add-on, director William A. Wellman unable to generate much heat between his two stars.

The better moments poke fun at the culture of journalism willing to take advantage of any story to sell copies, and savvy exploiters happy to turn the tables and dupe the media for personal profit. Nothing Sacred exposes a no-limits culture, in a creatively limited package.

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Movie Review: Seven Days In May (1964)

A Cold War political thriller, Seven Days In May uses a tense military takeover scenario in the United States as an avenue to explore themes of democracy, loyalty and nationalism in the shadow of a global conflict.

It's the early 1970s, and U.S. President Jordan Lyman (Fredric March) is facing severe criticism and protests for pushing ahead with a nuclear disarmament deal with the Soviet Union. He believes the agreement to be the only pathway to peace, but the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force General James Mattoon Scott (Burt Lancaster) believes the President is severely undermining national security.

Scott's right-hand man Colonel "Jiggs" Casey (Kirk Douglas) picks up cryptic clues suggesting Scott is planning a coup d'etat within a few days, using a covert military unit funded without appropriate authority and assembled and trained at a secret base near El Paso, Texas.

Jiggs takes his evidence to Lyman, who believes enough to investigate. He dispatches his chief aid Paul Girard (Martin Balsam) to interrogate a Navy commander stationed in the Mediterranean, trusted Senator Ray Clark (Edmond O'Brien) heads to El Paso, and Jiggs approaches Scott's former mistress Eleanor Holbrook (Ava Gardner) to dig up potentially useful dirt. But with the clock ticking, finding hard evidence against the plotters will prove a challenge.

With the Cold War at its peak after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, Seven Days In May joined Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe in a trio of 1964 films exploring various what-ifs of the conflict. Based on a novel by Charles W. Bailey II and Fletcher Knebel with a script by none other than Rod Serling, Seven Days In May delves into the perils of harbouring trust in a peace process, and at least as a starting point comes closest to predicting the actual course of negotiations eventually pursued by the United States and the Soviet Union.

The film uses the Cold War as background stage set. The focus is on the erosion of trust in a President's actions at the highest levels, and the potential for a cabal of generals and politicians to hide in plain sight while plotting a governmental takeover. Serling places intrigue and evidence gathering at the forefront of the story, Seven Days In May not featuring a single act of serious violence despite the threat of massive military and political upheaval. Director John Frankenheimer luxuriates in choreographing deep focus black and white scenes, turning the nation's most secretive boardrooms and offices into cerebral battlegrounds.

Along with star Kirk Douglas, Frankenheimer was instrumental in pulling the project together, and he assembled a dream cast, adding Lancaster, March, Gardner, O'Brien and Balsam, all in good form and tackling grim roles with requisite seriousness. And the film passes the baton around the lead roles at regular intervals, Douglas, Gardner and then March taking turns in the spotlight, with Lancaster a menacing presence throughout.

By the end March rolls back the years and emerges as a dominant presence, his scenes opposite Douglas (revealing the conspiracy threads) and Lancaster (a tense confrontational showdown) both mesmeric. Serling's script may be faulted for underplaying the President's hand and authority as the climax approaches, but also allows for the epic interpersonal clashes to play out.

As the race against time to unmask the conspiracy hurtles towards the designated hour of action, the film grabs opportunities to debate the merits of pursuing peace. General Scott cannot fathom how a powerful ideological foe can ever be trusted to disarm and has the public on his side, while Lyman, with sinking approval ratings, is convinced negotiating a treaty from a position of strength is the only path to a non-ruinous future. It's an eternal warmongers versus peacemakers polemic, and sometimes nothing less than the future of a powerful nation hangs in the balance.

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Movie Review: The Eagle And The Hawk (1933)

A World War One aerial combat drama, The Eagle And The Hawk is a contemplative anti-war film exploring the psychological damage caused by prolonged exposure to death.

From their base in England, American volunteer pilots Lt. Jerry Young (Fredric March) and his buddy Lt. Mike Richards (Jack Oakie) are redeployed to an airbase near the front lines in France. Young blocks the deployment of the brash Lt. Henry Crocker (Cary Grant), who is an undependable pilot but an ace gunner.

