Stylistic Studies: The Best Years of Our Lives

Our first official screening for the Stylistic Studies course was aptly titled "The Best Years of Our Lives", a film directed by William Wyler, released in 1946.

I'm going to try to share my thoughts on all of the films we watch in this course. Department Dean and film preservationist Bob Rosen is the instructor. He's a jolly, passionate lover of the silver screen. He speaks thickly, like John Madden (Kai's association), but with some serious resonance and certainty and knowing. He said that the purpose of the Stylistic Studies course is to help us better understand the connection between story, theme, and audio/visual style of a film.

"The Best Years of our Lives" takes place in a small American town (whose name I don't remember) right after the closing of World War II. It concerns itself with the homecoming of three service men, how they have changed and how their nation has changed. The film really blew me away with its writing and characterization. It avoids cliches at nearly every turn. The character's are particularly rich and complex in their views and relationships, so unlike the typical cardboard arch-types that we're so used to seeing both in the films of the 40s and now. To give you a taste of this, I turn to one of my favorite lines, uttered by Al, a Sergeant in the infantry who has returned home, when explaining that things are not what they seem in his household: "We seem kind of corny and mid-Victorian, but we talk about things."

Visually, the film is always interesting. Gregg Toland served as cinematographer. If you aren't familiar with him, he's the one who shot Citizen Kane five years before, among a great many other films.

I'm having a hard time really getting at the meat here. Part of it is that I'd recommend seeing it and I'm not fond of giving things away, and part of it is that I don't really enjoy writing reviews. I'll leave that up to T-Bone (So please, Theron, see it! Review it!). And part of it is that (big cop-out coming) I'm really pooped and I used up all of my powers of observation and analysis this afternoon in our first Stylistic Studies class, which, incidentally, is really interesting.

Professor Rosen has a completely novel approach to talking about films. He wants us to talk about them in the first person, as if we, the students, were the director. As he says, he wants us to "own it". Not on DVD, mind you, but in our discourse. We must discuss the strategy we used to come up with the image we see on screen as it relates to the story and the theme. Confused? I was too at first. But imagine it as filmmaking in reverse. All of the choices have already been made, and we must assume they have been made for a reason. So, we put on our director's caps, and first imagine that we are explaining to the cast and crew the purpose and import the scene is serving in the advancement of the story. Then, we talk about why we chose the shots that are there and why we constructed the sequence as it is, and then, what we are communicating with them. I'm not only talking about the camera angle or composition, but the entire visual/audible experience, the depth of field, the objects in frame, the movement of the camera and actors, the sound, the score. We must essentially construct a cinematic/storytelling reason for what we see on screen. I'm definitely not very good at it. It requires getting down to brass tax and establishing the simple narrative purpose of a scene, like: "In this scene, Character A is leaving the past behind", "Character B is struggling with his addiction; she has still not completely beaten it", etc. It's a great exercise, and a great new way to look at movies. I'm looking forward to refining and honing these skills.