摘要：In this discussion of The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946; hereafter ' Best Years '), I aim in part to interrogate the literature around the film that characterises it either as a document of American societal concerns in 1946, or as a model of formal innovation, critical strategies which tend to rely on elevating the film over a typified Hollywood product, while also attributing any shortcomings to its status as such a product. In 1948, the film's script-to-screen process had been portrayed in the CBS radio documentary The Hollywood Picture as an exemplar of 'the Hollywood product at its best' (Lyon 1948: 342). Meanwhile, James Agee's two-part review for The Nation was headed 'What Hollywood Can Do', taking the film's aspirations to social commentary as a way to define the limitations of studio film-making. Yet those perceived limitations, shared by reviewers other than Agee, depend upon quite narrow definitions precisely of 'what Hollywood can do'.
