Many years ago I compiled a list of my fifty favourite films. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then but if you have been with me on this journey (the blog I mean) you will have got a flavour of it, most particularly from my Advent calendar a while back.
Today I want to talk about one of the films that was on that list of fifty but didn't make it into the selection of twenty-four. If I were to do the Advent thing again, I suspect that The Best Years of Our lives might make the cut this time. I hadn't re-watched it for an age and I think I was scared to do so in case my memory of it was faulty. I had first seen it as a teenager. This may remain an unfashionable view (rather like my predilection for Steinbeck's fiction) but I think this is more than a very good film - it just creeps into the category of the great.
It is a film about the after-effects of war, about the toll not only on the combatants but on the families they return to. Yes it is melodramatic but there is a moral seriousness underscoring it. There is a scene when the Dana Andrews character punches an America-firster into a shop display case that has modern resonance. Great. Just. 88/100.
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