Face à l'orage

Clearly this movie was meant by Goldwyn to be comparable to Best Years of Our Lives. The difficulties with such an effort are that:

a) this movie looks at the beginning, not the end of a war - at the trepidation, the dislocation and sacrifice -- not the sweet relief of an ordeal over and the prospects for improvement in one's welfare; and

b) like all wars America has been in since W.W.II, Korea was not a "total war" (engrossing and engulfing the lives of all in the country) but instead one in which a peacetime prosperity and security continued for those at home while a relative handful out of the American population bore the entire brunt.

These factors produce a very different movie than Best Years - a movie of families riven by conflict over the disparity of the sacrifice, over whether to seek to avoid that sacrifice, over basic feelings about what is personally owed to the country (rather than self or family), and over the pride or shame in participation in a war.

The movie seethes with conflict and bad blood - often unspoken. The conflicts arise over deeply felt divisions in social class, in gender and in generation, and result in unspoken accusations of callousness and cowardice, vanity and selfishness.

In many respects this is a movie of another time - these days, unless a family has a strong military tradition, I can imagine few families now enraged by a son's expressed wish that a war could be won without his involvement, few families in which an employer would not draft a letter for his decades-long employee's only child to keep him out of war - and even refuse to write a letter (for which his mother pleads) for his own beloved brother's draft deferment.

One sees many views of war and patriotic obligation in this movie: views that deeply clash with one another, views that are expressed with strong emotion and that upset others.

The only comparable scene in Best Years of Our Lives is the darkest - the scene with Dana Andrews and the cynical customer at the soda fountain. Best Years is a far warmer and more optimistic movie (despite the predicament of the protagonists). In Best Years, one always senses that one day, there will be a workable re-adjustment.

In "I Want You", one has no such assurance - and it contributes to making this very realistic, often grim, and altogether fascinating.

It's the summer of 1950 in a small American town. The Greers are a happy, middle-America family with normal middle-America lives. With the approaching Korean War, they worry about their young son Jack who is at the top of the draft list.

I like the family drama pre-War and their struggle to keep Jack off the draft list. It could have gone anti-war. The second half is not as compelling. The happy ending feels inevitable. It's a nuclear family drama. Many reviewers seem to be comparing this to Best Years of Our Lives. I would say that it's playing the same sport but this one is trying to get into the pros while Best Years is one of the best player around.

This first-rate film about the effects of the Korean War on an Anytown U.S.A. deserves to be thought of in the same league as movies like 'The Best Years of Our Lives.' But just as history has done with the real wars, this movie seems to have gotten lost in the shadows of the much larger number of World War II dramas.

The Korean War came just five short years after WWII ended, just as many families whose lives were so disrupted by the bigger war were finally able to enjoy some peace and stability in their lives after struggles of readjustment. Lacking the impetus of a Pearl Harbor or the spectre of an Adolph Hitler, the draft was the prime mechanism for getting young men to the front lines in Korea. Older vets were now being asked to leave their homes and families again as well. This film shows surprising depth in its depiction of the problems and feelings of not only the eligible men, but their wives, mothers, fathers and girlfriends. The excellent script was written by Irwin Shaw based on magazine stories by Edward Newhouse and they provide us with an insightful look at this period in American history which doesn't get as much attention as the preceding or following decades.

Clay Blair called his book on the Korean conflict 'The Forgotten War' and this movie might be given a similar appellation, even though it deserves better. Simply as a piece of nostalgia it's enjoyable, but the movie is much more than that. It has a fine cast with many actors that even some of us baby boomers will recognize.

Of course, the first thing - and movie - which you think first after watching this one is THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, produced by the same Samuel Goldwyn company, the analysis, character study of a small town regarding the issues that the Korean war will bring among those people. It prepares us to THE DEER HUNTER and many more films of this kind - including WE WERE SOLDIERS, Vietnam, Irak, Afghanistan wars and so on. This movie, unlike those more recent ones, doesn't evoke too much post war traumatic stress disorders. But Mark Robson, the director of this very one, will give us LIMBO in 1973, telling a story very close to the above titles: Vietnam war wives and widows dealing with a hopeless life and personnal problems. Good film this one, as LIMBO.

While this was not intended as a sequel to the wonderful film THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, it did make a nice follow-up film and is very similar in style and tone--perfect to be seen together as a double feature. A lot of the reason it seems almost like a follow-up is because both films were produced by Samuel Goldwyn and both starred Dana Andrews. THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES concerns the adjustment of three men to civilian life following WWII. This film is set just a few years later and has to do with the coming Korean War and its impact on some families in an unnamed American town.

I read one review for this film that said it was "dull" and while I don't agree, I could understand how some might feel that way. The film is sentimental but never comes close to making the impact of THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES and it also doesn't give clear answers in some cases, so it might actually make you think. It's about a scary era in history and how it effects "the little people"--not exactly a topic that generates millions at the box office. Still, from a historical point of view it's a super-important curio as it's about the only film I know of that addresses the topic of the draft and Korea, and someone who would like to learn not just about history but the impact of events on peoples' lives will doubt enjoy this little curio. If you want explosions and action, then this certainly isn't a film for you. If you want to see a film with excellent acting that rings true about real folks facing real problems, then this film is highly recommended.