Young and Richards are tasked with missions to take photographs of enemy positions, and they frequently skirmish with enemy aircraft with plenty of casualties on both sides. Young proves to be a brilliant pilot, but many of his gunners are killed, and the deaths start to take an emotional toll. Crocker is finally called-up to the front lines and becomes Young's gunner, although the two men never get along. Young is celebrated as a role model and receives plenty of accolades, but finds it increasingly difficult to cope with the pressure.

Directed by Stuart Walker, The Eagle And The Hawk packs plenty of heartfelt emotion into 68 minutes of running time. The film is based on the book Death in the Morning by American author John Monk Saunders, who was a member of the Air Services during the Great War but was deeply frustrated by his lack of front-line service and committed suicide at age 42 after battling poor health.

By elevating Young to the status of a revered ace pilot with the military world at his feet, the story earns the freedom to have its say about battle consequences through the eyes of a hero. The screenplay by Seton I. Miller and Bogart Rogers fully embraces a downbeat, depressing view of war and its ramifications. Young views war as a ridiculous premise where inexperienced men are sent to die, and the celebrations, salutes, songs, medals and glorification are all part of a perverted deception to camouflage the unacceptable as gallant.

The film needs a strong central performance to work, and Fredric March is intense in his portrayal of a thoughtful man celebrated as an exemplary role model for killing other men. He is unable to cope both with the death of his own gunners and with the fiery destruction he inflicts on the enemy. As the victims become younger, Young's descent into the emotional wreckage today defined as post-traumatic stress disorder is convincing and difficult to watch.

Less impressive is Cary Grant, still learning his craft, and never quite striking the right tone. His Henry Crocker oscillates between aloof and hot-headed, and Grant doesn't get a grip on the character. Carole Lombard has one extended scene and makes an impression as the mysterious woman offering Young a temporary distraction.

Many of the aerial dog fight scenes are generally muddled and pilfered from other productions, and other than a few harrowing moments in the sky, the film is better when the actors are grounded. The Eagle And The Hawk is less about combat with the enemy, and more about the fight against the soulless private demons unleashed by war.

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The Movies Of Fredric March

All movies starring Fredric March and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Eagle And The Hawk (1933)

A Star Is Born (1937)

Nothing Sacred (1937)

The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)

Executive Suite (1954)

The Bridges At Toko-Ri (1954)

The Desperate Hours (1955)

Inherit The Wind (1960)

Seven Days In May (1964)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: A Star Is Born (1937)

A drama and romance set in the world of Hollywood, A Star Is Born is the classic tale of a new starlet rising just as her husband's career descends into sad oblivion.

Encouraged by her grandmother (May Robson), Esther Blodgett (Janet Gaynor) heads from her North Dakota family farm to Hollywood, in search of her big break in the film world. She befriends struggling assistant director Danny McGuire (Andy Devine), but otherwise cannot get a foothold in the industry. She is finally noticed by star (and frequently drunk) actor Norman Maine (Fredric March), who convinces studio boss Oliver Niles (Adolphe Menjou) to give Esther a screen test. She has a simple and natural look that Niles believes will be coming into fashion, and she is signed up by the studio.

With the help of fast thinking and faster talking studio publicist Matt Libby (Lionel Stander), Esther is transformed into Vicki Lester and receives the full studio spiffing up treatment. Cast as the female lead in Norman's next picture, she is immediately acclaimed as the next big star of the movies. After a whirlwind romance Norman sobers up long enough to marry Esther. But her continued success and his descent from glory drives him back to a pattern of self-destruction that threatens to derail her career.

Directed in colour by William A. Wellman and produced by David O. Selznick, the 1937 version of A Star Is Born holds up to the test of time remarkably well. While the bloated 1954 version is more about Judy Garland's attempted comeback, the 1937 effort is a perfectly balanced drama, allowing the story, the milieu and the characters of Esther and Norman to share the spotlight.

At 1 hour and 51 minutes, Wellman delivers an efficient and rich film. There is enough investment in depth to develop Esther and Norman into real people worth caring about. The supporting characters of studio head Oliver Niles, publicist Matt Libby and assistant director Danny McGuire also receive ample screen time and help to nurture the inside Hollywood environment.

