#2,725. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) - The Films of William Wyler

 

William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives was the big winner at the 19th annual Academy Awards, taking home seven of the eight Oscars for which it was nominated: Best Picture, Director (Wyler), Actor (Fredric March), Supporting Actor (Harold Russell), Screenplay (Robert E. Sherwood), Editing (Daniel Mandell), and Score (Hugo Friedhofer). Throwing a spotlight on the difficulties World War II veterans faced when returning home, The Best Years of Our Lives is a dramatic, deeply moving motion picture, as well as one of the best Hollywood movies of the 1940s.

Three veterans return to their home town of Boone City. Air Force Bombardier Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) is anxious to reunite with his wife Marie (Virginia Mayo), who he met and married only a few weeks before shipping out. Army Sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March) worked as a banker before the war, and lives in a posh hotel suite with wife Milly (Myrna Loy), adult daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright), and teenage son Rob (Michael Hall). Naval Petty Officer Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) lost both of his hands during the war. Though he’s become an expert with his new prosthetic hooks, Homer worries that his fiancé Wilma (Cathy O’Donnell) will be turned off by his handicap.

All three men have trouble readjusting to civilian life. Fred has a hard time finding work, and accepts the only job he can get: a counter clerk at the local pharmacy.  This doesn't sit well with Marie, whose insistence that they go out every night and paint the town red is more than Fred can afford. To complicate matters, Fred is falling in love with Al’s daughter Peggy, who also develops feelings for him. As for the others, Al accepts a promotion at the bank, though drinks heavily as a way of coping with his wartime experiences; while Homer withdraws emotionally, and loses his temper at the drop of a hat whenever someone treats him like a cripple.

The three former soldiers do get together occasionally at a local bar owned by Homer’s uncle Butch (Hoagy Carmichael), but each feels alone in this “new world”, and struggles to keep up with a society that seems to have left them behind.

The Best Years of Our Lives sets the dramatic bar very high in the opening 20 minutes, when the vets reunite with their loved ones. Each is hesitant to return home, with Al going so far as to say seeing his family again was as nerve racking as “going in to hit a beach”. All three actors do an amazing job in these early scenes, especially Harold Russell, who prior to this film had no acting experience. Russell was chosen for the role because he actually lost his hands during the war. 

The supporting cast is equally strong, especially Teresa Wright as the lovestruck Peggy and Virginia Mayo as the selfish Marie, When Fred first returns home, his father (Roman Bohnen) informs him that Marie moved out a year earlier, and took a job at a night club. An entire day passes before Fred can even track her down.

Where The Best Years of Our Lives really works its magic, however, is in its depiction of the hardships faced by veterans, and how difficult it was for many to leave their wartime experiences behind. Though a successful banker, Al is dissatisfied with his career, which just doesn’t seem important anymore. Despite the support of his loving wife (played superbly by Myrna Loy), Al deals with his frustration by drinking… a lot! His first night back, he drags Milly and Peggy from one club to another, finally landing at Butch’s bar, where he reunites with Homer and Fred, both of whom also needed a drink to unwind. Along with the performances, credit must also go to director Wyler and screenwriter Robert E. Sherwood, who did their part to make each and every character in The Best Years of Our Lives feel 100% genuine.

In addition to its success at the Oscars, The Best Years of Our Lives won both the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards for Best Picture, with the National Board of Review choosing Wyler as the year’s Best Director. The film was also one of the first selected for preservation by the National Film Society, and in 2007 the AFI ranked it the 37th Greatest American film ever made.

Watch The Best Years of Our Lives and I’m sure you’ll agree it deserves every damn one of these honors!
Rating: 10 out of 10

#1,596. The Big Country (1958) - The Films of William Wyler

Directed By: William Wyler

Starring: Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker



Tag line: "Big they fought! Big they loved! Big their story!"

Trivia: This movie was based on the serialized magazine novel Ambush at Blanco Canyon by Donald Hamilton








From its title alone, you might go in assuming that William Wyler’s 1958 movie The Big Country is going to be a larger-than-life motion picture. Clocking in at 165 minutes and shot in 35mm widescreen Technirama, it certainly has the look and feel of a western epic, much like Giant or How the West Was Won.

