It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

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Comment: Remember, Dusty: no man is a failure who has subscribers.

Rating: PG
Director: Frank Capra
Writer: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra
Stars: Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore
Release Date: January 7, 1947 (United States)
Run time: 2 hour, 10 minutes

THE PLOT:

via wiki:

On Christmas Eve 1945, in Bedford Falls, New York, George Bailey contemplates suicide. The prayers of his family and friends reach Heaven, where guardian angel second class Clarence Odbody is assigned to save George in order to earn his wings.

Clarence is shown flashbacks of George’s life. He watches 12-year-old George rescue his younger brother Harry from drowning in a frozen pond, leaving George with deafness in his left ear. George later saves pharmacist Mr. Gower from accidentally poisoning a customer.

In 1928, George plans a world tour before college. He is reintroduced to Mary Hatch, who has loved him since childhood. When his father dies from a stroke, George postpones his travel to settle the family business, Bailey Brothers Building and Loan.

Avaricious board member Henry F. Potter, who owns most of the town, seeks to dissolve the company, but the board of directors votes to keep it open if George runs it. George works alongside his uncle Billy, giving his tuition savings to Harry with the understanding that Harry will take over the company when he graduates.

Harry returns from college married and with a job offer from his father-in-law, and George resigns himself to running the building and loan. George and Mary rekindle their relationship and marry, but abandon their honeymoon to use their savings to keep the company solvent during a run on the bank.

Under George, the company establishes Bailey Park, a housing development surpassing Potter’s overpriced slums. Potter entices George with a high-paying job, but George rebuffs him when he realizes that Potter’s true intention is to close the building and loan.

On Christmas Eve, the town prepares a hero’s welcome for Harry, a Navy fighter pilot awarded the Medal of Honor for preventing a kamikaze attack on a troopship. Billy goes to Potter’s bank to deposit $8,000 ($139,726 in 2024) of the building and loan’s money. He taunts Potter with a newspaper headline about Harry, but absentmindedly wraps the cash in Potter’s newspaper.

Potter keeps the money, while Billy cannot recall how he misplaced it. With a bank examiner reviewing the company’s records, George fruitlessly retraces Billy’s steps. Frustrated and angered by Billy’s blunder, which may lead to scandal and jail, George resents the sacrifices he has made and the family that has kept him trapped in Bedford Falls. He appeals to Potter for a loan, offering his meager life insurance policy as collateral. Potter scoffs that George is worth more dead than alive and phones the police.

George flees Potter’s office, gets drunk at a bar, and prays for help. Contemplating suicide, he goes to a bridge. Before George can jump, Clarence dives into the river and George rescues him. When George wishes he had never been born, Clarence takes him into an alternate timeline in which he never existed. George finds that Bedford Falls is now Pottersville, an unsavory town occupied by sleazy entertainment venues and callous people. Mr. Gower was jailed for manslaughter because George was not there to stop him from poisoning the customer.
His mother does not know him, and Uncle Billy was institutionalized after the building and loan failed. Bailey Park is a cemetery, where George discovers Harry’s grave; without George to save him, Harry drowned in the frozen pond as a child; and without Harry to save them, the troops aboard the transport were killed. George finds that Mary is an “old maid” librarian. When he grabs her and claims to be her husband, she screams and runs away.

George races back to the bridge and begs Clarence, and then God, for his life back. His wish granted, he happily rushes home to await his arrest. Mary and Billy have rallied the townspeople, who donate more than enough to replace the missing money. Harry arrives and toasts George as “the richest man in town”.

Among the donations, George finds a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a gift from Clarence inscribed: “Remember, no man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings!” When a bell on the Christmas tree rings, George’s youngest daughter, Zuzu, explains that “every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings”, while those gathered sing “Auld Lang Syne“.

The Review

I love this movie. It’s a Wonderful Life is almost eighty years old, and it is just as great and powerful a story as it was when it was first released. In a lot of ways, it is also just as socially relevant as it was when it was first released. The screenplay is an incredible story, depicting an all-too-plausible heartbreaking descent of a good and self-sacrificing man from youthful optimism into middle-aged despair. The metaphorical and almost literal resurrection and restoration of George Bailey is an inexpressible joy in which to participate as an audience member. Jimmy Stewart’s performance is phenomenal.

More than just being a story about one man though, the film is a layered commentary about society and philosophy, too. It’s a Wonderful Life shows its audience the danger of the modern banking and lending system. If we replace dependence on, and love for our community, with a more individualistic reliance on an impersonal bank, more often than not, we end up losing our community ties and we end up beholden to the bank in the process. At least that is the story as told by the film. George Bailey, like his father before him, saw this danger to Bedford Falls and cultivated a community alternative to the bank that relied upon each other and prioritized individual autonomy, aided by and through the collective, rather than individual reliance upon a bank.

