It's a Wonderful Life

For many, 1946's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE is the quintessential Christmas movie.  What constitutes such has prompted a lot of (admittedly trivial) debate on social media.  For me, one must delineate between a movie that takes place at Christmastime and one that is about Christmas.  By that definition, sorry, DIE HARD ain't no Christmas movie.  Director Frank Capra's initially dismissed but now much beloved classic film straddles the line between the two criterion.  The main action concludes on Christmas Eve, and has a storyline that ultimately can be argued exemplifies the Christmas spirit.  What Christmas is about will vary by individual. 

 

Many of you have seen or at least have heard of this film, one of my all time favorites.  You probably know that Jimmy Stewart plays a man who considers ending it all on Christmas Eve, and that he gets to see what his hometown of Bedford Falls would look like had he never been born.  Worse, what would be of his friends and loved ones.  This comprises the last twenty minutes of the film, and never fails to get me.  During this most recent watch, my middle aged cynicism began to think that the quartet of screenwriters (Capra among them) may not have considered a potential narcissism with that scenario.  An egocentrism that suggests that the world (or the betterment of it) revolves merely around one person.  But that's me being a curmudgeon.  I think many of us have seen how our own mere presence (if not our words and actions) has made the world a better place, if only for one person.  Merry Christmas.

George Bailey (Stewart) lives a selfless life, one in which his dreams are repeatedly sidelined so that others may prosper, or at least not die or go to prison.  The film is told in flashback as a pair of angels hear the prayers sent up by George's loved ones on that fateful Eve.  We see George, who has lost thousands of dollars and may even get arrested, about to dive off a bridge.  But Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers), an angel desperate to earn his wings, hears George's life story and travels to Earth to prevent this tragedy.  Most of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE details Mr. Bailey's trajectory to that bridge.  A life that may recall the phrase "No good deed goes unpunished."  Or so it seems.  That finale also always gets me.

I've mentioned before that there are storytellers and there are filmmakers.  Some gifted souls are both.  Capra is one of them.  His innovative filmmaking (for the time) never gets in the way of this compelling, endearingly told story.  Rather, it suits it.  There's little I can say about it or anything else about this film that hasn't been already.  This is an authentic American classic, filled with fine performances and more good will than in a dozen other "Christmas" movies.  Sly humor here and there, too.  You need to watch this film, now.  Even if it's the fiftieth time.  Even if you see the colorized version.  There's something I don't say too often.