Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9786304696637
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC
ISBN: 6304696639
Label: Hbo Home Video
Manufacturer: Hbo Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Academy Ratio
Publisher: Hbo Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: October 28, 1997
Running Time: 170 minutes
Sales Rank: 93894
Studio: Hbo Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1946
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video:
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 Shannon
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Before the movie, before the screenplay, a book-length poem
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 ... Read More
Rating:  - After the war is over
I like this movie. It showed what happens, when the boys come home from war. It's very realistic. I recommend this movie.
Rating: - Picking Up The Pieces After WWII
I'm a confessed sap for old movies. But even among mid twentieth century films, this one is superlative. It was made in 1946, just at the conclusion of world War II.
Three men, unknown to each other in their previous lives, return home to the same town. Al (Fredric March) was a banker, but in the war was an infantryman in the Army. Fred (charming Dana Andrews) prior to the war worked behind the counter serving ice cream and soda but ended up as a Captain (bombadier) in the Air Force. Straight up nice guy Homer (Harold Russell) was a sailor in the Navy and had his hands blown off. This movie is an atypically (for its time) hard look at the difficulties returning veterans had as they tried to get back to the business of living normal lives. Their lives are now intertwined because they share a common experience; a common pain. In many ways I suppose this film was a broad social attempt to begin to heal. Plus, Myrna Loy was in it! :-)
For me, the scene in which Fred deals with his demons in the shell of an old grounded bomber accompanied by a tortured musical score as the camera moves up slowly behind him was one of the great cinematic moments of an already excellent film.
Rating: - Best Years is the best
This movie is one those classics that you can enjoy over and over again. It is timeless in its telling of men coming home from war and the struggles they face. The characters and richly drawn and you find yourself caring for them. The men come home to a place much altered than when they left. Trying to get back into a routine with friends and loved ones, married couples re-adjusting to each other, parents and a girlfired dealing with the double amputations of their son and fiance. To the couple that never should have married and his growing affection for the daughter of another returning vet. Time has been kind to this story and with the current war in our lives it only proves that some things in life trancend time. I really love this story and I think you will too.
Rating: - Gem of American Film
This deeply moving, beautifully written and performed film, was a long-planned tribute by director William Wyler to veterans of World War II, whose heroic service Wyler witnessed first-hand. Posted overseas himself during the war, Wyler vowed that when he returned to Hollywood, he would make a film that paid some sort of tribute to the men he worked with. "The Best Years of Our Lives" is the fulfillment of Wyler's promise. Released in 1947, the film won seven Oscars (it was nominated for eight) including Best Picture and Best Director.
"The Best Years of Our Lives" tells the stories of three veterans returning home to their small midwestern city from active service in WWII: Fred, a much-decorated Air Force pilot (Dana Andrews) from a poor background who, before the war, worked as a soda jerk at a drugstore lunch counter; Homer, a Navy sailor (Harold Russell) and former high school football star who has lost both arms; and Al, an army sergeant who, in civilian life, is a successful banker with two teenaged children.
As the veterans return to homes and wives and/or family (only Homer is not married, although waiting anxiously for him is his high school sweetheart, Wilma, played by Cathy O'Donnell), they confront difficulties reintegrating themselves into ordinary life, and re-establishing emotional contact with those who have been waiting at home. The men carry horrifying war memories that have changed their values and outlook on life, yet also experience disorientation ... Read More
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