The opposite trajectories experienced by Esther and Norman anchor the film. She rockets from unknown ingenue to stardom after her first film. He descends from the top of the heap to the bottom of the bottle at a remarkable pace. They cross paths in the middle, Norman giving Esther a key career boost, Esther doing all she can to halt his slide. Business is business, and ultimately Hollywood is the dream factory where only those who connect with the public are welcome. Esther is the new darling, Norman is the has-been, and few have time or sympathy for yesterday's stars.

Both sides of Hollywood are captured in key scenes. Oliver reaches out to Norman at a key low point, offering a return path to the screen. There are traces of humanity in this town, but Norman's ego prevents him from grabbing the lifeline, or even recognizing it for what it is. In another sequence, Libby wastes no time telling Norman exactly what he thinks of him, now that Norman is washed up. The knives come out quickly when the gloss wears off.

Esther is both protagonist and observer. She is eventually swept up by the studio star-making machine, and gets to observe its inner workings. Esther brings healthy farm-grown pragmatism to her reign at the top as Vicki Lester. Having already witnessed the fleeting nature of fame, Esther will know better than most how quickly the machine can dump and trample on its own creations.

Janet Gaynor and Fredric March both do well and generally avoid melodramatics, with Gaynor in particular radiating the honest appeal of a rural girl candid about her determination to chase a far-fetched dream. Stars are born in an explosion of perseverance, but burn out with a dark whimper.

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Movie Review: Executive Suite (1954)

A drama about a duel for dominance in the corporate boardroom, Executive Suite takes an admirably direct route towards its objectives, but in the process sacrifices character depth and elaboration on plot subtext.

In New York City, Avery Bullard, the President of large Pennsylvania-based furniture manufacturing firm Tredway Corporation, drops dead on the sidewalk. Avery never appointed a successor, and at the company headquarters office building a power struggle erupts as the Vice Presidents immediately start to manoeuvre themselves to succeed him.

The men in contention are the ambitious Finance chief Loren Shaw (Fredric March); the womanizing Sales VP Walter Dudley (Paul Douglas); the elderly Treasurer Frederick Alderson (Walter Pidgeon) who was closest to Bullard; the young and idealistic VP for Design and Development Don Walling (William Holden); and Jesse Grimm (Dean Jagger), VP for Manufacturing. Matters are complicated by majority shareholder Julia Tredway (Barbara Stanwyck), the daughter of the company's founder, and Board of Directors member George Caswell (Louis Calhern), who is looking to financially profit from Avery's unexpected death.

The women in the lives of the men are Don's wife Mary (June Allyson), who is urging her husband to quit Tredway and pursue his dreams away from corporate politics; Eva Bardeman (Shelley Winters), both secretary and mistress to Walter Dudley; and Erica Martin (Nina Foch), Avery's loyal secretary. As the Board of Directors gets ready to meet and appoint a new President, Shaw pulls all the strings to try and control the outcome in his favour. But his uncompromising bottom-line focus does not sit well with Alderson and Walling, who start looking for an alternative with unexpected results.

Directed by Robert Wise, Executive Suite is an almost mechanically-tuned examination of boardroom politics. The film is brisk and pointed, with the all-star cast in fine form. But the Ernest Lehman script is a bit too crowded with many similar middle-aged men, and a bare minimum of texture is offered to differentiate them. Tredway is plunged into a crisis, the power plays kick-off, and not enough breathing room is afforded for the men to establish who they are and why they may or may not deserve a promotion to the top chair.

Eventually Shaw emerges as the beady-eyed schemer and Don as the optimistic designer harbouring dreams of technical breakthroughs. Don gets the luxury of a family background to juggle with the unfolding workplace crisis, but the other men remain mostly office-dwelling creatures. The power struggle and tension builds to a nice sizzle, but the sub-plot involving Julia Tedway and her strained relationship with the deceased Avery never quite gains traction.

Executive Suite frequently circles the theme of driven men sacrificing everything, and mostly their families, for the sake of corporate ladder-climbing. The women are victims of neglect, pining either secretly or openly for attention they will not receive. Later the film explores the still relevant conflict at the heart of company priorities in the age of shareholders demanding instant gratification. Short-termism competes with loftier ideals of longevity and quality that demand investment in research and development.

The stellar cast members share the screen time, with Fredric March leaving the biggest mark as Shaw schools his competitors in the art of backroom company politics. William Holden is less convincing as the waffling Walling, while the other actors are somewhat trapped in straightforward characters. Barbara Stanwyck adds some drama as the economically powerful but emotionally weak link to the company's past, but her character is susceptible to slipping into melodramatics all too quickly.

