Our ongoing series reviewing the greatest Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror movies. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
Directed by: Frank Capra
Produced by: Frank Capra
Written by: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Jo Swerling, and Frank Capra; based on a story by Philip van Doren Stern
Starring: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore
Original Release: 1946
Reviewed by: Sam Christopher
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars (Highest Rating)
George: “What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That’s a pretty good idea. I’ll give you the moon, Mary.”
Mary: “I’ll take it. Then what?”
George: “Well, then you can swallow it, and it’ll all dissolve, see… and the moonbeams would shoot out of your fingers and your toes and the ends of your hair… am I talking too much?”
Synopsis: George Bailey has a problem. He has spent his entire life helping others, from saving his brother’s life at the cost of losing hearing in one ear to giving up his desire to see the world in order to keep the Savings and Loan his father built going, to giving up his honeymoon and myriad chances at personal fortune for the same end. But now some misplaced funds have him at the end of his rope. After everything he’s done, everyone he’s helped, all he can see is a future of incarceration and personal disgrace, with the town’s robber-baron Henry Potter taking the greatest pleasure in George’s ruin. George stands on a bridge and contemplates the icy waters of oblivion below only to find himself saving another man from the clutches of the river. The man says his name is Clarence and that he’s George’s guardian angel. George is understandably skeptical but Clarence offers to prove his point. George thinks everyone would be better off if he had never existed, Clarence creates the scenario for George.
Comments: This is my favorite Christmas film. And the funny thing is that Capra never made it thinking of it as a Christmas film at all. He made it as an ode to the power of the individual and also as an attack against the rising tide of atheism he saw sweeping the country at the time. I’ve always guessed that maybe this was kind of the leading edge of the “Red scare” that made the ‘50s so popular in our history books, and that he saw a lot of the humanism that would be decried later in the Hollywood of that time. That’s, of course, when I’ve wasted time thinking about such things. This is my favorite Christmas film not because of any such political or religious wrangling that may or may not have been going on behind the scenes at the time, but just because George Bailey is so powerful as the window for us to see into the world of Bedford Falls, and because the performances are so good.
We are shown a George Bailey who is the idealized version of all of us; he is the person we should all be. He saves his brother even at the cost of his own hearing. He keeps the pharmacist from making a terrible mistake in filling a prescription, a mistake that never would have been made if not for the man’s own weakness, and keeps the pharmacist’s secret which changes the man’s life for the better. George even gives up his dreams of college and world travel when his father has a stroke and it’s deemed that the savings and loan his father worked so hard to build can only be saved if George will remain in Bedford Falls and run it personally. All through his life, time after time, George is given a choice between his own desires and helping others and he always chooses helping others. And he chooses it freely, without any coercion or force being applied; he simply sees it as the right thing to do. Many critics have berated the film for its simplistic view of life and humanity but I would argue that it is that very simplicity of vision that makes it such a resonant story. Humans have always, I think, and especially in this day and age, made things far more complicated than they need to be. Granted, there are many emotions and hidden motives at work in the human psyche but people are generally willing to help others if given the chance and the freedom of choice to do so, I believe. Having said that, George is not completely ideal, as there are many times his own dreams nearly sway him from what he sees as his duty. But it is precisely because he at every turn chooses his duty over his personal wants that he is not an “every man” character but, rather, an “every good man”. He isn’t who we all are, only who we should all strive to be.
And this marvelous cast makes everything ring true. Jimmy Stewart had to be one of the best five or six American actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood (which pretty much means ever). His accomplishments are legend, and here he lives up to that legend. His George Bailey comes alive for the viewer in all his frustrated, angry, loving, dutiful, whimsically serious glory. The viewer feels he knows George, and that George is not only a friend but a close, lifelong friend. Stewart breathes life into this character, most notably for me during the scene with George and Mary Hatch walking back home after the dance. Mary is played by Donna Reed in another magnificent performance and these two stars joking and singing and talking over the future together is so beautifully wrought, so… sweet… that I have sometimes put in my copy of this DVD just to watch that one scene. Mary, we learn, is in love with George although he doesn’t know it and she’s not sure how to tell him. Reed shows us this time after time, attempting to draw his attention while not being too obvious. If there is a weak link here at all it’s, oddly, in the person of Barrymore, whose portrayal of the miserly Henry Potter is almost two-dimensional. I would say, though, that this is more a function of the character itself rather than any lack of skill on Barrymore’s part.
I know I haven’t said nearly as much as I could have about this film. I haven’t told the story of its being seen as a failure when first released, or the story of the alternate ending filmed that shows Potter getting what’s coming to him. As usual with great film, I just want you to watch this one if you haven’t, and watch it again if you have. I believe this to be one of the truly great fantasy films of all time.
Buy It’s a Wonderful Life and Other Movies from the Must-Watch List on DVD from Amazon.com:
