The Simple Power of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE

I. “Each man’s life touches so many other lives.”

When it comes to movies and television, I’m not much of a crier.

Most people I know take to weeping when something overwhelmingly sad or despondent occurs on screen, especially when it’s a situation that hits close to home (“I’ve been there!” or “oh god, she reminds me of my mom”).  It just doesn’t happen for me that often, even when I can empathize or sympathize with the poor characters.  I can definitely feel the punch in my gut, and the most affecting emotional moments in cinema can stay in my head for days and days.  I just don’t ever really cry.

Even onscreen deaths don’t do a lot for me.  I definitely take most fictional deaths with something resembling disappointment, especially when it’s a character I really like.  But there’s just this wall I often have that keeps the corners of my eyes from actually producing water.  Maybe it’s because death is used as such an emotional crutch in film and TV and we’ve seen it over and over and over and over since the first time we saw BAMBI as little kids that it loses its impact; it now needs to be a really well-earned moment for it to resonate for me, especially once you start experiencing the loss of real people in your life.

I don’t bring this up as a boast of superiority.  This is not a smug “look at all those pathetic little humans out there reacting to fiction; don’t they know this is all made up?” observation, I promise.  I’m genuinely jealous of those who are able to absorb visual storytelling to the point of it feeling real.  It’s an ability that makes art so much more accessible, so much more alive.  This wall of stone in front of me has worried me at times, like I’m watching movies the wrong way or something.

However, I know that I’m not a total monster.  There are a couple of moments in fiction that get me every single time, where the mere thought of them can get me going if I’m in a particularly vulnerable state of mind.  They just need to be moments of triumph rather than catastrophe, moments of joy, often depicting characters realizing they’ve done something they didn’t even know they could do.  That they matter.

I’ve mentioned this one before, but…in the middle of a much longer article, I mentioned how much I loved the seventh episode of the second season of THE BEAR, titled “Forks”.  I didn’t divulge then and, in the interest of hoping you all out there who haven’t watched it yet will take the plunge soon, I won’t really detail it out now (this isn’t an article about THE BEAR, after all).  Suffice to say, though, that the episode takes a character that was often very frustrating (to the point of almost actively being a problem for the show) and redeems him so completely and totally and imbues him with such purpose that he instantly became my favorite.  It’s a story that proves it’s never too late to reinvent yourself.  A story about how every second counts.  A story so well told that I can no longer hear the opening jangle of “Love Story” anymore without wanting to start running around the room. 

Another moment…this one is slightly more embarrassing to admit, but Christmas is about sharing, so…..

I admit that I get got by the ending of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2.  The Ravager funeral hits me very time.  There, I said it.  It’s for several reasons: for one, the death of Yondu meant the MCU lost Michael Rooker, one of the more overqualified and too-interesting actors in the entire franchise.  For two, it’s Rocket Racoon’s realization that people still cared about Yondu, even when he spent his life pushing everyone away and pretending not to care (a lesson that resonates with our favorite talking raccoon).  For three, it’s the fact that, despite his fears at the beginning of the film, Yondu didn’t let the Ravagers down!  Sylvester Stallone said so!  It’s another redemption story, this time for a gruff character that spent a lot of time acting like he didn’t care only to show, in his final moments, that he absolutely cared, to such a degree that at least one of the living is forever altered.

They’re both moments of men proving that they matter.  That they have (or had) worth.

Look, I have a type.

This brings us to the ending of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, an iconic and oft-parodied moment in a movie that’s almost exclusively filled with iconic and oft-parodied moments.  You probably know it without ever seeing it.  “To George Bailey, the richest man in town”.  Auld Lang Syne.  “Attaboy, Clarence”.  That whole thing.  Like much of the film, its final scene wears its heart so strongly on its sleeve that its arm threatens to come off.  It’s borderline manipulative.

And goddamnit, if it doesn’t make me cry.  Every single fucking time.  It’s as much a Christmas tradition as the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Naturally, I wanted to write about it as a little holiday treat. so, let’s jump into IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE!

