It's a Wonderful Life
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1990. | ||
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.jpeg) Wonderful life? more like a "wonderful Christmas movie!"
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It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 Christmas film based on the 1939 story The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern. The film stars James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore and Henry Travers. The film was directed by Frank Capra.
Plot
Around the Holiday Season of 1945, George Bailey (Stewart) is suicidal and wishes that he had never been born. After he states that a guardian angel named Clarence (Henry Travers) appears and tells him how his life is wonderful and if he wasn't around, life would be awful.
Why It's Wonderful
- When Frank Capra returned to Hollywood after World War II, he felt the need to make a statement about the war and how it attacted the people of the United States, like other directors returning after volunteering in the war effort.
- The director wanted James Stewart, a pilot during a war (who was thinking of retiring to his hometown). Although the role of George Bailey was difficult and it carried the actor through some 20 years, from student to father. It also required Stewart to portray a suicidal despair missing from his pre-war work. This was the start of a line of amazing performances from Stewart. Who became an iconic figure in the 1950s.
- Heartwarming premise about a man who’s saved from suicide by a guardian angel, who shows how the lives of those around him would have changed for the worse had he died, even if it’s based on Philip Van Doren Stern’s story The Greatest Gift.
- It shares with his Columbia work an understanding of film language. Here, Capra has more resources available to him than before the war, such as being able to shoot exteriors at night, on a massive city set on an RKO lot. He was also aware of where the industry was moving, as such, parts of the film resemble film noir or newsreels, both of which were becoming popular.
- The overall film has the feel of being one giant allegory, as the characters are all symbols in a universal drama aimed at teaching us some universal life lessons. Frank Capra admitted that most of his movies have the same message, which he described as "Sermon on the Mount" values. (Some noteworthy sermon points are, "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven; Blessed are the meek: for they will inherit the earth; Blessed are the merciful: for they will be shown mercy; Blessed are the pure in heart: for they will see God")
- Naturally, Potter represents greed, power, and isolation, all ultimately joyless
- George is the little guy beaten down by the powerful but who prevails because of his good heart.
- Mary represents the joys of family
- Bedford Falls is every small town where a sense of neighborliness and connectedness shows everyone the real meaning of life.
- Capra’s once again shown to be a master of manipulating emotions, as the film cuts closer to doubt and desperation than he had ever come before. Two scenes in particular show a new maturity and sympathy
- After another failed attempt to leave home, George Bailey visits Mary Hatch, ostensibly the girlfriend of another man. In an emotionally charged monologue, Bailey rails against the hopeless future closing in on him. And for two minutes straight, Capra holds him in a tight two-shot with Mary, with the director confident in the power of image and words.
- Then at a much later point, Bailey’s in a bar facing utter ruin. Capra slowly moves the camera in until his face fills the frame, a close-up as iconic as those used by John Ford. The harrowing prayer Stewart delivers is very effective.
- It's a Wonderful Life has a reputation as a Yuletide fantasy, despite the fact that the dream sequence is only seventeen minutes (out of over 2 hours).
- The film’s final 5 minutes – meant to be a praise to small-town life – aims for the climatic intensity of Capra’s great 1930s Columbia films, but the ending isn’t exactly what one would call “happy”. The money for the Building and is still missing, Potter gets away with everything and is still plotting against goodness, and George never gets to leave town and live his dream of traveling. His life is still pretty bleak.
Bad Qualities
- Most of the effects done for the film haven’t aged well, and the overall humor can be pretty corny.
- Capra himself would admit that the plot was filled with glaring holes and flaws in logic.
- A lot of continuity errors.
- In the alternate reality, Clarence tells George that his brother died at the age of 9 because he wasn't there to save him from falling through the ice, but when you see the tomb stone, it shows Harry Bailey was born in 1911 and died in 1919. That would make Harry only 7 or 8 years old.
- Characters like Ruth Dakin-Bailey (Harry's wife), and Marty Hatch (Mary's older brother) don't get a lot of screen time or development.
- During the alternate universe side, there's a scene where Mary's seen as a single woman who works at a library. Somehow this is meant to be portrayed as a horrifying fate, but it's actually not that bad, especially when compared to what happened to everyone else in town (going to prison, being homeless, death, nobody thinking about other's safety and health). Honestly, Mary got off pretty lucky. In fact, Frank Capra himself state this aspect of the film didn't age well, and wished Mary had gotten a different fate.
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