Fredric March, The Best Years of Our Lives

as AL STEPHENSON

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor

Fredric March appears in The Best Years of Our Lives much older and seasoned than the Freddie I had gotten to know so well the decade before. And with this age comes something new that hadn't been there prior--a profound sense of translucence, the ability to make the simplest of expressions into exhaustive significance.

At first glance, this is a very peculiar Oscar-winning performance. It is a mere piece in a very interwoven ensemble, one that's secondary to that of Dana Andrews. The character lacks a hook (pardon the pun) that would make you remember it, a la Harold Russell. The performance itself captured no prior precursory award. But the most baffling thing to me is that Al Stephenson isn't at all a driving force in this film. This performance doesn't command attention to itself as does Al Jolson or King Henry V. What's more, it doesn't exist to warm your heart like Penny Baxter or George Bailey. If you were to eliminate the character of Al from the film altogether, I believe there'd still be enough there to tell a truncated story. But Academy members for whatever reason paid attention, not only singling him out over Andrews but giving him a second statue, and I think that's solely due to March's talents as an actor in breathing life into a character that by no means was written to linger on the mind. But when I watched him in this film, I was struck by March's skill in communicating so much with mere glances--in his very first scene, he looks utterly fatigued by the war that has just finished up. He later dances a fine line between exuberance and intensity in his drunken scenes at the bar--all the while providing comedic relief. He is vehement and hard in his one-on-one with Andrews later on in the film. In other words, he brings a simultaneous effortlessness and zeal with material that doesn't allow gimmicks (unless you count all his drunken scenes), material that is dwarfed by what Andrews and Russell get to work with in terms of overall dramatic power. And yet there he is, dominating his petite role with subtle prowess, making his male counterparts look like amateurs in the process. It's impressively persuasive work by March, and yet another reason for me to adore him.