II. “George Bailey is not a common, ordinary yokel.”

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is a movie that became a Christmas classic mostly because it was free.

The fact that the 1946 Frank Capra drama was not exactly a box-office dynamo upon its release (essentially breaking even on its $3 mil budget) is one of the more famous things about it.  However, what gets lost in all that is that it was still liked by many in its time.  Its reviews were solidly mixed, yes, but consider that it was also nominated for Best Picture during the 19th Academy Awards, with Capra and James Stewart snagging Best Director and Best Actor nominations, respectively.  It won only a technical achievement award, but the film garnered respect from its peers even upon its release.  It even ruffled some feathers: its blatantly anti-capitalist themes prompted the FBI to issue a memo implying the film was Communist propaganda.  Not bad for a movie that is often dismissed as sentimental!

* for its simulation of falling snow, a technique considered unique for its time.

Every single person on the planet probably knows the story of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE but, just in case….it tells the now very well-known story of George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), a young man living in Bedford Falls who’s at the end of his rope.  We learn exactly how he got there by going through his life, as told to his guardian angel (Henry Travers).  We see George as a child saving his brother Harry (Todd Karns) from a watery death.  We see him as a boy working for a pharmacist, Mr. Gower (H.B. Warner).  We see George as a recent high school graduate, eager to go off to college and see the world.  When his father (Samuel Hinds) suddenly passes away, George must put his ambitions aside and run the Bailey Building and Loan, a people-oriented institution constantly under attack from the miserly and profits-first Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore).  Along the way, he courts the loving Mary Hatch (the inimitable Donna Reed) and begins to raise a family.

Mr. Potter is finally able to bring the Building and Loan to its knees, essentially by seizing an opportunity to steal eight grand from the loyal, but wildly forgetful, Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell).  With a bank audit about to begin, George finally has nowhere to turn.  A man once full of life is about to plunge himself off a bridge to his death.

Enter Clarence!  The wingless angel launches the most famous section of the film by granting George his wish to never be born so that he can see for himself just the impact he had on his loved ones, and the world at large, as well as just how much worse the world would be if he hadn’t been there.  If he hadn’t stood up against the greedy and cold Mr. Potter.  If he hadn’t fought for the people of Bedford Falls.  If he hadn’t started a life with Mary.  If he hadn’t saved his brother’s life.  George refunds the value of life and runs off to face another day, just in time for everyone in town to raise the money to cover the stolen eight grand…and then some!  The Building and Loan lives on, Clarence earns his wings, and the hearts of everyone in the audience grows three sizes that day.

Alas, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE came and went like a good majority of movies did in the times before television, home media and streaming.  Some have pointed out that the movie was not quite as optimistic as post-war audiences were hoping for in 1946 (and it is bleaker than you might remember), which might explain why it didn’t connect with audiences right away.  It became a movie somewhat lost to time, and it was certainly no holiday classic.

Then, the 1976 Christmas season came.

Thanks to a clerical error, National Telefilm Associates neglected to renew the copyright for the film in 1974, and it more-or-less entered the public domain soon after.  Starting with 1976, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE aired constantly on television, which led to people discovering it all over again.  By the 1980’s, it was as much a part of the holiday television schedule as Rudolph and Charlie.  There’s an overwhelming chance the first time you ever saw it was on TV.

For me, it was a movie that I was introduced to in stages.

For many, many years of my life, I knew it as “that movie that came on after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade” (yes, there was a time where it wasn’t the dog show!).  My mom usually worked on Thanksgiving, so I got to know the first forty-five minutes of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (with commercials) really well.  12:45 pm was about when my grandfather would pick me up to take me over to grandma’s house to start prepping for the day’s festivities.

