[QUOTE=Freddy the Pig]
Once the neighbors make up the shortfall, it won’t be missing any more.
[/QUOTE]
Even more But that was in addition to the missing money, which is still missing. I’m taking this to GQ.
[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
My question about the movie has to do with the ending. George Bailey is short $8000. Sam Wainwright telegrams that he can make $25,000 available. And people are STILL throwing money at him! I do find that odd.
[/QUOTE]
Presumably, George would mark down all the money his friends give him as loans – personal loans to him, not to the B&L – and write a promissory note for each one. Then he would replace the missing eight grand, fix up the house, buy a new car, invest the remainder in the B&L, and eventually be in a position to pay them all back with interest. They know he’s good for it, and they know he deserves it. That’s the whole point. Nobody would dig out their savings to help Potter out of a jam.
[QUOTE=pepperlandgirl]
I really don’t like the movie. I don’t walk away thinking George Bailey is a success or rich in friends. He sacrificed his entire life for his family, and his friends, and that stupid town. He put his dreams on hold again and again and again until they utterly disappeared. He was completely taken advantage of, and throughout the entire film, it’s never clear that the people around him understand or appreciate what they’re doing to him. And yeah, he’s to blame for some of this. But he is inherently a good guy, and the people who knew him knew that, and so they thought there was nothing wrong with taking advantage of him.
Then at the end of the movie, for one night in his entire life, they finally come through for him, and I’m supposed to cry? Where were they when he wanted to go to college? Where were they when he wanted to take pictures for the National Geographic? Where were they when he wanted to go on his own honeymoon?
And you know, the next morning, everybody is going to go back to their usual ways. Uncle Billy is still going to be barely functional. Old Man Potter is still going to be looking for ways to fuck him over. George is still going to be stuck in that damned town until the day he dies.
And this is a cheerful Christmas story? It makes ME suicidal. The “this is what the world would be like without you” was completely manipulative, and let’s face it, just a reminder of how co-dependent everybody in George Bailey’s life is.
[/QUOTE]
Um, ditto on all points. I actually consider this a horror movie.
I used to think I was unfairly influenced by the fact that, the first time I saw this movie, if all my friends had pitched together for me (or any one of us) we couldn’t have come up with $8,000 to save a life, and that was why it depressed me. But this is no longer the case, yet I still hate this movie and go out of my way NOT to watch it.
[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]
when their own kids are in college?
I remember a WSJ article from the early '90s in which Robert McFarlane, Reagan’s former national security advisor, said he had sunk into a deep depression after the Iran-Contra Affair. A friend gave him a videotape of It’s a Wonderful Life, which he credited with helping him find a way back from a suicidal brink.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, I believe he did attempt suicide unsuccessfully, and it was afterward that he was given the videotape.
Back when the movie was made, there was some sort of code that the bad guy in a film always had to end up punished. They seem to have made an exception for Mr. Potter. The ending worked so well that they may have decided simply to leave well enough alone.
[QUOTE=jjimm]
And the ghastly child at the end with the near-ultrasonic “Remember daddy, every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings” makes me puke. If I had a kid that said that, I’d throw myself off a bridge.
[/QUOTE]
I saw the movie in the theater this past Saturday and it was hosted by that little girl! She’s 67 now, though, and her voice has changed a little.
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
What he had was fulfilling? Because it seems to me that he has what is pretty much a dead end job, a family he’s not all that crazy about …
[/quote]
Where do you get the idea that he’s not crazy about his family? In his frustration, he lashes out at his children but at the same time, he lashed out at EVERYONE that night. The only member of his family that he hints at not being all that crazy about is Uncle Billy and that’s really only when Billy loses his $8,000.
[QUOTE=jjimm]
WARNING: don’t know about anyone else, but when I clicked that link, it didn’t go where it was meant to, and I ended up instead with some dodgy “virus scanner” site that resized my browser and replicated a Windows Vista security interface.
[/QUOTE]
It worked for me (FireFox on Mac OS X). Has your computer been malware-scanned?
I believe whether you get the redirect is based on what banner ad happens to pop up. I understand this has happened at major sites, too.
According to the original story Mary didn’t end up a lonely spinster, she ended up married, to a drunk. George visited her in the guise of the Fuller Brush salesman.
So her life could have been a lot worse, too.
I’ve missed a lot of Simpsons episodes, but I’ve heard there’s one that’s a takeoff of It’s a Wonderful Life, in which Homer is shown life without him, and it turns out everyone would have been much better off had he not been born. Yes?
[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
I’ve missed a lot of Simpsons episodes, but I’ve heard there’s one that’s a takeoff of It’s a Wonderful Life, in which Homer is shown life without him, and it turns out everyone would have been much better off had he not been born. Yes?
[/QUOTE]
I don’t remember that episode, but there was definitely a “Married…With Children” episode in which Al considers suicide and an angel (Sam Kinison) shows him how life would be if he hadn’t been born. Peg, Kelly and Bud are wealthy, Kelly is smart, and she and Bud go to a good college. Peg is happy as a homemaker, and I think she ended up married to Jefferson D’Arcy.
