alr

The Best Years of Our Lives

Screening on Film
Directed by William Wyler.
With Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Harold Russell, Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright.
US, 1946, 35mm, black & white, 165 min.

Perhaps one of the finest male melodramas ever put on screen, William Wyler’s ambitious slice-of-life about returning veterans after WWII is stark and devastating. Three ex-servicemen return to their beloved Boone City after their stints overseas only to meet with heartache, unemployment, and disability.  Much like the noir films which would soon sweep B-Hollywood, this intimate tale offers a less-than-sunny appraisal of American masculinity after the war. Unlike the noir cycle, however, the film’s high profile cast and production values brought these realistic problems into the mainstream of the American public consciousness. Cinematographer Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane) employs his trademark deep-focus photography throughout, allowing both the spatial and human relationships to gain dimension and complexity.

Part of film series

Read more

Melodrama Mondays

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Música de Câmara. The Cinema of Rita Azevedo Gomes

Read more

From the Harvard Film Archive Collection …

Read more

Chile Año Cero / Chile Year Zero

Read more

People and their Virtue. Two Films by Wang Bing

Read more

Trenque Lauquen by Laura Citarella

Read more

I Heard It Through the Grapevine with James Baldwin

Read more

Filmmaker, Guest Worker: Zelimir Zilnik’s Expatriates

Read more

Adachi Masao’s Revolution+1

Read more

Out of the Ashes – The US-ROK Security Alliance & the Emergence of South Korean Cinema