The Best Years of our Lives (1946)

The Best Years of our Lives (1946) is a returning veteran epic post-war romance and social adjustment classic and sweeping melodrama of PTSD, alcoholism, social manners and physical disability charting America's adjustment to the post war order with broken limbs, broken relationships, broken aircraft and civilian indifference, directed by William Wyler and starring Dana Andrews, Harold Russell, Myrna Loy, Cathy O'Donnell, Frederic March, Virginia Mayo, Teresa Wright, Steven Cochran and with best of all perhaps, Hoagy Carmichael on piano.

Detective Story (1951)

Detective Story (1951) is a classic stage play brought top screen film noir psychological police drama directed by William Wyler and starring Kirk Douglas and Eleanor Parker, among many more.

It's not the most obvious film noir but makes up for that in a mighty cast, with a mighty punch, based on a play by Sidney Kingsley. This picture also brings up the tricky subject of police brutality — something that should have been against the Production Code of the time — and yet which still forms the central moral aspect of this piece.

Detetcive Story is a brilliant cop-on-the-edge narrative, a form familiar to film noir. Kirk Douglas is that cop, every bit as tense and nervous as Robert Ryan in On Dangerous Ground (1951); or maybe Sterling Hayden in Crime Wave (1953).