Ultimately, though, the movie is about more than sweeping panoramas and massive gunfights. Putting the focus squarely on its characters, The Big Country has more in common with Wyler’s The Little Foxes than it does any big-budget Hollywood extravaganza.

Former ship’s captain James McKay (Gregory Peck) is leaving the high seas behind and moving west, where he intends to marry Pat Terrell (Carroll Baker), a beautiful spitfire and the daughter of wealthy land baron Major Henry Terrell (Charles Bickford).

Major Terrell owns the biggest cattle ranch in the territory, but unfortunately, McKay has arrived at a rather inopportune time. Terrell is locked in a tense showdown with fellow cattle man Rufus Hannassey (Burl Ives), both of whom are trying to buy a few hundred acres of land known as the “Big Muddy” from its current owner, school teacher Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons). Coveted for its water supply (which never dries up), Terrell and Hannassey know that whoever controls the “Big Muddy” controls the entire area.

Aided by his tough-as-nails foreman Steve Leech (Charlton Heston), Terrell has been battling it out with Hannassey and his sons, including the reckless Buck Hannassey (Chuck Connors), for years, with neither man showing any signs of backing down.

A pacifist by nature, McKay refuses to take sides in the matter, which doesn’t sit well with either Pat or her father.

But before the conflict comes to a head, McKay will get involved, and in a big way.

The Big Country looks great; shot on-location in, among other places, California’s Red Rock Canyon State Park and the Mojave Desert, it makes excellent use of its picturesque settings, which serve as a backdrop for many of the film’s more dramatic moments (a scene where Terrell and Leech, along with a few dozen hired hands, ride into Hannassey’s homestead and wreak havoc is one of the movie’s strongest).

Equally as impressive is the film's star-studded cast, especially Burl Ives as the hard-headed but eternally fair Rufus Hannassey, a role that landed him an Academy Award as the year’s Best Supporting Actor.

Yet what makes The Big Country such an engaging motion picture is its characters, and how their relationships (some merely inferred) evolve over the course of the film. McKay and Pat, deeply in love at the outset, reach an impasse when McKay refuses to fight Leech (who clearly harbors feelings of his own for his boss’s daughter). In Pat's eyes, this makes McKay a coward. Even more intense is the bitter, sometimes ferocious relationship between Rufus Hannassey and his eldest son Buck, whose dim wits and questionable morality are a constant thorn in his father’s side (The Big Country’s most uncomfortable scene has Rufus stepping in to prevent Buck from raping Julie Maragon, a standoff that leads to a violent confrontation).

It is through interactions such as these that The Big Country grabs our attention, then holds it for nearly three hours, a feat unmatched by many of Hollywood’s grandest epics.

In the final scheme of things, The Big Country may not be quite as "big" as other epics, but it delivers the goods all the same.

#1,183. The Letter (1940) - The Films of William Wyler

Directed By: William Wyler

Starring: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson




Tag line: "With all my heart I still love the man I killed"

Trivia: Previously filmed as an early talkie in 1929 starring Jeanne Eagels







When it came to playing a bitch on-screen, few were better than Bette Davis.

In classics like Jezebel, The Little Foxes, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, Davis displayed a penchant for strong-willed characters, and in 1940’s The Letter, she portrays a woman of questionable morals so determined to get her way that she is willing to kill for it.

Based on a play by W. Somerset Maugham, The Letter tells the story of Leslie (Davis), the wife of wealthy plantation owner Robert Crosbie (Herbert Marshall). In the film’s opening scene, Leslie shoots and kills Geoff Hammond (David Newell), a man she claims attempted to rape her.

But as her attorney, Howard Joyce (James Stephenson), delves deeper into the case, he discovers that Leslie and Hammond were, in reality, having an affair. What's more, an incriminating letter that Leslie wrote to Hammond, in which she laid out her true feelings for him, is currently in the hands of Hammond’s widow (Gale Sondergaard).

At Leslie’s insistence, Joyce tries to buy the letter in order to destroy it, but can they keep all this a secret from Robert, who is still convinced his wife is innocent?

