I love this film. I prefer Mr. Smith and Arsenic and Old Lace, but It’s a Wonderful Life is also great cinema.
My nitpick has always been that Potterville certainly looked like it would have had way better jazz clubs than Bedford Falls. (I could picture John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk playing Potterville - can’t see it in Bedford Falls…)
Like the politics of humanist capitalism vs. socialism, I don’t think Capra was writing his thesis; he was just telling a story. Perhaps that’s why it’s such a strong film - it’s not about the political message, it’s about the story.
I never thought it was a “great” movie, but it’s a nice movie and it’s worth watching once a year at Christmas. I give it a B, as I like Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed.
And I’m amazed that despite seeing it many countless time, and feeling like I’m sick to death of it, if I walk past the TV while it’s on I’ll get hopelessly stuck, and watch it to the end, again.
Can I hang out with you? Sounds like fun.
That reminds of a friend who knew every single line in Mel Brooks’ History of the World. For several months he’d spontaneously launch into a line from that movie and I’d just fall over laughing. It was good times for both of us.
Sure, but I have a nagging suspicion I’m not quite as fun as I was a couple decades ago.
I worked in a small warehouse with 5 or 6 other guys; we were all young and a little bit nuts. Most of us shared an affinity for IAWL. So I taped the movie from PBS one year and then transferred the audio of the entire movie to 2 cassette tapes. During the holidays we would listen to it (over and over some days, as I recall) over the P.A. system, calling out our favorite lines, singing along to Buffalo Gals, and so forth. What a weird bunch.
Looks like you’re right about that. Seems I’ve been guilty of spreading ignorance. The only things in the Hayes Code specific to crime are:
“No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.”
“Methods of crime (e.g. safe-cracking, arson, smuggling) were not to be explicitly presented.”
Thinking about it, I’m wondering if whoever put the idea in my head, (I think I read it years ago on the internet somewhere) might have confused the Hayes code for movies with the ‘Son of Sam’ law.
Anyway, thanks Wallon, for fighting my ignorance and stopping me from spreading it.
I had never even heard of the movie, let alone seen it, until I was in college, where it’s shown every Christmas. Then I saw it and was hooked. I don’t see it every year, but enjoy it when I do catch it. A great, great film, for all its schmaltz.
My favorite scene was the dance contest with the floor opening over the pool. The head chaperone is shouting and waving his hands ineffectually, then shrugs and dives in along with everyone else. Also, Mr. Potter heading the draft board and rating everyone eligible for military service (“1-A… 1-A… 1-A…”). That would’ve gotten a big laugh from all the WWII vets in the audience. Capra said many years later that people always asked him about Potter and the missing money, and he just said something like, “Yes, Potter still has that money, but it doesn’t make his life even one tiny bit better than George Bailey’s.”
I agree it’s a communitarian-minded movie. It celebrates the virtues of smalltown life (fellowship, familiarity, safety, peace, helpfulness) but also doesn’t deny its occasionally less-pleasant aspects (gossip, lack of privacy, small-mindedness, boredom). The movie covers a tremendous emotional range from utter despair to almost unbearable joy, with a fine script, a great cast from top to bottom, beautiful cinematography, etc. It has a timeless message of individual self-worth and thankfulness for all of life’s blessings. I love it.
I’ve always found it interesting that, of all the people we recognize from Bedford Falls, Nick is the only one who seems to be doing better in the alternate reality. Now he’s no longer a bartender but a bar owner! Sure, he’s a little harsher as a personality but he owns a bar and it seems to be doing pretty well considering how packed it is on Christmas eve. George wishes …and Nick returns to being a bartender again.
It’s packed on Christmas Eve because somehow everybody would rather be at a bar than at home with their families (or maybe they’re alone, like Ernie the cab driver and of course, Mrs. Bailey in her boarding house). Violet is a dance hall girl… Everyone is just a little meaner, their lives are a little bleaker.
I think it would have been even scarier if they had shown Mary being married to Sam Wainwright, except then of course she wouldn’t be living in Pottersville. Maybe she settled – a little – but at least she has all the things George could never buy her.
I don’t think George is a doormat, BTW. He seems to be a typical dutiful first-born son to me. It’s not that he feels he has such a bad life in Bedford Falls, but he had these dreams and he wanted to give Mary the moon and he’s always scrambling to pay the bills and WTH happened? It’s not until the events of the movie that he realizes he doesn’t need to be anywhere else – he has a wonderful life right here.
Haven’t seen the movie in many years–but a friend of mine has written a fairly successful adaptation of the movie as a radio play. I’ve seen it for the last few years, and it’s really a treat.
But when it reaches the climactic scene, all I can think of is SNL’s alternate ending.
I loved it as a small child, I think in part because on some level I really believed something like that was possible – ok, not the angel, but the whole community coming together and saving the bank.
Now I think, had the owner tried to stop the run on the bank by reasoning with the depositers, they would have beaten him to death, hung the corpse in a tree and set it afire.
It’s never shown in the movie, but how hard would it be to piece together what happened re the money and trace it back to Potter? When the bank examiner and sherriff put their own money into the basket, you know that they know that nobody thinks George Bailey did anything wrong. All they have to do is sit Uncle Billy down one more time and get his story, talk to witnesses, yadda yadda… I like that in the end, Potter only “wins” by cheating.
Absolutely no chance she might have married some other guy, or moved out of town, or run away with the circus, or been “discovered” at the soda fountain and become a movie star. Oh no. Poor old Mary “one George away” from becoming a dried up bitter old virgin. Thank God for George!
Seeing this movie can crank me up so badly that I want to start slaping any man I see upside of his head just for the insult to Mary.
Well, Clarence (and his angel bosses) are trying to get George to snap out of his funk when they show what happened if he’d never been born. Presumably, an alternative world where Mary is happily married to Sam Wainwright who gave her everything she ever wanted wouldn’t have fulfiiled that goal.
