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Re: "The Best Years of our Lives"

When I was researching the WWII aircraft boneyards and salvage operations for a project, I learned that TBYooL had some compelling scenes involving this little known element of the war. So I saw this recently for the first time. It was a hard rental to find. Netflix has it.

I was pleased to see that the aircraft graveyards were used as a metaphor for the used up veterans returning to an America that had gotten along fine for 4 years without them. The men were as disposable as the equipment. The Dana Andrews character is SO disillusioned and lost. He left as a boy and returned a man, but society wanted him to go back to a boys job and life because that's all it had for him. The guy that lost his arms had an amazingly positive attitude with a sad undercurrent of loss of what he could have been and the feelings of being half a man. The fact that he was a non-actor vet that HAD lost his arms in the war only made this that much harder to watch.

The whole concept of the film rang true for me and can very easily be put into the context of today. It's a classic anti-war/vet story and I was frankly stunned that there was a movie like this made right after WWII. And that it (deservedly) swept the Oscars that year. By far, Dana Andrews best movie.


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