From the initial scene alone, it’s easy to see why Davis received her fifth Academy Award nomination for her work in this film (she had won Best Actress twice before, for 1935’s Dangerous and 1938’s Jezebel). The peaceful serenity of a moonlit evening is broken by the sound of a gunshot. From a distance, we see Hammond stagger out the front door of the Crosbie estate, with Leslie following close behind, brandishing a revolver. As the plantation workers look on from their makeshift hut, Leslie fires another shot into Hammond

… and another…

and another.

By the time she finished, all six of the gun's bullets have been fired at point-blank range.

The deed done, Leslie stares at Hammond’s lifeless body, dropping the gun at her side. As the camera closes in on her, we sense the realization of what has just happened setting in on her, yet the blank expression on Leslie’s face never shifts. It is an intensely dramatic sequence, and Davis handles it perfectly.

Flawlessly directed by William Wyler and with a stirring Max Steiner score, The Letter is a true Hollywood classic in every sense of the word, and features an actress proving to the world why she is one of the greatest of all-time.

#705. Ben-Hur (1959) - The Films of William Wyler

Directed By: William Wyler

Starring: Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins, Stephen Boyd




Tag line: "The World's Most Honored Motion Picture"

Trivia: For several sequences in the chariot race, some of the chariots had three horses instead of four. This enabled the camera car to move in closer






Made in an era when historical epics were commonplace, William Wyler's Ben-Hur remains the greatest of them all.

Along with its moments of spectacle (including a battle at sea and a fiercely exciting chariot race), Ben-Hur tells the gripping story of a man tortured by conflicting loyalties, searching for answers in a world that is equal parts splendor and barbarity.

What should have been a fond reunion between childhood friends proves anything but when Messala (Stephen Boyd), a newly appointed Roman Tribune, asks boyhood pal Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston), a Jewish nobleman, to help him squash a rebellion against Rome, which has been gaining strength in Judea. Unwilling to assist his people's conquerors, Ben-Hur refuses Messala's request, leading to a fissure between the two that results in Judah's imprisonment.

Sentenced to serve in the galley of a Roman warship, Judah eventually saves the life of the vessel's commander, Quintus Arrius (Jack Hawkins), who is so grateful that he adopts Judah as his own son. Now a free man, Judah returns home to confront Messala, and to learn the fate of his mother (Martha Scott) and sister (Cathy O'Donnell), both of whom were also imprisoned.

Despite the pleas of his former servant, Esther (Haya Harareet), Judah cannot put aside his anger, going so far as to face off against Messala in a highly-dangerous chariot race. But times are changing, and the teachings of one man might just convince Judah Ben-Hur that it's time to extinguish the hatred in his heart.

The most famous sequence in Ben-Hur is undoubtedly the chariot race, in which Judah Ben-Hur and his team of four white horses challenges Messala, whose black steeds have guided him to victory on many occasions. Shot on location in Rome's Cinecetta Studios, the outdoor sets alone were, at the time, the largest ever constructed, and the sheer magnificence of this locale remains impressive even to this day. As for the race itself, I would rank it as one of the most thrilling moments in cinematic history. To even attempt to do it justice by way of a few sentences is an act of futility; the chariot race must be seen to be believed.

Just as strong as the film's larger-than-life sequences is the character of Ben-Hur, played so well by Charlton Heston. At the outset, Judah is a proud member of the Jewish nobility, a kind man who feels he has no choice but to turn his back on his closest friend. The scenes with Messala at the film's outset are a sharp contrast to what happens later, when Judah saves Quintus Arrius, a man he initially despises, and becomes Arrius' adopted son. Having earlier refused his friend, Judah now embraces his enemy, and for a short time lives as if he were a Roman.

Yet his journey is not finished; Judah Ben-Hur will face many more obstacles, ask many more questions in the search for his own identity.

Ben-Hur is a film that is impossible to overpraise. From the magnificent performances of its supporting cast to Miklos Rozaa's stirring score, it is the movie by which all other Hollywood epics are measured. X And as far as I'm concerned, none have come close to it.