After a couple of years, I started getting kind of curious about what else happened in this movie, specifically when we got to the angel making it so that Jimmy Stewart was never born.  I started having the TV turned on to NBC in that brief period between getting settled at Grandma’s and having other family start to trickle in.  I think my grandparents liked that I was getting into older movies.  Yet, I never did make it to that damn bridge.  This was easily the most famous thing about the movie, and yet, I never managed to watch it long enough to ever see it.

Finally, a family member loaned me a cheapie VHS copy of it and told me to enjoy.  I finally sat down and watched the dang thing one November in the early 2000’s and finally, finally got to see Clarence arrive and alter George Bailey’s existence.  Shockingly, this most parodied element of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE doesn’t occur until around minute 100 of a 130-minute movie.  I kind of considered most of what came before it to be a little overlong and a little boring, I’m afraid.  Too much focus on loan management, on housing, on bank examiners.  George Bailey should have tried getting into video games or something.  At least, that’s how I felt at the time; if it weren’t for the film being so intertwined with my still-forming holiday traditions and memories, I might have never thought about it again.

The funny thing about IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, though, is how much it opens up once you become an adult yourself.

III. “Why’d we have to have all these kids?”

Look, one of the joys of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is just how fakey Hollywood it can often be.  There’s a lot of “pause for the punchline” kind of moments, where background characters emerge from the ether to say an old-timey one-liner like “why don’t you kiss her instead of talkin’ her to death!”.  Where the presence of a bottle or a shot glass in a character’s hand represents a fall from grace.  Hell, there’s a fucking black crow that starts flying around whenever shit is about go down at the Building and Loan.  It’s not subtle, and it’s often pretty goofy.

My favorite little detail of the whole movie is how, throughout the course of what has to be one of the most stressful Christmas Eves a movie character has ever experienced (after Potter steals the money from Uncle Billy, George threatens Billy with prison before coming home and roasting the house, his wife, his wife’s family, his kids, his kids’ teacher and the song his kids are playing), he goes from being clean-shaven to developing a five-o’clock shadow.  What a day!

And, yeah, it’s got all the hallmarks of an “old movie” with possible “old movie problems”, depending on your point of view.  There’s a scene of George and Mary flirting in a way that might be considered uncouth now; George withholding her robe from her as she crouches naked behind a bush is pretty obviously meant as a playful give-and-take, but I imagine it may bump some today.  And, like basically all movies made between 1931 and 1956, there’s a black maid character that you kind of just have to get through*, although Annie (Lillian Randolph) isn’t the butt of a joke as often as I had remembered.

*My method of dealing with racism and sexism in old media: I visibly shake my head and audibly say “oh, that’s not okay”, even if nobody else is in the room.  This then absolves any guilt or unease about continuing to enjoy the movie from there.

And, of course, the movie is littered with that “old-timey movie” accent.  IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is filled with oft-quoted lines of dialogue.  But, for me?  My favorite line to quote to myself is one from the alternate George-less present.  It’s when Sheldon Leonard, playing the titular owner of the bar Nick’s, starts laying down the law to Clarence Oddbody after he orders something a little too, um, colorful: “we serve hard drinks in here for men who want to get drunk fast, and we don’t need any characters around to give the joint ‘atmosphere’!”  Watch it again sometime and tell me that’s not a satisfying thing to recite.

But I think all the Hollywood artifice contained within IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is actually a charming addition to the movie, not a cheap detraction.  Because, honestly?  The movie is often unbearably, shockingly dark.  And somewhat cynical.  And, yes, anti-capitalist enough to prompt a response from the fucking FBI.  And displaying the darkness alongside a magic movie world just makes it that much darker.

For context, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE contains a grief-stricken shop owner battering his child employee until he bleeds from his ear.  A young man dies of influenza.  A father yells at his kids after lamenting ever having them in the first place.  Our hero tearfully prays to God before drunkenly crashing a car on his way to commit suicide.  It just goes on like this.

More than anything else, though, it contains the story of a dream deferred, of a man who constantly gets beaten down by the levers of his country, of his god, of life itself.  And, for the most part, the story doesn’t cut any corners in regards to its slow, steady depiction of George getting beaten down.  

