Review - It’s a Wonderful Life
Released 1946, 131 Minutes, Directed by Frank Capra
Films that are given a place amongst the upper echelon of cinema by the American Film Institute I tend to be skeptical of. In the same vein as literaries like Hemingway and the writers of his generation, whom, it’s felt, were not successful because of their prowess with a pen, but because they where white men who had no trouble getting published, cinema from before the 1950s usually ages less like the David and more like the Parthenon. But Frank Capra’s 1946 It’s a Wonderful Life, one of the AFI’s top 15 American movies of all time, has a universality and charm that truly feels timeless.
George Bailey, the son of a banker, from his earliest memories has felt he never belonged in his hometown of Bedford Falls, and believed himself destined for a life outside the family business, building and dreaming the world of tomorrow. Through a series of moral and familial crossroads, he never leaves Bedford Falls, taking over the family business, and by accident, hits financial rock bottom. Realizing his life insurance policy leaves him worth more dead than alive, he’s taken on a spiritual journey just before he commits suicide, one that, as the title says, helps him realize that it really is a wonderful life.
The brilliance of this movie is not something slightly more performative that tends to boost the greatness in your modern cinema like a powerful soundtrack, gripping dialogue, beautiful cinematography, or captivating effects. In fact, I’d go so far to say it’s not all that compelling in any of these departments, though they do have their moments. And the gender roles and weird intersexual dynamics that are fossils of this time are uncomfortable, to say the least (so much so that this is the biggest issue I have with the film and is really the piece of the puzzle that prevents it from moving into “perfection”). No, what actually makes It’s a Wonderful Life exceptional is that the viewers are made to feel in every capacity possible that we are George Bailey.
A large criticism of the film is how downhearted the first 115 minutes of the movie are, which is not something I disagree with, but I think that’s exactly the point. George Bailey goes through a series of events that tests him morally, usually a choice between the right thing to do and something that would make his life easier, and he always chooses the righteous path, even if a bit misguided at times. We, the viewer, see ourselves in George, surely believing that we too have had similar hurdles to overcome and have done the right thing, and become growingly attached to George as his world starts to spiral, taking us with him. So when the clouds begin to part and love, warmth, and good fortune are once again returned to George Bailey, we cannot help but remember the times in our life, past or present, that have challenged us in such a powerfully similar way.
Jimmy Stewart’s portrayal of George Bailey cannot be understated. Having just returned from the second world war, you can see the truly raw emotion in some of his most intimate and powerful scenes of the film. Stewart carries with him a real darkness, no doubt projecting his experiences from the war onto his performance of George Bailey, a man not a veteran of combat, but of the existential battles and inner turmoils he faces as he struggles to find control and meaning in his own life. Donna Reed was an incredible foil to this darkness, and I don’t believe this movie would be what it was without their performances. And while the dialogue wasn’t that intellectually stimulating, it surely is one of the most charmingly quotable Christmas movies of all time.
And so, it was not Frank Capra’s technical mastery of the film medium that moved us, as it sometimes can. It instead was the incredibly performed vignettes of one man’s life that moved us as deeply as we could ever have imagined by a movie, not because we’ve known George Bailey from the moment he was born, but because we too know what it is like to struggle and need friends. I would expect nothing less from a film that is the 11th greatest American movie of all time.
