The Best Years of Our Lives

DUE TO THE LENGTH OF THIS FILM, PLEASE NOTE SPECIAL SCREENING TIME:  6 PM

Date: Sunday, November 8, 2026 @ 6pm

USA, 1946, Approved, B&W, Romantic War Epic, 2h 50m

Directed by William Wyler; Written by R. Sherwood, M. Kantor

Stars Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Fredric March

Of all the Oscar winners from the early decades of the awards, few feel as justified as the Best Picture winner from 1946, William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives. Though less familiar to modern audiences than Golden Age classics like Casablanca or Gone with the Wind, Wyler’s utterly absorbing drama wins the adoration of every film lover who discovers it. For those of us who have seen it, it just grows deeper and more emotionally resonant with every viewing. 

Wyler’s film tells the story of three World War II veterans who meet on their return trip to Boone City, a fictional midwestern town. Al Stephenson (Best Actor winner Frederic March), an Army sergeant, is excited to return to his career as a high-ranking bank official and reunite with his wife, Milly (a luminous Myrna Loy) and their late-teenage children, Peggy (Teresa Wright) and Rob (Michael Hall). Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), a bombardier captain, looks forward to settling into life with his wife Marie (Virginia Mayo), whom he quickly married before leaving for the war and barely got the chance to know. Homer (Best Supporting Actor winner Harold Russell), a Naval petty officer who’s lost both of his hands in battle, longs for his girl-next-door sweetheart Wilma (Cathy O’Donnell) while harboring deep insecurity about his new disability.

The movie follows the intersecting stories of these three irrevocably changed men and the difficulties they face integrating back into lives and families that have changed as much as they have. The challenges Al, Fred and Homer face, both physical and otherwise, are presented in striking depth, with the film refusing to paint them mere victims of their circumstances. Al’s loving family and high-profile job mask a dark and ongoing struggle with alcoholism. Fred’s financial struggles, some of which seem to derive from a lack of ambition, may in fact be linked to his severe PTSD. And though Homer’s physical disability presents obvious challenges for those around him, Wilma and his family are more than willing to do their part if only he would let them

in. 

For a film meant to honor those who served, The Best Years of Our Lives is shockingly unsentimental, likely a major reason it still grips audiences today. And grip it does. The screenplay, adapted from the novella Glory for Me by Mackinlay Kantor, is so deft and absorbing in juggling the stories of these three men and the people who love them that three hours feel like one despite there being no real action to speak of. Wyler’s assured direction is aided in large part by Greg Toland’s lauded deep focus cinematography, which, rather than existing simply to draw attention to itself, adds layers of complexity to the emotions and relationships within each frame. The cast is magnificent from top to bottom, with strong lead performances and a supporting cast littered with great character actors able to wring emotional depth out of just one or two scenes.

For these reasons and others, The Best Years of Our Lives remains one of the greatest of all Hollywood movies, a shining example of what the studio system could accomplish with filmmakers and a cast committed to telling a story that honors the Greatest Generation by refusing to sugarcoat their experiences. It’s a movie that constantly engenders new appreciation for veterans of foreign wars and the people who love them by portraying them not as saints, but as flawed human beings who simply answered the call when their country needed them. (MVH)