It’s a Wonderful Life

Often considered one of the quintessential Christmas classics, It’s a Wonderful Life honestly doesn’t feel like its heavily dominated by the merry season and only became a classic of the season through its ending and its message of spreading love and joy to those that need it most. Despite now being revered and beloved by all who returned to it all these years later, it was not a critical or commercial success upon release, it even almost made director, Frank Capra, seem incompetent to make movies for the studios at the time due to the lack of returning income. However, it was awarded for several awards at that year’s Academy Awards, and it did eventually warm to people and critics and now it is only seen as something truly special. In the small town of Bedford Falls lives a troubled man named George Bailey (played by James Stewart). After a recently bad year, George is at his wits end after going bankrupt from his business and laments the adventurous life he dreamed of as a child and what he gave up supporting a family business that suddenly failed. Despite his wife, Mary (played by Donna Reed) and their children beside him, George runs away and attempts to commit suicide, only to be saved by his fallen guardian angel, Clarence (played by Henry Travers). Being sent down from the heavens to assist him, Clarence shows him a world where he was never born and through this experience, George realizes the lives of his friends and wife would have been far worse off without him, and despite not feeling like he changed a lot, actually accomplished a lot in life just by being a good man. Based on the 1939 short story, The Greatest Gift, written by Phillip Van Doren Stern, It’s a Wonderful Life is a brilliantly captivating and wholesome story about the impact of simple goodwill and travels into somber, depressing life events to make the good moments feel all the more confronting.

The fact that this film is based on a short story becomes apparent as the movie’s narrative structure actually has a lot more parts than what the actual premise is. Despite the element of ‘’seeing a world without being born’’ being one of the defining elements of said movie, it really only lasts twenty minutes of the film’s two-hour length, and even that is only comprised to the final act. While this could come across as over-stretching a basic set-up, every element of the backstory for the main character does act as a leading up point to making the message feel more warranted; it establishes an environment, character, and goal for a lot of the people in the film, so that it can be altered and messed with in a way that most audiences can clearly see. It’s a film that doesn’t really act much on being incredibly detailed and complex, it acts on emotions and tells this cautionary tale in a realistic enough manner that makes everybody feel like the ending is earned despite it not being so long. Much like what its original story was based on, it almost acts like an opposite to the famous Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, where someone is thrown into a wild journey through their life and made to realize the error of their ways around the holidays, but while one is about appreciating the love and spirit of Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life is more about learning to love the little things in life and realizing that a small favor goes a long way even if it doesn’t seem like it. It is a movie that could come across as pretty shallow and maybe even a little too optimistic given the circumstances the plot lays out, but the core meaning behind the film handled by the direction and the genuine emotion that comes out from the script handled by Capra along with Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett (with additional polishes from Jo Swerling, Michael Wilson and Dorothy Parker) feels perfectly real and it doesn’t shy away from the harder moments so that it feels completely unrealistic. Its paced decently well, no scene feels wasted, the transitions between each time period isn’t too distracting (if a bit abrupt) and the ending is definitely going to illicit that warm, joyful Christmas feeling.

In creating a character like George Bailey, you want to find an actor who can capture that all-around positive sense of normalcy; someone who can be incredibly charming and good-looking while still feeling like an average ‘’nice guy next door’’ kind of man, and James Stewart fits that title pretty spot-on. Known for other roles like Mr Smith Goes to Washington and The Philadelphia Story, James Stewart was given incredible praise for his role in this movie (even being nominated for Best Actor) and it feels like a role he could do very easily. George Bailey is an all-around upstanding guy (outside of a random moment where he hijacks his future wife’s dress) who gets pushed to the limit after giving up on his own dreams to support the town, his wife, and kids. It’s a role that features as many light jovial moments as it does aggressive, bitter, and cold moments, but the pure delight that he exhibits during the end of the movie is simply treasure. The supporting cast is also pretty good, giving recognizable faces to a lot of secondary roles that don’t have much to work with, but do enough that they are familiar before and after the change. Donna Reed does a decent job at playing George’s wife and proves to be a decent foil to him with good chemistry, Henry Travers brings a light and slightly oblivious, but still down-to-earth portrayal of the guardian angel, and while the quote-on-quote villain of the movie played by Lionel Barrymore is a little too unrealistically slimy and evil (feeling very much like a cartoon character), considering he was a pretty well-known radio version of Ebeneezer Scrooge, his personality makes a lot more sense in context.

The black and white filter for the movie weirdly helps it out in a big way. Even ignoring the fact that every movie at the time was going to look like that, something about the manner in which its used in this film really helps in capturing an atmosphere. It’s a movie that honestly has a lot of sadder moments until that final scene, so it’s an environment where there’s very little use of background music, and extravagant shots, instead it uses its visuals to give the audience this feeling on generic normalcy in the first half, with steady shots, regular angles and mostly bright lighting, to offset the changes in the last act of the film which has heavier shadows, odd angles and a heavier focus on strange off-putting shots that get up-close and personal with the actors. Some of this even feels like it came by accident, as the film had three cinematographers working on it, with Victor Milner, Joseph Walker and Joseph F. Biroc all at one point contributing to the production but either through Capra finding the shoot slow and pretentious (Milner) or being tied to another project (Walker), had to be replaced, so it worked out in the long run. It does have a slightly cheaper feel to it in places (the movie opens with literally just two smudges blinking between each other to show talking), but it still works for the film as a whole. The environment becomes about as much a character as the rest of the people in the film thanks to the production design by Capra, as its dedication to staying humble and honest ties with the main character’s purpose and it feels extra weird to see this quiet homely turn essentially be turned into Vegas in this new reality.

It’s a Wonderful Life is a movie that a lot of people know about, but given its age and classic status, its unclear how many people in the current era have actually watch it. For a first viewing, it is a good sitting and for those going in pretty blind, it might offer up some nice surprises on how it gets to its iconic main theme and ending. Despite not really being about Christmas until the final act, its undeniably tied into the spirit of the holiday with its core themes and ideals matching with everything that makes this time of year so special. It has a timeless story and moral, it has memorable characters with a lot of charming actors, it has good visuals, and despite having a messy starting point, its definitely going to remain in people’s minds around Christmas time for years to come. Check it out and revisit the magic that occurred on that faithful night when a man realized what horrors would befall his place of home if he never existed.