film classics

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, William Wyler, United States)

Filmed and released not long after the end of World War II, William Wyler’s much-praised and award-feted drama follows the homecoming of three US veterans played by Fredric March, Dana Andrews, and nonactor Harold Russell, who lost both hands during his own military service. As each of the trio works to readjust to civilian life, their struggles are counterpointed against the microcosmic backdrop of an America coming to grips with a still-immediate collective trauma. At nearly three hours, it feels as if we’re living alongside these characters, bearing witness to how outside forces have shaped them for better and for ill. This is all sensitively and intuitively captured through Wyler’s direction, the varying styles of the performers (Russell’s non-Hollywoodized screen presence garnered him both an honorary and a competitive Oscar for Best Supporting Actor), and the exquisite deep-focus photography of Gregg Toland, which helps to emphasize both the strong ties and the fraying bonds of the community at large. (Streaming on Amazon.)

Dog Day Afternoon (1975, Sidney Lumet, United States)

It could have been off-puttingly lurid, but instead there’s something achingly humane, and oh-so-New-Yawk, about Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon, a classic crime film adapted by Academy Award winner Frank Pierson from a Life magazine article titled “The Boys in the Bank.” Said boys in the movie version are Sonny (Al Pacino), Sal (John Cazale), and Stevie (Gary Springer), an out-of-their-depth trio aiming to rip off a Brooklyn financial institution so they can pay for the sex reassignment surgery of Sonny’s partner Leon (Chris Sarandon). Things go awry almost instantly, resulting in a tense hostage situation that plays at times like improvised street theater. (Even if you haven’t seen the film in full, you surely know the moment when Pacino riles up a crowd gathered outside the bank with cries of “Attica!”) Pacino and Cazale give career-best performances, the former a prancing force of nature, the latter an unnervingly soft-spoken half-wit. And Lumet or-

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