I started to watch this film late one night about 35 years ago, with all the cynicism of an overeducated teenager, having just returned from the pub and while waiting for some food to cook. The food was ruined: three hours later, as the film finished, I had not moved from my chair and was in what I can only describe as a state of shock. The tale of these three men returning from war to face difficulties in picking up the threads of their past life is epic, deeply moving, entirely realistic, understated and utterly heroic. 

America is depicted as a country where justice and right will prevail, but only after a herculean struggle; where family is the bedrock of survival; where there really is nothing to fear except fear itself. Al picks up the threads of his marriage. Homer believes his girl won't want him because of his disability, but she overcomes his self-immolatory desire to end the relationship to protect her. Fred can't find work befitting an officer and gentleman and becomes a soda jerk again; he takes up with Al's daughter, his wife leaves him, he loses his job, but in the climactic scene of the film — magnificently photographed and with a tone unusual in American films up to that point — he wanders through a massive scrapyard of bombers at the city's airport, as he is about to flee for a new life, and by chance finds a change of direction as a salvage man: he and Fred's daughter decide to marry, and in the end, for all three men, the struggle has availed.

Whatever else you buy with your Christmas Amazon vouchers, buy this film. It is not just Wyler's masterpiece, but America's. Oh, yes, Citizen Kane is brilliant: but The Best Years of our Lives is a hundred times more than just that.