Director Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) stands as a wonderful Christmastime perspective check. Along with James Stewart’s George Bailey, viewers should also remember that even though our lives are a mix of good and bad, the world would be a worse place without us. All humans are imperfect, but we’ve made positive impacts.
For George, this refers to specific instances such as saving his kid brother, Harry (Todd Karnes), from drowning in freezing water. The butterfly effect is triggered: Harry goes on to save many fellow soldiers in war. In the George-less timeline, shown to George by angel Clarence (Henry Travers), Harry dies, and so do all those soldiers. More broadly, George positively impacts Bedford Falls by giving out loans to pretty much everyone, with substantial risk to himself and his company.
George is good, but is he a bad businessman?
George suffers from what today might be seen as hyper-empathy disorder. He isn’t even the one that loses the $8,000 that means his company, Bailey Brothers Building and Loan, will go under; that’s his Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell), who accidentally hands the cash to the film’s villain, Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore). When George comes to him for help (which is denied), even Potter seems taken aback that George places no blame on Billy, instead presenting it as his own problem.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946)
Director: Frank Capra
Writers: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra (screenplay); Philip Van Doren Stern (short story)
Stars: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore
While Potter is unambiguously presented as the film’s villain, I was surprised by his outright theft of the money, which puts him at another level of evil – a level that in most movies would require him to get his comeuppance in order for viewers to be satisfied. (“Saturday Night Live” eventually rectified this oversight in a famous skit.)
Up until the theft, “Wonderful Life” presents a surprisingly nuanced view of the morals of money lending for such a mainstream, family-friendly classic. George takes risks for small gains, and Potter is a conservative consolidator of money-driven power. Potter is the better businessman, but the town (including Potter) is on the upswing because of George’s selflessness: We’re told Bailey Park, a new home development, is thriving, with values quickly doubling.
Is bad business good for anyone?
When we later learn Bailey Brothers Building and Loan is nonetheless merely scraping by in this boom period, I realized George’s business may be financially benefitting from Bailey Park, but not to the same degree as the homeowners. George doesn’t make deals that benefit him as much as they should. George might have a martyr complex too.
Strictly speaking, Potter’s business decisions are not intrinsically bad, as he’s keeping his enterprises going. They are morally neutral. If he’s making mistakes by not helping poor people, they can move to a better situation. Indeed, this is almost the path chosen by Violet (Gloria Grahame), who might’ve had a chance with George except that he only had eyes for Mary (Donna Reed).
Curiously, George himself has always dreamed of leaving Bedford Falls – which in his mind is the typical crappy hometown everyone wants to get away from. On screen, it’s the Americana of mom, baseball and apple pie, but we can read George’s skewed view as a commentary on how everyone wants to leave their hometown; logic has nothing to do with it.
George is stuck in Bedford Falls because he’s the only one who will help people in need with loans, while also not destroying the company – even though he shows no signs of making it grow. (The board doesn’t trust Uncle Billy, perhaps rightly.) Being chained to the business is the primary way George suffers from “nice guys finish last” syndrome. In many ways, George has it pretty good; even in the flashback to him as a teenager (Bobbie Anderson), two girls – Mary and Violet – swoon over him. They like him because he’s a nice boy.
Watched today, we can also argue that George is lucky to live in the 1940s instead of the 2020s, because he can live in a huge house and fix it up, even though doesn’t bring home a big salary. It’s drafty, but quite nice, and he can support a wife and four kids. In the generation of his dad (Samuel S. Hinds) – a manager at Building and Loan – the family has a nice house and a maid/cook. The “different times” perspective is not provided by Clarence (angels in 1946 couldn’t glimpse the 21st century), but it would’ve been equally eye-opening to George as his alternate-reality peek.
Is the movie too long?
Why does everyone love “It’s a Wonderful Life”? After all, it’s corny out of the gate, with angels conversing among the stars. It sometimes slows to a crawl – so much so that there’s a popular abridged version that runs 87 minutes instead of 130. How many classic films entice fans with shorter versions?
While it’s an engaging intellectual exercise to break down the relative business acumen of George and Potter, this is not the stuff of heartstring-pullers. The pro-generosity message is hard to argue with, but don’t look closely at those spreadsheets. If George’s company goes under, he won’t be able to help anyone. This fact is perpetually on the film’s margins, but Capra makes sure to never highlight it.
Nonetheless, there’s lots to like. There’s the rhythmic patter provided by wife-and-husband writers Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, who also contributed mightily to “The Thin Man” films’ success and arguably to the launch of the spousal-banter sitcom genre. We simply like George; we like listening to him riff and go about his day.
In contrast, we hate Potter, the Ebenezer Scrooge figure. The “Christmas Carol” connection is quite linear: Capra’s film is based on Philip Van Doren Stern’s short story “The Greatest Gift” (1943), which is based on Charles Dickens’ novella “A Christmas Carol” (1843). And both stories feature supernatural guides for the protagonists.
Scrooge needs to see how a riskier lending policy will help people and enrich his life in non-monetary ways via friendship and love. George already knows all this. Scrooge is constantly miserable, but George is constantly in danger of being miserable if one thing goes wrong and his delicately crafted sense of happiness collapses. All it takes is his uncle misplacing an envelope for a moment.
The film pushes mainstream values, but does it make its case?
Like Dickens’ classic, “Wonderful Life” aggressively promotes generosity toward one’s fellow man, not by making a close examination of the account books, but by a literally spiritual belief that what goes around comes around.
