"The Best Years of Our Lives"

Essay Project

This film assignment is slightly different in that you are not viewing a film that portrays actual events.  The stories in the film, however, are nevertheless quite real, as they were played out thousands of
times in varying degrees by returning veterans after World War II.

The post-World War II era was a happy time, as the United States had helped defeat two powerful enemies: Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.  Nevertheless, over 400,000 Americans had died, and millions of young men—boys, really—had gone off and had remained overseas until the war was over. Although some bomber pilots and crews who completed 25 missions were rotated back to the United States, soldiers, sailors and Marines stayed with their units until the fighting was complete. They all came back as men who were very different from the boys they had been when they left.  As joyous as their return  to the United States and their loved ones was, the readjustment was often traumatic for the veterans and their families.

(If you have seen "Saving Private Ryan," you have some insight into the problem, as when Captain Miller wonders aloud to his men how he is ever going to explain "a day like this" to his wife. All the combat veterans had "days like this.")

"The Best Years of Our Lives" portrays in a very realistic way the issues that these returning veterans had to deal with. The film won numerous awards, including Oscars for best picture, best actor and best director.

One part of the film does have an element of reality.  That is the story of Harold Russell, who portrays the returning sailor, Homer Parish.  Here is a clip about him from a web site:

Harold John Russell was born in Nova Scotia in 1914. His family moved to Cambridge Massachusetts when his father died in 1919. He was training paratroopers at Camp MacKall, NC, on June 6, 1944 when some TNT he was using exploded in his hands. He lost both hands. After receiving hooks, and training on them, he was chosen to make an Army training film called "Diary Of A Sergeant". William Wyler saw the film and decided to change a character in his film The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) from a spastic to a double amputee. Harold Russell played Homer Parish. For this role he received 2 Oscars, a Best Supporting and one for being an inspiration to all returning veterans. He is the only actor to receive 2 Oscars for the same role. After the movie he attended Boston University. He later went on to help establish AMVETS as a viable alternative to the American Legion for veterans, though his dream of an international veterans organization was never realized. He later appeared in Inside Moves (1980) and Dogtown (1997). He lived with his wife on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. He wrote 2 biographies: "Victory In My Hands" (1947) & "The Best Years Of My Life" (1981).

My suggestion is that you look at some newspapers or magazines from that period to try and get a sense of what life was like. Then check out some reviews, watch and enjoy the film, and write your own response to it.  You can't go wrong if you just think about what that film meant to millions of Americans. A contempory review by a Howard A. Rusk, MD, in the New York Times shortly after the film's release in November, 1946, titled "Rehabilitation" said it was "a moving, clear and penetrating study of one of America's great problems." (NY Times, November 24, 1946, page 60.)

You can access contemporary newspaper articles via Proquest, a resource available on line through the NVCC Libraries Databases.

Essay 3 Instructions | Updated February 26, 2008