Dispassionate and cold, Executive Suite is as ruthlessly efficient as the business world it represents.

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Movie Review: The Desperate Hours (1955)

A well-executed hostage drama, The Desperate Hours features one of Humphrey Bogart's final performances as he plays a hardened, desperate fugitive trying to make one last stand.

Dangerous convicts Glenn Griffin (Bogart), his brother Hal (Dewey Martin), and the lumbering Simon Kobish (Robert Middleton) escape from prison and randomly choose the suburban Indianapolis home of businessman Daniel Hilliard (Fredric March) to seek refuge. The family consists of Daniel's wife Ellie (Martha Scott), their teenaged daughter Cindy (Mary Murphy) and young Ralphie (Richard Eyer), now held hostage in their own home. Griffin connects with his out-of-town girlfriend with instructions to deliver a large sum of money to the Hilliard address.

Deputy Sheriff Jesse Bard (Arthur Kennedy) organizes a search for the escapees, but progress is slow. In the meantime the wait for the money takes longer than expected and the home occupation drags beyond one day. Griffin allows Daniel to go to work and Cindy to go out on a date with her fiancé Chuck (Gig Young) to maintain a semblance of normalcy in the neighbourhood. But the strain of the hostage ordeal starts to take a toll, tensions mount between Griffin and Daniel and among the convicts, while innocent visitors to the house stumble into mortal danger.

An adaptation of a Joseph Hayes novel (inspired by real events) and a subsequent Broadway stage production which starred Paul Newman, The Desperate Hours deviates from the typical hostage drama by affording the victims some flexibility of movement. Griffin allows Daniel and Cindy to repeatedly come and go from the house unsupervised, on the pretext they will not dare alert the authorities as long as Ellie and Ralphie are under threat at home. It's a tenuous argument. While the freedom of movement increases location diversity, expands the tension into Daniel's workplace and draws the fiancé Chuck into the drama, it also undermines Griffin's competency.

Otherwise director William Wyler crafts a tidy and tense thriller, capitalizing on a clash of two strong central characters. The career criminal with his cohorts and the well-to-do businessman with his family are suddenly forced to deal with each other, and it's a well-staged duel spiced by the brewing unease between Griffin and the boorish Simon Kobish. Cindy's presence as an attractive young woman caught in the clutches of desperate men adds a further element of menace, with Griffin's ability to control Kobish's primal urges always in question.

A strong police dragnet eventually corners the escaped convicts, but the script (by Hayes) is always aiming for a man to man final confrontation, the hardened criminal and the family man destined to determine the outcome. Hilliard realizes he is in the best position to help his family, deploying strategy to compensate for his lack of natural aggression.

Humphrey Bogart and Fredric March are both excellent, two veterans enjoying the thrill of sparring. Bogart's star power meant he landed the role ahead of Newman, and Glenn Griffin evolved into an older character to suit the actor. Bogart referred to Griffin as "Duke Mantee grown up" in reference to his career-making role in 1936's The Petrified Forest. Fittingly, The Desperate Hours proved to be Bogart's final gangster, as he passed away the following year after just one more release.

Bogart's last outlaw wants a measure of revenge against a system designed to defeat him. Surrounded by the domesticity he never experienced, Glenn Griffin unleashes his fury on hostile suburban normalcy.

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Movie Review: Inherit The Wind (1960)

A courtroom drama fictionalizing the real trial of a schoolteacher who dared teach the theory of evolution in a rural and deeply religious community, Inherit The Wind is an engrossing battle of wits between entrenched traditional beliefs and the relentless forces of progress.

It's the 1920s in the small southern farming town of Hillsboro, and young school teacher Bertram T. Cates (Dick York) is arrested and charged for violating a law prohibiting the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution. The town leaders insist that the Bible's Book of Genesis is the only true description of human creation, and Darwin's scientific theory about the evolution of species contravenes the word of God.

Three time presidential candidate and celebrated Biblical scholar Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March) volunteers his services to prosecute the case, and he receives a hero's welcome in Hillsboro. Much less warmly received is the controversial Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy), a strong believer in the power of independent thought and scientific exploration, who arrives to defend Cates. Also arriving in town to join the growing circus and report on the trial is journalist E. K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly) of the Baltimore Herald.

