• If you want to watch something specific to the American Revolution, there's always the musical "1776," the Mel Gibson action picture "The Patriot" or the recent HBO miniseries "John Adams."

• Then there are myriad wartime films — especially those propagandistic pictures made during World War II (often starring John Wayne) that demonize the enemy and lionize the American soldier.

• But one of my favorites is a post-World War II film, "The Best Years of Our Lives," about three disparate veterans (Fredric March, Dana Andrews and double Oscar-winner Harold Russell) returning from overseas duty to the women they love (Myrna Loy, Virginia Mayo and Cathy O'Donnell — with Teresa Wright thrown in to shake things up).

To my mind, no film more successfully captures the human spirit in the throes of a country's rebuilding and adjusting to change — which is really what patriotism is all about.

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E-mail: hicks@desnews.com