Also reflecting the times, it aggressively promotes marriage. Clarence is quite jovial when showing George around the dens of vice in Pottersville (the alternate Bedford Falls), but he becomes unironically serious when George asks about Mary. The angel doesn’t even want to tell him she is an “old maid” who works as a librarian, because in 1940s apple-pie America, this is the worst fate for a woman.
(An alternate reading – though not the one that jumps out in Capra’s presentation — is that Mary and George are soulmates. Since George doesn’t exist, she never met anyone she loved. But clearly, the film does not promote this reading.)
I suppose this can all by smoothed over like the snowfall that covers the town in a pristine white blanket, like the clouds in Clarence’s heaven. Bailey Brothers Building and Loan has an office pet, and it’s a bizarre choice: a crow. Capra employs crow symbolism (renewal) almost as bluntly as John Woo would later use doves.
And “It’s a Wonderful Life” ends with “Auld Lang Syne,” a New Year’s song, even though it’s chronologically still Christmas. It’s a wonderful life because things can always change for the better, and that’s why people keep coming back to this wonderfully imperfect movie.
IMDb Top 250 trivia
- “It’s a Wonderful Life” ranks No. 21 on the list with an 8.6 rating.
- It was a big year for positive-leaning post-war films, as “The Best Years of Our Lives” (No. 226, 8.1) is the only other 1946 film on the list.
- It’s Capra’s only entry, although “It Happened One Night” (1934) and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939) are on the fringe with 8.1 ratings.
Did ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ influence the greatest TV season of all time?
Regardless of whether I love “It’s a Wonderful Life,” I can’t help but appreciate it. It can’t be denied that this film percolated in Joss Whedon’s mind a half-century later when he shaped “Buffy” Season 3 (1998-99), my favorite TV season of all time. But Whedon – never one to make it easy on his characters – never quite gives Buffy her Clarence.
The episode that most directly references the movie is “The Wish” (9), but it’s worth noting that it’s Cordelia who wishes Buffy never came to Sunnydale. Unlike George, Buffy is not treated to a self-esteem boost, because she’s entirely unaware of the alternative situation. (Continuing the irony, even Cordelia doesn’t learn anything.) This is how it is in reality: We aren’t treated to robust proof that the world is better with us in it. We have to do the hard work of making our minds understand it.
The George-less Bedford Falls of “Wonderful Life’s” third act has such power because George is at a very down place. He comes close to a suicide leap into a freezing river, but Clarence comes along to take the plunge, knowing George can’t help but try to save him. Thus George’s suicide is diverted and Clarence can make his case.
“Amends” (10) can most directly be compared to “A Christmas Carol,” but it also continues the “Wonderful Life” riff as Angel is suicidal up until what seems to be a heavenly intervention – preceded by Buffy serving as the Clarence figure to Angel’s George by reminding Angel of his value. Buffy is again a Clarence figure to Jonathan in “Earshot” (18), by talking her fellow student down from suicide.
But she’s mostly a George, saving people from demon attacks rather than from financial ruin. When Jonathan gives Buffy a Class Protector award in “The Prom” (20), it’s the parallel to the townspeople giving George the $8K he needs; it’s the moment she learns she is widely appreciated. In “Graduation Day, Part 2” (22), the Class of 1999 helps her overthrow the demon mayor, so the parallel continues. The people of Bedford Falls (not just George) are Building and Loan; the teens of Sunnydale (not just Buffy) are the town’s protectors.
The “Wonderful Life” structural parallel can be taken further: In “Anne” (1), Angel is in a supernatural dimension, as is Buffy, for that matter. In their cases, it’s hell (or metaphorical hell). In Clarence’s case, it’s heaven. Angel is Buffy’s guiding angel, but not in the literal manner of Clarence. He works behind the scenes. For instance, in “I Will Remember You” (“Angel” Season 1), a coda to “Buffy” Season 3, he protects Buffy from a psychological setback by turning back time.
Ironically, as Buffy struggles to recognize the world is a better place with her in it, she also can’t see how her friends and wise mentors help her (and can help her more in the future, if she lets them). In other words, she has several Clarences, but she doesn’t know it; and the value of a Clarence is that the George is well aware of how Clarence is helping him.
In “The Zeppo” (13), Xander helps Buffy save the world, but she’s ignorant of this revelation that she need not take everything on her shoulders alone. In Season 2, Whistler guides her a bit (but does not interfere), and he is nowhere to be found in Season 3. Spike provides valuable outside analysis to Buffy’s troubles in “Lovers Walk” (8), and Giles is always on hand as a mentor. But these people are all friends or neutral observers, not hand-holding guides the way Clarence is.
Four seasons later, Buffy would be informally diagnosed with an inferiority complex about her superiority complex. Like George, she can’t help but help people, but she struggles to help herself and to recognize wise guidance from others, or to even accept help from others. (In Season 4, she learns the lesson of teamwork, but by Season 5 she’s back in self-sacrificing territory.)
As such, after Season 3, “Buffy” runs for four more seasons (nine more if you include the comics), whereas “It’s a Wonderful Life” comes to an immediate happy ending – so happy that the Big Bad need not even be vanquished. It’s enough to know that the community will always step up to defeat Mr. Potter when needed.
With both George and Buffy, guiding angels need to be blunt, not subtle; only George received this benefit.
Click here for an index of all of John’s “Buffy” and “Angel” reviews.