Friday 29 December 2023

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946 William Wyler)

Just about one of the greatest films of all time, as fully jotted here.

We were focusing on Daniel Mandell's Oscar winning editing this time, there certainly is a lot to it - his neat dissolves from face to face, for example, or the sequence shot from the taxi where they arrive back in Boon City. A former acrobat, Mandell went on to edit several later Billy Wilder films including The Apartment.

All the cast are great. Myrna Loy never looks like she is acting - she just is the character she's playing. Teresa Wright is so subtle, she totally makes the scenes she's in - my favourite with Virginia Mayo in the mirrors, which is so beautifully worked out, in which we she realises quite what a bitch the other woman is. Neither of them were even nominated, which is absurd. It is I think Wright's best performance.

It's quite subtle - Dana's dad is clearly an alcoholic. Where's his mum? Hortense is Gladys George, also The Maltese Falcon, the father is Roman Bohnen. Steve Cochran is the wannabe boyfriend, Dean White the ex-serviceman farmer.



Robert Sherwood's screenplay is also beautifully nuanced, such as when the morning after Dana asks  Teresa why she isn't married already and she says 'The good ones are all taken' suggesting she already thinks he's one of the good ones - a spark early on. Also the number of sequences that are silent.

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