Whenever something can go wrong for George Bailey, it does.  It must.  His father suddenly passes away.  The Building and Loan must survive a bank run.  His brother, the heir apparent to the B&L, gets married and hooked up with a great job elsewhere.  And every single time, he must put others before him.  For better or for worse, he has a driving sense of nobility within him.  He knows exactly what is good with the world: his father, the family’s B&L, his wife Mary, his brood of kids, keeping citizens with roofs over their heads even if payments are late, community, society, loyalty.  Keeping one’s word.  He also knows exactly what’s wrong with the world: Potter, the richest man in town.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE makes it very clear: the rich are the enemy.  Potter drives people into slums, or maybe the streets.  He owns almost every utility in Bedford Falls, and spends most of the movie trying to take down the Bailey Building and Loan.  He eventually finds his chance by stealing money from Uncle Billy, the fateful envelope that leads to George’s follicle miracle on Christmas Eve.  Potter is never to be trusted.  He’s loyal only to himself.  And that’s why he nearly wins.

This movie never, ever stops putting the screws to George Bailey.  For the first 100 minutes (and even really the next 20 after that), it’s George getting his ass handed to him by life.  He never gets to go and travel around the world, or to get his education, or even to leave his damn hometown.  And, y’know, that’s the thing about being an adult.  This happens to almost all of us to some degree.  I’m guessing almost everyone who’s ever seen IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE can relate to some aspect of George’s plight to some degree.  How could you not?  I won’t turn this into a screed about the state of the American worker, but I will let you search within and do the math yourself.

Even when Clarence finally takes human form and shows him what life would have been like if he had never been born, George kinda eats shit the whole time.  He’s informed by everybody he’s ever loved that they don’t know who he is.  He’s thrown out onto the street.  People are constantly dismissive, and at least one is outright scared*.  And, yes, it turns out life is now a dystopia named Pottersville.  Nice going not being born, George!

*That would, of course, be the now-matronly Mary, whose “unwed librarian” status is indicated by putting her hair up and fitting her with glasses.

It can be a difficult watch if you let it be.  It’s a story of how you can live as nobly as you possibly can, and believe in people, and treat everyone well, and put everybody else around you before yourself, and you can still get chewed up and spit out by a rich fuck who decides you’re in his way.  And that’s kind of all there is to it.  And when you’re watching it happen to one of the most beloved movie stars to ever grace the silver screen?  Yeah, it’s brutal.  By the time George sits on a barstool at Martini’s, praying to God to help him if he’s out there….it’s panic-inducing.

IV. “No man is a failure who has friends.”

All of the above is why, when the movie does kind of pull off some Hollywood razzle-dazzle by getting us to that magic ending?  Where everything is okay at the end, once George realizes his life meant something?  Where even the fucking bank examiner starts contributing money to the George Bailey Relief Fund?  Where the most powerful choice that George is ever provided turns out to be to choose to keep on going?  That he matters, and always has, warts and all?  How could it not be genuinely rousing?

Yes, it’s schmaltzy.  It’s corny.  One might even call it manipulative, were they so inclined.  Because it’s leaning on all the old tropes that all stories do.  Friendship and love, it turns out, is all you need.  Now let’s sing a song to the new year!  Christmas!

But, goddammit, it hits.  Because it’s the perfect conclusion to this melancholy story.  It turns out that George has not been defeated.  He ultimately wins the day by having the one thing Mr. Potter never did.  He has friends.  He has people that love him.  He’s touched their lives.  Everyone is emotionally better for having been in George Bailey’s life; one angel now has his wings because of him.  George Bailey is better for being alive.

It all culminates in one of the only movie moments that honest-to-god makes me cry every time, even if I just think about it.  Harry Bailey, the war hero, comes home to raise a toast to his brother George,

“The richest man in town.”

Merry Christmas, everybody.