It’s a line that prefigures a similar one from “Death of a Salesman,” another work about a desperate American Everyman, which would premiere on Broadway three years after the release of “Wonderful Life.” In Arthur Miller’s play, a beaten-down Willy Loman says: “Funny, y’know? After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.” Potter (a gloriously malignant Lionel Barrymore) taunts George that: “You’re worth more dead than alive.” Soon George is stumbling through the streets of Bedford Falls, lip bloodied, hair matted with sweat, a life-insurance policy for $15,000 in his pocket. In both scenes, Stewart makes it clear that George’s stunted life, as much as the bank crisis and the prospect of prison, is at the root of his despair. Later, when Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) commits a careless act that could put the building & loan out of business and land George in prison for fraud, George grabs him by the lapels, yanks him to his feet, and hisses: “Where’s that money, you silly, stupid old fool?” Upon his return home, George vents his fury at Mary and their children, snarling “You call this a happy family - Why do we have to have all these kids?” and kicking over a table. It’s worth noting that until he talks them out of it, quite a few of his customers seem all too ready to desert a man and an institution that have made it possible for them to own homes. George doesn’t get to go to college, either, and even his honeymoon with Mary is short-circuited by a run on his building & loan. As a young man, he tells his future wife, Mary (Donna Reed), “I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world!” But George eventually tosses aside the travel brochures that he’s been clutching like a talisman of hope. In the former, George’s dreams of adventure and exploration are systematically dashed. There’s a virtual industry built around a determinedly rosy reading of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”īut consider the events that precede the film’s there’s-no-place-like-home finale, both in George’s actual life and in the counterfactual “If George had never existed” scenario.
Its wonderful life movie#
NBC is airing the movie twice this month, including on Christmas Eve, and it’s streaming on multiple platforms. You can purchase “It’s a Wonderful Life”-themed products that range from Christmas tree ornaments in the shape of a bell to an “Official Bailey Family Cookbook” to wall calendars to quilt blankets adorned with scenes and quotes from the film. You know the scene I’m talking about: In a deus ex machina resolution that would have made the dramatists of ancient Greece blush, the citizens of Bedford Falls rush to George’s financial rescue, his brother proclaims him “the richest man in town,” everybody sings “Auld Lang Syne,” and little Zuzu caps it all off by chirping that “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.”Īnd every time a cash register rings, a corporation gets its cut.
Many viewers have preferred to look away from the shadows in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” focusing instead on the not-terribly-convincing burst of sunshine that floods across the screen at the end. In the lighter scenes, he falls back on his familiar aw-shucks mannerisms, but when Stewart tunnels into George’s desperation, it is with a truthfulness both raw and fearless.
I don’t know whether Capra fully got that, but Stewart clearly did. That portrait is coupled with a view of human nature that is far from reassuring. Much - most - of the film is a portrait of a thwarted man who tries to live his life with integrity but is driven first to frustration, then to the very bottom of despair. But the real greatness of “It’s a Wonderful Life” lies in its darkness. Those are the kind of adjectives routinely affixed to Capra’s film. This month its ubiquity is enhanced by hoopla around the film’s 75th anniversary, complete with the release of a new, two-disc Blu-ray set of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” billed in a Paramount Pictures release as “beloved,” “inspiring,” “uplifting,” and “life-affirming.”