The Best Years of Our Lives

Powerline Blog ^ | 05/26/2014 | Scott Johnson

[DFG]

When I walked into Spaulding Auditorium to see The Best Years of Our Lives as an undergrad, I had never even heard of the film. When I walked out three hours later, I couldn’t believe I had never heard of it. It is a great film with a lot of truth and a big heart in it. Tonight TCM is carrying the film as part of its Memorial Day lineup. It’s a movie every American should see. If you haven’t seen it yet, you might want to try to catch it tonight.

Mark Harris tells the highly improbable story behind the making of the film in Five Came Back, his terrific account of the prominent directors who volunteered to use their filmmaking skills in the armed forces during the war. The Best Years of Our Lives provides a sort of capstone to the story.

Telling the story of returning veterans was Samuel Goldwyn’s idea; he commissioned MacKinlay Kantor to write a screenplay. Instead Kantor turned in a treatment in blank verse.

[publius911]

TCM has a great lineup of movies scheduled today.
I marked a few of them for recording.

Not meaning to hijack this thread, but I managed to buy a stand alone full feature DVD recorder before they became totally unavailable, and transferring the Dish recordings to DVDs is an ability I really appreciate.

I wonder if more modern versions of those recorders will ever again become available in the U.S.? I understand that they are available in Canada and Mexico...

[Peter W. Kessler]

One of my top-five favorite movies.

I have the DVD; can watch it anytime.

I watch it often.

[publius911]

There’s a lot of drinking in the Myrna Loy Thin Man movies too.

...and what's even worse, smoking!!

Miss [Florence] King on smoking: "It's this: I think suicide qua suicide is weak and shameful, but maybe, if I just keep smoking, I can hasten my exit from this Walpurgisnacht called America and escape the mephitic cultural collapse that Nice-Nelly conservatism is powerless to stop.

"This is probably wishful thinking in view of my family's medical history, but it points up another benefit of cigarettes we no longer hear about: consolation. Even the word is gone from the language now, but it was what came through in World War II newsreels showing weary soldiers and refugees lighting up. In their most despairing moments a cigarette was all they had, and increasingly I feel the same way.

"There goes my chance at Keynote 2000, even if I work on my perkiness and arrange to rent a baby."

I often worry whether they censor/edit these old classic war movies.

[PieterCasparzen]

There’s a lot of drinking in the Myrna Loy Thin Man movies too.

The Thin Man was written by Dashiell Hammett, yet another key literary figure who was a communist drunkard with ties to financial elites, whose works are well-known and well-respected. Hammett, as is common for such men, served in both WWI and WWII. I like The Thin Man series, personally, it reminds me of the '90s, i.e., a replay of the '20s. A time of success and invariable accompanying excess and overreach.

Hammett founded his writing career on his experiences during a few short years as a young Pinkerton detective.

Hammett notably birthed the career of the younger Lillian Hellman. In Hammett's readings, he came across the real-life story of two lesbian schoolteachers, and presented the idea to Hellman and helped her write The Children's Hour, which was made into a Hollywood film. Though they never married, Hellman came to be Hammett's final supporter as her career waxed and Hammett's waned.

Thus we see the consistent, slow steady promotion of both socialism/communism and immorality.

[yldstrk]

watching now

[Savage Beast]

Yes. I noticed the drinking in the Thin Man movies too. They get up in the middle of the night. Myrna says: "Fix me a drink." They have a cocktail.

This was shortly after the repeal of Prohibition, when it was thought sophisticated to guzzle alcohol.

There was another flick--Alice Faye, I think--in which the girls of the chorus smoked cigarettes. I'm sure the people of that time considered it terribly sophisticated.

Today it's considered sophisticated to be mindlessly decadent and nationally self-destructive--in other words, "liberal". Of course there's nothing sophisticated, intelligent, or liberal about these people or their brainless paradigms, but you'll never convince them of it.

There are stupid people everywhere and in every generation. They don't know they're stupid.

[crazycatlady]

I love Florence King. The more politically incorrect she is, the better I like her.

I understand the importance of consolation. That’s why I like tea, the beverage that “soothes, but does not inebriate.”
But I occasionally like beverages that inebriate, too.

[ABN 505]

Don’t forget the Beautiful Virginia Mayo, and The talented Hoagy Carmicheal.