I came to Edward Dmytryk’s TILL THE END OF TIME via Bernard Dick’s Radical Innocence book on the Hollywood Ten, which spoke highly of it. I slightly disagree with the author when he says that Wyler’s THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES has become a classroom text on deep focus and can no longer be enjoyed as a film (paraphrasing — maybe he doesn’t quite say that). No doubt it’s true for him, but I came to the film late, never saw it in a class (at “film school” we saw very few films in class), and the superb (and strange) Gregg Toland photography is only one aspect of what I enjoy in it.
Anyway, Dick says that Dmytryk’s more modest film is more human, and therefore a greater success. The comparison is certainly apt as both films follow three soldiers returning to civilian life, dealing with problems of adjustment, and suffering from injuries both physical and mental.
The Dmytryk trio are Guy Madison (handsome, a tad bland), Robert Mitchum, and Bill Williams as the amputee — Wyler scores far above this film by casting a genuine amputee (I wonder if poor Harold Russell was subjected to the usual infinite series of Wyler takes — I somehow suspect he wasn’t, as he would have actorly tricks to strip away). Dmytryk writes that Williams couldn’t act at all, had to be told exactly what to do — “It made me feel rather Teutonic but not particularly comfortable.” But the results are just fine. Perhaps Williams’ slowness is why the personable lead’s career never caught fire, though.
Since this one ISN’T three hours long, it focuses more on one vet than the others, and unfortunately the one it chooses is Madison. In fact, he’s fine, I wouldn’t normally mind spending time with him, but when the way-more-interesting Mitch is lurking offscreen somewhere one gets antsy.
Also along is Dorothy McGuire, who as Dick notes is an unusual character for this time period — a war widow who hasn’t necessarily been faithful to her late husband’s memory, may have been playing the field (the film throws up this suspicion only to deny it — we aren’t wholly convinced by the denial, though). So she’s a maybe-loose woman who’s still alive and relatively happy at the end of the movie, an unusual proposition for the forties.
The other main girl is the second Mrs Dmytryk, Jean Porter, a little firecracker who looks about twelve but is meant to be perhaps nearly eighteen? When she started jitterbugging I suddenly recognized her from Esther Williams musicals where she also pops out of the chorus, a magnetic solar presence.
Like the heroes of IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER the war-damaged protags finally resolve their troubles with a massive Fordian donnybrook. What makes it OK is they’re fighting fascists. I’m dubious about the healing power of violence but anything where fascists get punched has appeal. I guess this is another example of Dmytryk’s leftism creeping in, but as with the Wyler film the movie is deep-down patriotic, more so if anything. We’re regularly reminded that help is available for American casualties of conflict.
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The most cinematically radical scene occurs early on — as the men go through the demob process, Dmytryk’s camera (cinematographer Harry J. Wild — I’m Wild about Harry) first rushes down a line of men as they give their names, then, far more unusually, swishpans between interviews, filming each with a curving dolly shot that circles the interviewer then pans onto the interviewee, still rotating, then ZZZIP off to the net pair. Very exciting stuff.
I asked myself WHY this was being done, beautiful as it is. I guess to make a dry bureaucratic process seem exciting (OK, we meet some personable folks, but it’s PROCESSING…) — but whose excitement is this? Not the men’s — presumably for them it’s fairly boring, with a slight perking-up when they reach the head of the queue. No, the thrill must be the army’s, we’re experiencing the joy of a machine, not the slomo trudge of the participants but the well-oiled ball-bearing smoothness of a system where everything may be subjectively slow to the men but it’s as fast as it can be made to go, which registers as top speed to the army.
So it’s pro-America propaganda, without a trace of subversion. America DOES seem to look after its injured better than other countries. It just isn’t enough — how could it ever be?
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