THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES

Watched my favorite movie, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, on TCM tonight. I've seen it many times since it first screened in 1946 and it was always high on my various lists of favorite movies, but in recent years it has moved to the top, because every time I watch it not only do I see more and more to admire about it, I also see nothing to not admire it for.

It's of its time, and maybe you have to be from that time to be impacted by it the way I am. I was born a few months after Pearl Harbor, and my two oldest brothers were in The Army Air Corps and The Navy at the end of the war, one in Okinawa when the fighting stopped. My two sisters, who were five and seven years older than me, took me with them to the movies most Sunday afternoons (to get us out of the house for our father's weekly nap on his only day off), including to this one.

But even if this film doesn't evoke for you the same kinds of memories it does for me, it can still be admired as classic Hollywood filmmaking. William Wyler's direction is so good (aided exquisitely by Gregg Toland's famous depth of field cinematography), even the briefest scenes and the acting in them resonate. Three of my favorite actors—Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, and Cathy O'Donnell—give superb performances, while Virginia Mayo and Dana Andrews give their best performances ever (and Frederic March and Harold Russell won Oscars for theirs).

For me, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES is a perfect film. There, I've said it.