The Best Years of Our Lives : We Better Start Re-Watching This Weekend

We Better Start Re-Watching This Weekend

Even if it's in increments. Otherwise, this board is kaput.

Re: We Better Start Re-Watching This Weekend

It will never be kaput. Long live BYOOL!! (aka 3JRHFTW) I intend to pop it in my player sometime around Thanksgiving.

Re: We Better Start Re-Watching This Weekend

Why not for Veterans Day, wrfarley? I've had it sitting on my DVD player for the past week. I was going to start re-watching today, but we had some military excitement of another kind here in Pennsylvania. A blimp sort of crash-landed in my region. A blimp! What would the three Joes think? I was kind of worried because I think helium is combustible

Re: We Better Start Re-Watching This Weekend

Veterans Day? Good idea! I'll join you two if invited.

Btw, I'm pretty sure helium IS combustible .... so, don't forget to duck, my friend! Wouldn't do to lose you.

Re: We Better Start Re-Watching This Weekend

Hydrogen is combustible, not helium. The Hindenburg was filled with Hydrogen.

Re: We Better Start Re-Watching This Weekend

Ooops! You're right. Thanks.

(Hilary -- I'd be prepared to duck, nevertheless.)

Re: We Better Start Re-Watching This Weekend

The truth was everyone was kind of laughing at the blimp because it looked like the Pillsbury dough boy... A $1.75M dough boy... A preppy blimp, if you will.

Every time I re-watch 3JCHFTW I get something new from it. One thing that hasn't changed is needing a box of Kleenex every time I see it. I start crying from the minute I hear the opening music.

I realized this time that in fact, the War, while the obvious and literal back-story, exists in the film's context only as a symbol for all three heroes' previous suffering and losses and triumphs. Three huge, timeless, and challenging aspects of human life are presented in each of the men: Homer, disability (or "ill health"); Al, aging; and Fred, undeserved poverty. Each of these men are BLESSED with traits or people who help them cope with these universal handicaps (I turned 59 this month, gents, so I have the right to call aging a handicap ).

Homer comes home to a family, an entire neighborhood, that loves and supports the former football-star. Without that support--no Best Years of his life. Al comes home to women, the stunning Milly and adoring Peggy. Al is getting older, and his depression about aging was more noticeable to me watching it this time. Of all three heroes, he seems readiest to forget his war service on the account of the fact of age alone: age follows a person whether he is on the battlefield or in a swank Boone City apartment. He is also blessed with and by Mr. Milton. Without that female love and support--no Best Years of his life.

But Fred. Dang, do I love Fred. Fred has no support from anyone, except the illicit support of Peggy. When he decks the Commie and is fired, he makes a comment to the effect that "guys like him" should expect stuff like this. That statement broke my heart, because what about a courageous, modest guy characterized by perseverance should leave him open to the slights he experiences from beginning to end? I dislike his father and Hortense even more than I dislike Marie; his father never embraces him. Dana Andrews deserved an Oscar nomination for his performance. It is difficult to portray the subtle and constant shifts from despair to diligence that he portrayed so well. Of all three men, the state he is emblematic of, poverty, is the only not healed by the end of the picture.

This film may be about war, and some folks may be offended by the notion that, in the end, the war is actually inconsequential. But this film is about even more than war, about even more than the Second World War. It is the most natural and realistic film about LIFE that was ever made.

Re: We Better Start Re-Watching This Weekend

Hilary,

Lovely post -- as usual. Just two additional comments if I may:

First, If aging at 59 is a handicap, then I at 69 am on life-support!

Second, I didn't get the same impression about Fred's dad and Hortense. This may have much to do with background and Old World cultural norms. In my case, I can tell you that neither my mother nor my father ever gave me a hug that I can remember. An old German family! They showed me love in just about every other way I can think of, however. They're greatly missed. For me, Fred's father's heart-felt demeanor in reading Fred's citations speaks volumes (excellent performance) about his pride in and his love for his son, and Hortense's quiet gesture of self-exile at that solemn moment reinforces, I think, her love for both Fred and Fred's father. I believe Fred knew what I felt. These moments were certainly among the most moving in the picture -- for me, at least.

Btw, today, I hug everyone around me when given the chance -- whether they like it or not!

I'm dealing with yearnings such as these in a novel I'm working on right now. I'm hoping to do so with the same poignancy this fine film brings to such universally felt emotions.

Thanks and best, as always

Re: We Better Start Re-Watching This Weekend

That Lawrence Welk! He can really cut a rug, Cwente!

Well, I'm glad you bring up the matter of Fred's dad and Hortense. When the old man sat down and read his son's citations, it made me cry. You are correct that some folk are just this way. But when you think of how warm Homer's and Al's families are to get their heroes back...

Thank the good Lord the Fred Derrys of the world *may* find a Peggy. I'm glad you're writing a novel that deals with the need to reach out, because we never know when it might be too late. We never know how just extending ourselves one little bit further may impact another.

Re: We Better Start Re-Watching This Weekend

Indeed, hilaryjrp, Veteran's Day would be the normal and perfect time to see BYOOL (aka 3JRHFTW), but my first encounters with the film was on WPIX, New York's syndicated station, in the early 1980s when it was played on Thanksgiving. So, there's an element of nostalgia by watching it on Thanksgiving. However, the film stands up anytime, so if I can make the time, I will watch it on November 11.

Regarding my first, second and even third viewing of the film, I didn't realize that it had been cut to two hours for broadcasting; so the first few times I saw it, I didn't see "Al's night out," or Homer and Fred's talk after the fight at the drug store or even Homer firing the gun in his garage. It wasn't until I saw it on TCM or AMC in the 1990s that I saw the full version; and what a revelation that was!

Re: We Better Start Re-Watching This Weekend


Regarding my first, second and even third viewing of the film, I didn't realize that it had been cut to two hours for broadcasting; so the first few times I saw it, I didn't see "Al's night out," or Homer and Fred's talk after the fight at the drug store or even Homer firing the gun in his garage. It wasn't until I saw it on TCM or AMC in the 1990s that I saw the full version; and what a revelation that was!


The snoozer awakens . I can't believe the syndication cuts were of these scenes. The problem is I can't think of any "beats" (plot-pivots) not dealt with very economically. Honestly--can you think of *any* scene that could even be shortened? My first time seeing it, the length of Al's Night Out hit hard. It was so painful. Milly and Peggy were totally spent, and I think it was torture for them to keep up the "pub-crawl." But then if they didn't make it to Butch's, Hilary ('er, I mean Peggy ) would never get to stare at Dana Andrews' sloshed face with stars in her eyes.

Okay, wrfarley, you won't be AWOL if you wait 'til Thanksgiving.

Re: We Better Start Re-Watching This Weekend

Replying to my own post. Happy 70th Veterans Day after 1945 for all the Als, Homers, and Freds out there.
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