Bible salesman: Are you an evolutionist? An infidel? A sinner?
E. K. Hornbeck: The worst kind, I write for a newspaper.

To compound Cates' misery, his girlfriend is Rachel (Donna Anderson), who happens to be the daughter of Hillsboro's local religious leader Reverend Jeremiah Brown (Claude Akins). Brown whips the locals into a frenzy against Cates and Drummond, surprising even Brady with his venom. As the temperature rises literally and figuratively, the trial commences with Judge Mel Coffey (Harry Morgan) presiding, and Drummond facing a hostile gallery and the seemingly impossible task of defending Cates against deeply held but simplistic beliefs.

Drummond: An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral. And the advance of man's knowledge is a greater miracle than all the sticks turned to snakes or the parting of the waters.

Timelessly potent, Inherit The Wind is based on the 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, written at the height of the McCarthy communist witch hunt. The play's intent was to use the real 1925 trial of schoolteacher John Scopes, in what became known as the Scopes "Monkey" Trial, as a parable on the need to vigorously defend the right to think, discuss, and debate, without fear from stifling laws and lawmakers.

The film takes artistic liberties with some of the facts of the trial, but keeps the essence intact. And it is astounding that Inherit The Wind remains relevant not as a historical artifact but as contemporary social commentary. Director Stanley Kramer shines the spotlight on the frustrating intransigence that results when literal, simplistic solutions are applied to complex issues. The film also highlights the ease with which ignorance can be enshrined in law, effectively legislating intellectual atrophy from one generation to the next.

Kramer creates all the trappings of a dangerous media circus in the fictional little town of Hillsboro, the real Scopes trial apparently instigated with at least the partial intent of placing Dayton, Tennessee on the map. Kramer then delights in teasing out the fine line between exuberant religious belief and the creeping spectre of mob violence, the townsfolk often slipping into threats, and Reverend Brown completely swallowed up by his own zeal in wishing for his daughter's destruction.

The complex relationship between Drummond and Brady is at the heart of the movie. Spencer and March bring the two grizzled men to life as aging veterans of many a political battle, often fought side-by-side, but this time fate has landed them on opposite ends of a polarizing religious and social divide. Despite the bluster, anger, and emotion, Drummond and Brady never lose respect for each other, and the scene where they share quiet words in rocking chairs on the front porch of their hotel is pure movie magic.

Brady: Why is it, my old friend, that you've moved so far away from me?
Drummond: All motion is relative, Matt. Maybe it's you who've moved away by standing still.

When the two men engage in the climactic battle of wills after Drummond places Brady on the witness chair, Kramer unleashes the fireworks in extreme close-up, dogma and independent thought clashing with breathtaking intensity.

Brady: We must not abandon faith! Faith is the most important thing!
Drummond: Then why did God plague us with the capacity to think? Mr. Brady, why do you deny the one faculty of man that raises him above the other creatures of the earth? The power of his brain to reason. What other merit have we? The elephant is larger; the horse is swifter and stronger; the butterfly is far more beautiful; the mosquito is more prolific. Even the simple sponge is more durable. But does a sponge think?

In a dramatic yet humourous role, Gene Kelly is a surprising success as the sharp-tongued Baltimore journalist E. K. Hornbeck, playing the role of the big city observer not mincing words when it comes to the backwardness of Hillsboro and its people. Kelly gets the film's best one-liners, but also serves as a serious sounding board to Drummond in the raging insanity of the farcical trial.

Townswoman: You're the stranger, ain'tcha? Are you looking for a nice, clean place to stay?
E. K. Hornbeck: Madam, I had a nice clean place to stay... and I left it, to come here.

An epic film about ideas and the essence of being human, Inherit The Wind delivers its message with plenty of punch and a wry smile.

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Movie Review: The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)

A sprawling life-after-combat drama, The Best Years Of Our Lives is an engrossing and surprisingly clear-eyed examination of a formidable topic.

It's the end of the Second World War, and three servicemen share a plane ride back to their fictional hometown of Boone City. Fred (Dana Andrews) was an airman specializing in dropping bombs; Al (Fredric March) served in the infantry in the Pacific; and Homer (Harold Russell) was in the navy and lost both hands when his aircraft carrier was destroyed by the Japanese, but he has learned to capably use his prosthetic hooks.

