Film Chronicle
THE ANATOMY OF FALSEHOOD
T
HE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
presents an optimistic picture of Amer–
ican life, and of postwar America in particular, making suitable
reference to such accepted symbols as democracy, the American charac–
ter, the American way of life, etc., with the object of impressing the
spectator with the dignity and meaningfulness of "typical" American
experience (his own experience) and making him feel a certain confi–
dence that the problems of modem life (his own problems) can
be
solved
by the operation of "simple" and "American" virtues, while at the same
time-though more indirectly-he is given a sufficient sense of the gravity
of those problems to prepare him,
if
possible, to meet his "responsibilities"
-which, so far as they are defined at all, seem to consist of the obliga–
tions to be patient and work hard (not to ask too much of life) and to
face the future cheerfully.
The ideas on which such a movie rests are accepted readily enough
as public symbols-that is, as accustomed stimuli calling for certain
orthodox responses of no great intensity-but they will not bear serious
examination and they cannot be made to emerge forcefully from any
true presentation of reality. Since it is precisely the function of a "serious"
movie to reaffirm and intensify these ideas by giving them concrete ex–
pression, the problem of technique is to embody them in a structure of
character, plot, and background that is so real in detail as to be accepted,
more or less continuously and unreservedly, as truthful, and so complete
and self-contained as to engage the spectator's full attention and dis–
courage any tendency to look beyond the fixed boundaries. The degree
of artistry displayed in solving this problem seems to be what determines
whether such a movie is successful with the educated and discriminating
audience, for that audience (generally speaking) is distinguished not by
any real unwillingness to accept the basic Hollywood myths-which
are simply the basic American myths-but merely by a distaste for the
cruder dramatic and ideological conventions ordinarily used to express
them.
Thus, the success of
The Best Years of Our Liues
as a major docu–
ment in Hollywood's picture of America is attributable to the unusual
care that has been devoted to the reality of the surface. The camera,
above all, catches the exact appearances of the metropolitan back-
