By Nicolaus Mills, Special to CNN
updated 7:54 AM EST, Fri December 23, 2011
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Many will watch "It's a Wonderful Life" this Christmas season, Nicolaus Mills says
Mills: But the movie we should watch is another 1946 classic, "The Best Years of Our Lives"
Oscar-winning film shows peacetime difficulties faced by three World War II vets, he says
Today, veterans aged 20-24 have an unemployment rate of nearly 30%, Mills says
Editor's note: Nicolaus Mills is professor of American studies at Sarah Lawrence College and author of "Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America's Coming of Age as a Superpower."(CNN) -- This Christmas season the classic film most of us will watch on our televisions is Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life." With good reason: It's the perfect feel-good Christmas movie. In celebrating the quiet good works that Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey has done in running his family's savings and loan bank for the benefit of the residents of Bedford Falls, "It's a Wonderful Life" tells the story of American modesty at its best.
But the movie we ought to be watching this Christmas season is another 1946 classic, William Wyler's "The Best Years of Our Lives." With a script by playwright Robert E. Sherwood, who also was a speechwriter for President Franklin Roosevelt, "The Best Years of Our Lives" tells the story of the difficulties three World War II veterans overcome on returning to their peacetime lives in the fictional Midwestern town of Boone City.
What makes the Academy Award-winning "Best Years of Our Lives" so relevant are the problems today's veterans -- now coming home in increased numbers with the end of the Iraq war -- are having finding a place in civilian life.
Veterans in the 20-24 age bracket have an unemployment rate of nearly 30%, more than double the 14.5% unemployment rate of nonveterans in the same age group, and veterans of all ages have an unemployment rate of 11.8% compared with the civilian unemployment rate of nearly 9%.
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