Homer's family welcome him back but with his disability he feels uneasy, unsure if he is surrounded by love or pity, and he finds it difficult to reconnect with pre-war fiancée Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell), although she is still eager to marry him. Al is surprised by how much his two children have grown, particularly daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright). Al's wife Milly (Myrna Loy) tries to help him readjust, and despite an emerging drinking problem, Al is eventually hired as a Vice President at the bank where he used to work before the war, with a mandate to manage loans for returning servicemen. Fred has difficulty finding Marie (Virginia Mayo), the woman he married just before the war, and ends up spending his first evening as a civilian with Al and his family, discovering an instant and shared attraction with Peggy.

As the men struggle to re-adapt to their new old lives, Al runs afoul of the bank's bottom-line oriented procedures and his drinking worsens. Fred cannot find a decent job and ends up as a lowly floor salesperson at the local department store, an income that does not satisfy Marie, allowing Fred's relationship with Peggy to deepen. And Homer withdraws from everyone, embarrassed by his disability and unable to imagine what life with Wilma will be like when he cannot even hug her.

Producer Samuel Goldwyn recognized the importance of a topic that remains relevant generations later, and commissioned a screenplay. Robert Sherwood eventually adapted MacKinlay Kantor's resulting novella, and the script confronts head-on the difficulties of integration back into civilian life. The Best Years Of Our Lives contains no sugarcoating. It's a movie filled with small awkward moments that ring true, men fighting to find their role in a now foreign environment and having nowhere to turn for help, their women equally ill-prepared and clumsily trying to prop-up their returning heroes.

The performances are more stoic than nuanced. Fredric March and Dana Andrews carry most of the load with broad-shouldered resignation and recognition that integration is a battle without a plan. March authentically finds refuge in a bottle and the camaraderie of bar-hopping, quickly forgetting his surroundings and defaulting to the military's definition of relaxation. And once Al is back at his banking job, March effectively conveys the unease of a man used to instinctive decisions having to conform to the discipline of the corporate world.

Andrews as Fred represents the other end of the scale, unable despite his best efforts to find any meaningful job to satisfy the rich tastes of his opportunistic wife. Andrews is able to mix a realistic military attitude with an underlying questioning of everything that was once important, Fred's evolving but difficult relationship with Peggy presenting tantalizing opportunities to rediscover happiness in post-war life.

Non-actor and real-life Army amputee Harold Russell delivers a most natural performance as Homer, bringing to the role the deep discomfort of a man who just wants to get on with life, but is paralyzed by the acute awareness that the world is watching his every move with pity. The physical nature of his struggle renders Homer the most visible victim of the war, but Russell makes it clear that the bigger battle even for him is the mental discomfort.

The ladies provide good support and a refreshingly expansive representation of the home front. Most interesting is Teresa Wright's Peggy, among the vanguard of young women released into the workforce due to the war, and now equipped with the confidence to chart their own path. Myrna Loy as her mother and Al's wife is the more traditional woman, the wife willing to support, tolerate and help her husband's difficult return.

Virginia Mayo as Marie has no patience for integration or anything else. Fred must have had an off-day when he married her just before heading off to war, and now she is only interested in the good life. Peggy offers a much better match, a fact that eventually both Fred and Marie will recognize. Finally Cathy O'Donnell as Wilma offers the innocence of the young woman fully in love with the troubled Homer, but clueless as to how she can help.

At almost three hours in length, director William Wyler maintains excellent pacing and interest in the stories of the three men. The film is rich in relevant details, creating realistic surroundings and taking the time to allow the stories to unfold in a relaxed manner. The result is a movie that avoids over-dramatizations and gains strength from a sense of authenticity.

Despite ending on the high note of a marriage, The Best Years Of Our Lives purposefully leaves all its stories open ended, with the men aware there is more work to be done. It's a realistic conclusion for an endeavour that could last a lifetime.

Celebrated with seven Academy Awards, The Best Years Of Our Lives is a film both of its time and ahead of its time, a deglamourization of the battle after the battle, when hard-earned victories can yet yield shattered lives and collateral family damage.

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