I kind of grew up in Bailey Park, in the 70s, and it was no more part of “car culture” than the village, really.
I think what you’re failing to take into account is that there’s more to George than what you get from the narration. He picks a fight with Potter at the age of ten, and never stops fighting. After Potter apparently* kills Peter, he never lets up on him. He doesn’t give up on college to save the family business, but because “They’ll vote with Potter, otherwise.” Everything he does that seems to be for the town’s good, he is really doing to hurt Old Man Potter. He shakes the man’s hand and is reminded of how much he hates him. Clarence’s quote could have been, “From Hell’s very heart, I strike at thee!”
I really love this movie, and I really hate people who think it embodies some sort of “traditional family values.” I think any candidate who (like Reagan did) makes a reference to this movie ought to have to include in their next run of commercials the footage of the druggist beating a child until his ears bleed.
And by the way: After Violet walks past George, Bert and Ernie, Ernie says, “Hey George, how’d you like to…” and George says “Yeah.” What was he going to say?
*I say apparently because Peter had a stroke at just about the exact time that Mary made a wish and shot a rock through a window, forcing George to remain in Bedford Falls.
[QUOTE=saoirse]
…And by the way: After Violet walks past George, Bert and Ernie, Ernie says, “Hey George, how’d you like to…” and George says “Yeah.” What was he going to say?..
[/QUOTE]
“… drive down to the old quarry and enjoy some red-hot monkey love with Bert and me?”
Hmmm, saoirse, I like that reading of the movie. The local indie theater plays the movie every Christmas for free. I might go see it this year (I went last year too) and look at it as though it’s entire movie based on sticking it to the man.
[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]
“… drive down to the old quarry and enjoy some red-hot monkey love with Bert and me?”
[/QUOTE]
Nonsense. Bert decided to “go see what the wife is doin’.” It seems obvious though, that Ernie and George, (and sometimes Bert) had some sort of outlet for the feelings they had watching Violet walk into the sun. My guess was Mrs. Bick.
Capra was a populist film maker. I’m sure the film was all about the little people overcoming the machinations of those elites in power. In the end the nobodies that Potter dismissed ended up being able, as a group, to outwit him and be able to more than ensure the future success of the little savings and loan.
I also am confused with the belief he hated his family, especially his children? He was under undue stress and lashed out, their reaction seems to indicate this was no where near the norm.
Hell look at his last plea:
[QUOTE=kingpengvin]
Capra was a populist film maker. I’m sure the film was all about the little people overcoming the machinations of those elites in power. In the end the nobodies that Potter dismissed ended up being able, as a group, to outwit him and be able to more than ensure the future success of the little savings and loan.
I also am confused with the belief he hated his family, especially his children? He was under undue stress and lashed out, their reaction seems to indicate this was no where near the norm.
Hell look at his last plea:
[/QUOTE]
Well, yeah. You’ll notice that through that whole sequence, he was always less upset by the fact that the town had gone to hell than he was by the fact that no one knew who he was.
By the way did anyone else notice how Capra protrayed Potter as head of the Draft Board?
Potter: One-A… One-A… One-A.
[QUOTE=saoirse]
…By the way did anyone else notice how Capra protrayed Potter as head of the Draft Board?
Potter: One-A… One-A… One-A.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah - Potter being true to form. After all, the movie came out soon after WW2. That gag probably led to a lot of grim chuckles among the ex-servicemen in the audence.
And one other thing (I promise) —My siblings and I were convinced that when George comes by Potter’s office window at the end, his hands aren’t visible because he’s flipping the old bastard off with both barrels. We have a sort of tradition of answering insults, when in polite comany, with “Merry Christmas, Mr. Potter,” as a substitute for the obscene gesture.
ETA: Okay just one more. I once had an alternate ending where George goes to bailey Park and you hear the spooky music, and the houses are all sinking into the ground. Mr Martinin says, “You move-a da headstones, but you no move-a da bodies! Why you no move-a da bodies?”
I can’t stand this movie and agree 100% with everything that pepperland girl said.
Aside from that, what really gets me is how illogical the whole thing with the angel is.
Okay, so George is going to off himself so that his family can benefit from some life insurance scam or something (I can’t remember the specifics). Clarence shows up and convinces George not to take his own life by showing him how horrible everything would have been in his town had he never lived.
Well, what does that have to do with him offing himself in the present? It’s not like him committing suicide would retroactively make Donna Reed a spinstress. For all George knows, Clarence is simply distracting him from the fact that maybe things will actually be a lot better for everybody else in the future if George kills himself. How do we know that Clarence isn’t actually the Devil, using questionable logic in order to keep George alive and inflict misery on everyone in the community? Bleh.
Perhaps Donna Reed was a witch, and all of George’s troubles stemmed from her. The moment she threw that rock through that window in that old house – a supernatural feat in and of itself – George became trapped and her personal toyboy. Perhaps all would have turned out better for George had she been burned at the stake early on.