The Movie I Never Knew I Needed: It’s A Wonderful Life

I’ve always avoided watching this movie — I’m not sure why. Twee? Sentimental? A Frank Capra Scrooge-like scenario but with angels and time-bending? Wrong on all counts. It’s gritty, nuanced, surprisingly modern and the angel is only a very small part of it.

Ignore the fact that it’s shot in black and white, this 1947 production doesn’t creak due to amazing performances. We start with an angelic assignment summoned by prayers. Clarence (Henry Travers), a delightful trainee angel with the ‘brain of a rabbit’ and the ‘faith of a child’, is assigned to look after George Bailey (James Stewart), who is about to commit suicide. To intervene, the angels show Clarence an informative sweep of George’s life to date. Maybe this will be the one which wins him his wings.

George has had a tough life —in saving his brother Harry from drowning, he loses hearing in one ear. In Charleston-ing up a storm with Mary (Donna Reed), his love rival turns the dance floor into a swimming pool. Budding romance is interrupted by his father’s stroke, as are his education and career plans — and his dreams. He ends up running his father’s building society and bank to save the town and the employees from being taken over by the grim-faced Potter (Lionel Barrymore). His honeymoon is interrupted and defunded by a run on the bank. As a youthful employee he gets beaten by his employer Mr Gower (H. B. Warner) for trying to protect this grief-stricken and drunken chemist from making a poisonous mistake. His uncle’s distraction creates a mistake which lands George potentially in jail. He even uses his own college fund to send his younger brother to college. His wife wants them to live in a fixer-upper home: cold, old and drafty. His dreams of architecture, travel, life beyond a small ‘crummy’ town never quite materialise. Even his war is small — warden duties, scrap drives and more. And yet, even when you’re definitely not living your best life, the film says that it’s worth it, that you are worth it. That there is hope in the harshness and pain, there is kindness and love, that people with friends are millionaires, that humans are valuable. And absolutely no twee moments.

With his uncle having misplaced the family bank’s money, the blame bounces back onto George — who even considers getting a loan from Potter. Which is the pits. In a moment of deep despair, George terrorises his family and the family home, without saying what’s really wrong with him. He then heads off to drink too much, gets punched by an irate husband (he insulted his wife — his children’s teacher) and then, having damaged an ancient tree, by crashing his car…heads off to find a bridge. This is Christmas Eve. It is here that Clarence makes his entrance — jumping in to get George to save him so that he can save George.

Quickly, George rashly wishes that he’d never been born — and Clarence (with some heavenly dispute and thundery rumbles), grants this wish. Soon, with no living younger brother, a lonely Mary (his once wife), a deserted old house and a terribly sour mother, George starts to see that his life, his very existence and being, has made a deep difference to people. Deeper still, his home town has been Potter-fied, filled with all the money making ventures — and it’s sleazy, heartless, venal, cold. (Whilst looking very flashy on the outside).

Very quickly learning his lesson, having been treated like a dangerous man, George rushes (joyful Scrooge-like) back home, wishing everyone and everything a ‘Merry Christmas’ along the way. Even a prison sentence is a joy, because life and people are now precious. But it doesn’t end miserably, for the townspeople repay their bank loan of long ago, rallied by Mary. They all pile in, bringing their funds to keep George and the bank afloat. Even curmudgeons (in the form of the bank monitoring commissioner) find their inner generousity and heart — joining in a Christmas sing-along and communal give. Younger brother Harry (who never stops talking about his older brother) jets in to support him. It’s a beautiful ending — there is hope, love and community.

Charmingly, the old house retains a bit of balustrade which always comes off every time a person uses the stairs. I love the strands of tinsel decorating the tree — and sometimes George. Everyone is a character here and all are redeemable — no-one is judged, not even the attractive girl Violet (Gloria Grahame) who might be a good time girl or even a bad girl in any other movie. Here George helps her out to start a new life — just because he cares. Wonderfully there are black and brown people in this movie, who are just people and townsfolk.

Progressively for the era, black and brown people (very elegantly dressed) come to laugh at George on a potential date and later support George as the bank teeters on disaster. Rather than being types, they are just people! His family housekeeper is maybe a bit of cliche, but at the same time, she is still enabled to speak her mind and be her own woman, to be an equal in the town. Celebrating different types of American is the order of the day here as the focus is on a run-down small town, hard-working and impoverished working class and lower middle class families. Shown in part by Italian-Americans getting their first proper home and business (the Martinis). All of this was such a surprise and remarkable.

The cinematography is beautiful too — Gothicky shadows at points, and pointedly contrasting Potter’s profile with a bust of Napoleon in his office. Both aggressive empire makers and creators. Props too make a point — such as the sign in his father’s office pointedly stating that you can only take with you all that you can give away.

Most of all, it is James Stewart’s nuanced, naturalistic and emotional performance which steers this away from melodrama and into truth. Such as the interaction with his screen daughter Zuzu — it’s so real and sincere. Although it’s 1947, he makes the drama contemporary and very real emotionally. Despite the subject matter, it’s also very, very funny and romantic too. Even Mary is her own woman — not just a dewey-eyed wife trope.

Without shying away from hard things, even when Potter and the hardness of life appears to have won — he and it haven’t! From It’s A Wonderful Life, we see that ordinary life, life itself, is a battle, even a spiritual one, but God believes in us — even when we don’t believe in Him, and life is precious. And there is literally light at the end of the tunnel — and some Mark Twain.