Movie Review: "It's A Wonderful Life" (Frank Capra, 1942)

BEDFORD CALLING by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: George Bailey (James Stewart) faces his fate in Mr. Capra's film

 

You know James Stewart—that likable, halting, gangly movie star, the actor who so confidently played the awkward everyman.  Yet behind his casual humanity is something else: anger.  Alfred Hitchcock tapped it in “Vertigo,” but it spews most forcefully in Frank Capra’s 1942 magical-realist drama “It’s A Wonderful Life.”  The first time you see Mr. Stewart in the movie, he’s spreading his arms wide, smiling innocently, and looking utterly wholesome.  But before the film’s runtime has elapsed, that familiar face contorts as Mr. Stewart shouts and runs, breaking out into storms of sadness and violence.

            Why then, do so many people watch the movie on Christmas Day?  “It’s A Wonderful Life” may be optimistic, but it’s also ferocious and even ghoulish.  As a late scene in a graveyard shows, it’s equally suited for a midnight screening on Halloween.  Yet Mr. Capra’s movie is no fright fest—instead, it is a vibrant, emotional journey of one man struggling against his own demons and the world’s.

            That man is George Bailey (Mr. Stewart), a kid growing up in the fictional town of Bedford Falls, New York.  He’s eager to leave and it’s not hard to see why—Bedford doesn’t look like much fun, especially since it’s ruled by a sneering, wealthy tycoon named Henry Potter (a fantastic Lionel Barrymore).  Yet on the night of his departure, George’s father asks if he would ever consider working at the family business, the town Building in Loan.  “I couldn’t stand being cooped in an office,” George protests.  But even as he says it, you can almost sense that he’s doomed to do just that.

            And so it begins—a pattern of painful, infuriating events that keeps George trapped in Bedford, running the Building in Loan.  First his father dies; then his brother gets married and refuses to take over the business.  That leaves George, never one to mince words but never one to say no either, to stay at the office, knowing that his puny but honest bank is the last obstacle blocking Potter’s attempts to financially exploit the town.

            It’s better not to dwell on the economic realities of George’s life; the movie’s not concerned with them and you shouldn’t be either.  What does matter to Mr. Capra (who adapted the film from Philip Van Doren Stern’s short story “The Greatest Gift”) is the anguish of George.  It’s not just that he’s trapped in a small town he’s always hated; it’s that it’s a miserable, hopeless place.  Mr. Barrymore, alive with eager cruelty, haunts the film and even when George’s life really is wonderful, it seems bleak.  Look at the scene where he and his wife (Donna Murphy) hold a house warming party for their friends.  First they’re happy; then they’re left alone on a dusty road, caught in the quiet.

            If “It’s A Wonderful Life” was merely the moral drama it initially appears to be, it would be a painful and beautiful work.  But the supernatural turn that sharpens the final act makes it a masterwork.  Battered, drunken, and hated, George stumbles through Beford’s snow-mushy streets one Christmas Eve, having lost all faith in himself.  But then, guided by his guardian angel, Clarence (Henry Travers), he sees something strange—a vision of what the world would be like if he’d never been born.  “Each man’s life touches so many others,” Clarence says.  Everything that follows movingly and chillingly proves his point.

            I don’t want to spoil the rest.  The vision of the world without George is perversely alluring—a chaotic alternate reality where Bedford Falls is overrun by tyrants, drunks, and hookers.  But the film still finds its way back, back from the edge of the bridge where George imagines killing himself, back from the dreary rage of the Building in Loan, and back to the home where George’s family and friends are waiting for him. 

Maybe George should have left Bedford in the beginning; maybe he should never have stayed behind and been nobly miserable for the sake of others.  But what makes “It’s A Wonderful Life” so meaningful is that in the end, its bitter, selfless hero finds some wonder, if not in the way he always imagined.