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Drama. The three came home - the young air force officer, the middle-aged (banker) army sergeant and the sailor who had lost both arms. The air force officer found his hasty wartime marriage had been a mistake, also found that he could not settle to his pre-war job of serving in a drug store. The banker, with cynical excursions in alcoholic relaxation, settled down to getting to know his grown-up family, and learning again to grant bank loans on actuarial instead of humanitarian bases. The sailor had to overcome his consciousness of the pity which his friends and his sweetheart gave him.

With a good script, this is probably the most efficient film that Hollywood has made in years, smooth, observant, human. Edited to a leisurely tempo it interweaves these three stories of readjustment into a true and moving picture of small-town life. But it is the theme of the armless soldier which establishes it above mere efficiency. This theme shocks the attention immediately and it is handled throughout with correct emphasis and restraint. Much of its success is due to an amateur but not amateurish actor, Harold Russell, who did lose his arms in the war. The manipulation of his two steel claws is remarkable, as remarkable as the simplicity of gesture and expression by which he conveys his emotional struggle. The climax comes when he shows his sweetheart the intricacies of the harness which operates the claws -and his helplessness without the harness. Apart from Russell's contribution, the acting is of a polished standard with March, particularly, in one of his best roles of recent years.

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