IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946, USA, Frank Capra, screenplay with Frances Goodrich / Albert Hacket / Jo Swerling / Dorothy Parker / Dalton Trumbo / Clifford Odets, from Phillip Van Doren Stern's short story "The Greatest Gift")
Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives, and when he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?

I know. For many it's pretty much just one of those sentimental Christmas favourites, a harmless exercise in seasonal nostalgia that kind of makes them feel nice. Warm apple cider for the soul.

That's not my experience. Somehow I managed to reach my early forties – and something akin to early onset midlife crisis – never having seen this holiday classic. Somebody happened to rent the video, and I sat down blithely for a taste of some sweet, easy-to-digest Capra corn.

Frank blindsided me completely. By the last half hour, my face ran with tears. Eventually I was sobbing. Not because of sweet platitudes about how everything will always work out, not because Christmas will always be cheery, but because of the opposite. It showed me my life, which didn't feel so wonderful.

I saw a man make a lifetime of small sacrifices that led him to... Well, despair. George Bailey is a man who doesn't live out his dreams. He lives something very different than the life he imagined for himself, and when he comes to the end of it all he can't quite see that it's been worth the trouble. Ouch. And they show this thing at Christmas?

It astounds me that people think of this as a gentle little Christmas hug of a movie. Bah! It's a sucker punch - no surprising, really, with uncredited screenplay contributions from Dorothy Parker, Dalton Trumbo and Clifford Odets, none of them known for their sentimentality. Critics for the TimeOut Film Guide write “Take a closer look at Capra’s IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, one tough movie for much of its running time. The climactic affirmation of genuine friendship and mutual reliance is so affecting precisely because it’s so darn hard-won. Although the picture has become synonymous with homespun, small town values, it achieves its profound emotional resonance precisely by stressing their limitations. The 'unborn' sequence is chilling not because it's morbid fantasy, but because Pottersville was and is so much closer to contemporary society than the nostalgic gentility of Bedford falls. For both Capra and Steward, Wonderful Life was their first movie after serving in WWII, and it's riven with their anxieties on coming home. Regardless of whether or not you believe in angels, it's a wonderful movie."

So, yes, they do show this thing at Christmas. A time when refugees shelter in animal sheds to give birth, when politicos protect their power with mass murder, when God sends messengers to keep saying over and over, "Fear not." A time when, against all odds and all fears, a baby is born, and lives long enough to make a difference.

AFTER LIFE, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, MR HOLLAND'S OPUS, THE TRUMAN SHOW

Available at Videomatica


from "1000 Films To Change Your Life"...

Take a closer look at Capra’s It's A Wonderful Life, one tough movie for much of its running time, since it shows how irrepressibly decent James Stewart has had to sacrifice his own dreams of travel and achievement to sustain his family's loan company on which the local community depends. Decades of self-denying service lead him to, well, contemplate suicide from a bridge at Christmas since his insurance policiy seems the only thing able to rescue the operation from financial doom. Not such a wonderful life then after all, until Henry Travers's passing trainee angel shows him the corruption and misery which would have overrun his home town Bedford Falls had he not been bonr. The climactic affirmation of genuine friendship and mutual reliance is so affecting precisely because it’s so darn hard-won. The triumph over – and thus sublimation of – the fear of loss is at the heart of Capra's film.
Trevor Johnston, "Joy: A User's Manual" in Time Out: 1000 Films To Change Your Life

Some of the most heartening films are also the most heartrending: does It's A Wonderful Life move us so deeply because we believe in miracles, or because we know the cluastrophobia and frustration of dreams unrealised? If it's the latter, could it be that the movies' greates gift is just this: the expression of our repressed emotions, our secret and silent sorrows? Further, that films operate on identification and empathy, and that this empathy is – in a cinema – a shared experience a recogntion that we are all in this together? (Preston Sturges put it very eloquently: 'I like the movies. You get to hold hands.')
Tom Charity, "Celluloid Sorrow" in Time Out: 1000 Films To Change Your Life

"This story is the lousiest cheese..." Capra admitted to his star after making a rotten pitch. Stewart stuck by his favourite director. "Frank, if you want to do a movie about me committing suicide, with an angel with no wings named Clarence, I'm your boy." Although the picture has become synonymous with homespun, small town values – values Stewart personified and Capra obviously cherished – it achieves its profound emotional resonance precisely by stressing their limitations, even to the point of suicide. This is the tragedy of a man who deams of travelling the world, building cities and making love to Gloria Grahame, who never leaves his hometown, works in his dad's office, and marries Donna Reed. The 'unborn' sequence is chilling not because it's morbid fantasy, but because Pottersville was and is so much closer to contemporary society than the nostalgic gentility of Bedford falls. For both Capra and Steward, Wonderful Life was their first movie after serving in WWII, and it's riven with their anxieties on coming home. For Stewart, it paved the way for Vertigo and The Naked Spur; for the director it was in effect his testament. That Capra relents and 'saves' his hero is but bitter-sweet consolation. Regardless of whether or not you believe in angels, it's a wonderful movie."
Tom Charity, Time Out Film Guide 2008