Mrs. Miniver's Historical Bona Fides Are More Intriguing Than Its Own Characters

As the Turner Classic Movies pre-movie introduction helpfully clarifies, the historical context for Mrs. Miniver is utterly fascinating. This American financed movie set near London was released in the summer of 1942 but had been in production for well over two years beforehand. This meant the film was constantly being tinkered with, even after whole scenes were shot, to keep the movie relevant to what was going in this worldwide conflict. This likely resulted in a tumultuous process of filmmaking but it did manage to also result in a movie that resonated deeply with both general moviegoers and famous world leaders of the era.

The Blue Dahlia Is Competent But Struggles To Stand Out From Other Classic Film Noirs

Like the same year's Best Picture winner The Best Years of Our Lives, the 1946 George Marshall directorial effort The Blue Dahlia deals explicitly with the experiences of soldiers coming home to World War II and trying to adjust a world that's eerily familiar yet oh so strange. That's what's happening to Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd) and his two friends and fellow soldiers Buzz Wanchek (William Bendix) and George Copeland (Hugh Beaumont) as they attempt to return to reality after enduring all kinds of horrors in World War II, one of which left Buzz with a plate in his head. It isn't long before Johnny's life is tossed into chaos when Johnny's wife is murdered shortly after the two have an argument.

The Best Years of Our Lives Mostly Works As An Ambitious Contemplation of Post-WWII American Society

Where was American cinema supposed to go in the wake of World War II? In the broader sweep of history, 1950's American filmmaking emphasized grandiose spectacle intent on keeping the masses distracted from reality and those new-fangled television sets, but in the wake of World War II ending in 1945, we did have a handful of movies that offered up reflections on real-world wars instead of pure and simple escapism. These kinds of films would be far more prominent in the 1970s and 1980's when it was time for American cinema to come to terms with the Vietnam War and would struggle to gain much of a foothold in the modern-day American cinema landscape where less challenging reflections on war like Lone Survivor or American Sniper tend to win out over more thoughtful meditations on the subject.