The Best Years of Our Lives is one of the greatest Hollywood films ever produced. It is, by turns, a hilarious, inspiring, sobering, and tear-jerking look at the difficulties that soldiers returning from World War II, as well as their waiting families, had to endure. The most surprising thing about this film is that it was made just a year after the end of World War II. Its blunt and realistic portrait of the problems faced by returning veterans is pretty shocking, considering that it came out when postwar euphoria was still rampant in the United States, when the idea that returning veterans would have a hard time was anathema; how could a grateful country treat its returning heroes badly? This was not Vietnam, it was not an unpopular war marked by increasingly virulent protests. Returning soldiers were supposed to be heroes, proud in the knowledge that they had defeated a tyrant and brought freedom to much of the world. They weren't supposed to be haunted by nightmares, spurned by their wives, or uncomfortable in their former employment.

This film is defined by several masterful performances, all of which were Oscar-worthy. Headlining is Dana Andrews, who plays Fred Derry, a captain who spent the war in the nose of a bomber. He is haunted by nightmares of combat in which some of his closest friends died. He was a captain in the army, but in the real world he's just an unemployed former soda jerk who is reluctant to take his old job back from people who are equally reluctant to give it to him. He married Marie (Virginia Mayo), a young woman he met while training in Texas; when he returns home he can't find her because she's taken a job in a nightclub and moved out of his parents' house. The going wisdom is that families somehow put their lives on hold in anticipation of their husband's or father's return; the sad reality is that people tend to adjust to changes, and it's easy to get used to someone not being around anymore. When he finally finds his wife and moves back in with her, it's obvious that they didn't know each other very well when they were married, and they're not very compatible now. Andrews brings a great nervous intensity to his role; he's not the same frantic doomed man from The Ox-Bow Incident here, but you can see the helpless anger brimming under the surface. Sadly, he was overlooked at the Oscars for this, his finest performance.

Fredric March, who won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance, is stunning as Al Stephenson, a former banker who was a sergeant in the military. He returns to find that his family, whom he has not seen for four years, has grown up without him. His wife Milly (Myrna Loy) loves him, but the family has gotten used to him not being around; a great early scene shows them somewhat disappointed that he didn't call before arriving so they could change their dinner plans. His son Rob (Michael Hall) grills him about the atomic bomb and looks askance when Al presents him with battle souvenirs. His daughter Peggy (Theresa Wright) is no longer a girl but a woman. He doesn't want to go back to his boring job at the bank, and why would he? He's seen Japan and Europe, walked through Hiroshima after the bomb; now he has to turn down returning veterans for loans because they don't have any collateral. He takes refuge in drink, which begins as a humorous evening out with his wife and daughter but hints at larger problems.

Harold Russell, who plays Homer Parrish, is an inspiration. Russell, who had never acted in a "real movie" before, was a casting coup: he lost his hands in a training accident during the war, and his character, a sailor who lost his hands, is the bluntest reminder of the sacrifices that so many soldiers made. Homer was a former athlete who was the pride of his high school and family; now, they have a hard time looking at him without weeping over the loss of his hands, a loss that he has at least physically adjusted to. Several poignant scenes have him resolutely refusing assistance from sympathetic people in signing his name, lighting a cigarette, etc. He is worried that he can't be a good husband to his high school sweetheart Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell), but he disguises his self-loathing as caring for her future.

The film is not just about the returning men. Three great performances by Myrna Loy, Theresa Wright, and Virginia Mayo help anchor the film. Loy plays Milly as a loving woman who understands what Al is going through and puts up with his readjustment with humor and patience. However, she is not the usual "loving wife" wallpaper we've grown used to seeing in recent movies. Just watch her, and learn what it means to be a great actor. One good test of talent is what an actor does when he or she is not the person talking: most actors wait for their turn to speak, but Loy continues to inhabit her role. Most of Wright's scenes come opposite Dana Andrews, but her standout is one where she challenges her parents about relationship difficulties. Mayo makes the most out of the thankless task of portraying the straying wife Andrews left behind; the filmmakers are careful to make it clear that it is not entirely her fault. A young woman's patriotic duty was to marry a soldier and then wait patiently at home, or perhaps get a war-industry job, until he returned, whereupon she was supposed to quit her job and adjust to life with a man she barely knew.

In scene after scene, the forgotten everyday trials of readjustment to civilian life play out. The focus of much of the film is on Fred Derry, who knows how to drop bombs, but he has little to offer employers outside a strong back. He also quickly finds that he and his wife are incompatible, and he has to deal with his growing affection for Peggy, his friend's daughter. One great aspect of the film is how it deals with how military friendships are affected by civilian life: Derry outranks his friend Al within the military, but on the outside, class issues are at the forefront.

The final star of the film is Gregg Toland's gorgeous deep-focus cinematography. When comparing his breakthrough work in Citizen Kane to this film, the differences are subtle but important. In Kane, the deep-focus photography had an exoticizing effect, making everything seem a little unworldly, while here, its flat images and zero depth of field give the film the look of a documentary or a still photograph; it seems somehow archival, a look that immeasurably helps the film's immediacy.

The film was nominated for eight Oscars and won seven: Picture, Director (William Wyler's second of three Oscars and sixth of an amazing twelve nominations), Writing, Score, Actor (Fredric March's second Oscar and fourth of five nominations), Supporting Actor (Russell), and Editing.