This message was not well-received in Washington D.C. at the time of the movie’s release. On May 26, 1947, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a memo stating, “With regard to the picture It’s a Wonderful Life, [redacted name] stated in substance that the film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists. [In] addition, [redacted name] stated that, in his opinion, this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters.” Film historian Andrew Sarris observed as “curious” that “the censors never noticed that the villainous Mr. Potter gets away with robbery without being caught or punished in any way”.

Personally, I find it curious that criticism of banking practices, usury in particular, were equated by the F.B.I. with advocacy for communism. There seems to be a lot of space between opposition to high interest lending and the erosion of a traditional community, and an embrace of Marx and Lenin. However, if the F.B.I. was working for Big Banks, then this is the sort of self-serving view one might expect them to express. Do with that as you will.

Philosophically, this movie is an exploration of what it means to be rich. In this sense, the story feels very Christian. George Bailey is exceedingly rich in love, community, and good character. He is an example of a man who would seem to be collecting vast riches in heaven while he struggles to get by on earth. The heartbreak of George Bailey, for most of the film, is that his heart’s instinct to accumulate spiritual wealth is not something he ever fully embraces intellectually. When Potter steals $8,000 from Bailey, George approaches that calamity with his mind and not with his heart and finds no way out. “I’m worth more dead than alive.” The job of Clarence is to convince George’s mind to see what his heart already knows. Once that internal understanding occurs, George knows how rich he is and the idea of worldly trouble no longer concerns him. He’s perfectly happy to go to jail. Even imprisonment is a small thing compared to the riches of his life.

Of course, it doesn’t come to that. When the community of Bedford Falls finds out that George Bailey is in trouble, they rally to save him. They not only raise the $8,000 he needs, they collect much, much more. The lifetime George spent, convincing everyone to rely on each other instead of the evil Mr. Potter, they teach him in return, in his moment of need. George Bailey spent his life lending his strength to others. It never occurred to him that they’d be willing or able to do the same. In this sense, George finally joins the community he has been creating for his entire life.

One interesting element of the film that’s never addressed is that – insofar as we know – Mr. Potter’s theft is never discovered. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. He in many ways represents the devil and we might imagine that one day his comeuppance will arrive, but for now, Bailey and his friends simply win by resisting him.

There are of course some people who think Lionel Barrymore’s Mr. Potter was an unsung hero of the film. Well, maybe not people. Person. Ben Shapiro. If you’ve seen the following clip online, feel free to remember that Bailey’s lending practices were working and that the community was thriving, that Potter was a thief, and that “Pottersville” was a nightmarish hellscape bereft of the pre-existing community and its values. But you know, I guess it adhered to good lending practices. (Honestly, I hope this Shapiro clip is a comedy bit and isn’t sincere.)

This movie really works because of the performance of Jimmy Stewart. One of the most difficult things to portray on screen is earnestness that could easily come across as hokey or insincere. It’s the challenge that awaits anyone who wants to play a comic book character like Superman or Captain America. George Bailey, a regular human, is that type of character, particularly when he’s young. Jimmy Stewart made me believe. If you are fortunate in life, you’ve met at least a couple of people like George Bailey, and they make you want to be a better person.

A hero’s journey can be a small person doing something far bigger than he ever imagined. It can also be a great person doing innumerable small, unrecognized deeds. This is the latter kind of tale and I think it resonates across time because it’s the more regularly occurring one. The tragedy of George Bailey are the small elf-sacrifices he makes that bury his own original hopes and dreams beneath the growing weight of those he holds up for everyone else. You see it on his face as he encourages others to go and achieve their dreams. By the time George Bailey hits a breaking point, sitting at the bar alone, Jimmy Stewart seems to age almost in front of our eyes. The weight of everything he’s carrying bears down on him, as does the loss of everything he hoped for himself. He resents his own life because he knows if he’d been selfish he wouldn’t be in his predicament. We get to watch him be broken by his own goodness. It’s incredible acting. Then not long later, we see him running up and down the streets of Bedford Falls, shouting Merry Christmas, before finding a kissing his family, and we believe him. The whole performance oozes authenticity.

My only gripe about the film is a theological one. “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.” Do humans become angels? No. That’s just bad theology. We’ll set that aside though and give the writers some allowances for dramatic license. (Just don’t let your kids walk away from this movie without giving them a quick correction.)

On the other hand though, is there something special about bells? Was the film subtly drawing our attention to it through this bad theology? Yes. Maybe. No, really, I don’t know. However, if you’ve never jumped down the “Church Bells Conspiracy” rabbit hole, it’s a fun one. I recommend it.

Anyway. I love this movie. It’s not just one of my favorite Christmas movies of all time, it’s one of my favorite films, period. The story is emotionally powerful, the pacing never lulls or drags, Jimmy Stewart gives an acting performance for the ages, and I find myself newly inspired to make the world a better place.

Have you seen It’s a Wonderful Life? If so, what did you think?