Every Best Picture Oscar Winner Ranked Worst To Best
13. The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)
The Best Years of Our Lives, unlike most war movies both before and since, takes a look at what it's like for soldiers to come home after combat. This isn't a war film concerned with violence, but its effects.
Heartbreakingly personal and timely - directed Air Force veteran William Wyler and starring Harold Russell, who, like his character, lost his hands in the war - the drama follows three troubled servicemen who can't quite find peace after returning home.
Far ahead of its time, The Best Years of Our Lives captures the horrors of PTSD with such empathy and intelligence that many modern war dramas feel awfully in its shadow. It maybe shouldn't have beaten It's a Wonderful Life to Best Picture, but it was a worthy victor all the same.