Never has such a safe return from war been so absolutely foreboding.

 

Cast: Myrna Loy, Fredrich March, Dana Andrews, Theresa Wright, Virginia Mayo, Harold Russel.

Director: William Wyler

Writers: MacKinlay Kantor, Robert E. Sherwood

Running time: 172 min.

 

1946

 

This is perhaps the first example of the true, tragic, cold reaction soldiers receive when coming “back home;” the predecessor to “Born on the 4^th of July.”

 

Men, slightly out of time, (out of the loop,) return home from the war to uncertain half-existent lives.  Times and politics have changed, and it is brilliantly illustrated here, that soldiers are not the only ones shell shocked by war.

 

Fredrich March and Myrna Loy prove why their names have longevity to this day, as solid actors, with masterful tempo.  Their strained, but sure, family dynamic is actually quite hopeful.  March, although chained to his uniform, throws himself at “a normal life.”  Loy desperately tries to give it to him, because she just wants her husband back.

 

Homer is a navy man with hooks for hands, played to natural perfection by Harold Russell, who presumably lost his hands for real in WWII.  He’s absolutely tragic, as he tries to make himself believe his girl will still love him, and that he is still entitled to a normal life.  He’s tragic because he doesn’t know if he can accept himself back into normal life after losing his hands.  This film must have been an amazing catharsis for Russell, one that he carried on with him.  Before he can accept being accepted he must prove to himself that his hooks are just as good as hands, and that he is still just as much of a man.  The performance is hauntingly real, as you might expect, and lends itself nicely to the texture of the film.

 

Fred Derry, played by Dana Andrews, is the cursed sucker-captain, saddled with a commitment to an unfaithful, uncaring, selfish harpy played to perfection by the ever-lovely Virginia Mayo.  All the while, after returning home to his “she-bitch,” Derry begins to fall for Theresa Wright, (who wouldn’t, especially if you’ve seen Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt.”)  She is the daughter of March’s Sgt. Al Stevenson.

 

The three soldiers circulate around their hometown, tied to the only thing that still seems familiar: each other.  Beyond the war all they have is their hometown and each other.  That alone can rehabilitate them as they share the painful immersion into post war existence.  These exchanges paint a poignant and nasty truism that should well be remembered in our time: war is, and always has been, an ambiguous, seemingly unavoidable, destructive thing unique to human life.

 

There is, however, life after all the death.  This film is masterfully crafted by William Wyler, (Bun Hur,) and guru cinematographer Gregg Tolland, (Citizen Kane, David Lean’s Oliver Twist,) to culminate in an uneasy happy ending like, “…um, yay?”  Noir, shadows, darkness in people, is one of those things about stories that can be seen almost anywhere, if you know how to see it.  These guys knew how to coax it out, like patient sculptors, creating a brilliant sense of tension and foreboding throughout, as well as beautifully pacing the film.  At 172 minutes a black and white film could be narcotic, just like subtitles, in the wrong hands.  Take it from someone who watches most of their films at night; if the pacing is off, your internal clock will let you know…by knockin’ yo ass out!  Of course, that is nowhere near the case here.  It doesn’t exactly hurt to boost the noir either, that everybody and their conjoined extra/set dressing smokes like fiends, and the B & W is sharp and clean with brilliant compositions.  Nor does it wound the final outcome that the story is layered upon the literal and metaphorical graveyards of post WWII America.

 

Bravo.

 

Four stars, count ‘em, ****