The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) Parents Guide & Movie Info
The Best Years of Our Lives Poster

The Best Years of Our Lives - Family Review

It's the hope that sustains the spirit of every GI: the dream of the day when he will finally return home. For three WWII veterans, the day has arrived. But for each man, the dream is about to become a nightmare.

1946 | 170 Minutes

No MPAA rating
IMDB: 8.1 ⭐️ Votes: 65,309

Content Warnings

  • Sexual Content
    Mild
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    Several scenes with passionate kissing between husband and wife and also between a married man and a single woman, who fall in love.

    A man starts taking his clothes off to take a shower; the scene fades before we see anything.

    A man briefly holds a photo of his wife in a bikini.

  • Violence
    Mild
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    There is one scene where two men get into a fistfight in a drugstore and one of them is pushed into a glass counter. He falls through the counter which shatters, but there is no blood or obvious injury shown.

  • Profanity
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    None Mild Moderate Severe
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    A mild language.

  • Intense Scenes
    Mild
    None Mild Moderate Severe
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    A man lost his hands in a shipboard explosion.

    The character of Fred, who was an Air Force Bombardier, has a recurring nightmare about being in a plane that caught fire and watching helplessly while a friend died. The dream is not explicit, but Fred's fear and screams to his friend in the dream to "get out! get out!" are real. He wakes up in a cold sweat, sobbing.

    At the end of the movie, Fred is walking through a "graveyard" of bomber planes like the kind he used to fly, which are being sold for scrap. He climbs into the cockpit of one of the planes, and although there are no visual flashbacks and no battle sound effects, the music on the soundtrack and Fred's expressions and perspiration make it clear he is reliving some of his war memories. This is a very powerful scene which some viewers might find upsetting.

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