The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), directed by William Wyler.
The last chapter of any war story is "coming home".
Three servicemen, eager and nervous, yearn for simple things: just a life after the war. Family, good food and coffee, civilian clothes. They meet in a bomber, now carrying them home instead of reducing Germany and Japan to rubble. We'll revist the scene again toward the end: the aircraft scrapyard is one of the great moments in American cinema.
Their families, wives and sweethearts have been through the war too. So much has changed. It has to be a new life; for the better?
The human drama includes quite a bit of comedy. It's hard for me to appreciate an entirely humorless film (see Citizen Kane (1941)). Serious as this story is, it still has moments of wryness and even absurdity. Our three characters, in declining order of the amount of humor allowed them:
Fredric March is the banker who became a sergeant. Loving family, good job, you'd think all would be well, but he drinks and is troubled by the inequities of civilian life and the way veterans are treated. Still, he gets the most laughs.
Dana Andrews is the soda jerk who became an Air Force captain and bombadier. He barely knew his wife before leaving for the war. Just as well. They're not compatible and he's in love with loveable Teresa Wright. But it is all painful. He has nightmares of the war. His comedy is of the bitter, wincing sort we all know from the workplace, the indignity and triviality of the drugstore in his case. Harder for him because his war effort, much as he hated it, was important and gave his life meaning, now gone.
Harold Russell, not an actor, is a double amputee with spring-loaded hooks that he uses with amazing dexterity. He has no self-pity except for his doubts about burdening his fiancée. He takes her up to his bedroom and shows her his stumps, a tremendous act of courage. She doesn't run away so it must be love. He gets barely any comedy, apart from the parents' suspense at the wedding where they wonder how he will get the ring on the bride's finger, which he does with ease.
The last chapter, Coming Home, is an essential part of the story. "Message" can be deadly to a film, but here it works. Russell's is the heaviest part; we know he's an amateur playing a character much like himself, and that takes us out of the movie, but the reality of his disability grabs us.
For the rest, how could you tell the story of coming home without the jarring notes, the outrage over injustice? It meshes with the love stories: three good women relieve much suffering.
Available on Blu-ray.