The Best Years of Our Lives was a 1946 film directed by William Wyler that starred Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo, and Harold Russell.
The film tells the story of three United States servicemen readjusting to civilian life after coming home from WWII to fictional “Boone City” (reportedly modeled after Cincinnati Ohio).
The Best Years of Our Lives won seven 1946 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Fredric March), Best Supporting Actor (Harold Russell), Best Film Editing (Daniel Mandell), Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert E. Sherwood) and Best Original Score (Hugo Friedhofer).
The movie sold ~55 million tickets in the USA and was the highest-grossing film in both the United States and UK since the 1939 release of Gone with the Wind.
One of my favorites. A war movie without any war that depicts the physical and emotional scars of war, and for many combat veterans, they never can fully recover their pasts. Their futures are bonded together knowing what they lived through can never be fully understood by civilians. I’ve watched it about 4 times