As the whimsical and wingless angel, second class, Clarence voices the fundamental theme of It’s a Wonderful Life, embodying its spirit of undying hope and resolute buoyancy: “Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”
In the intimate town of Bedford Falls, New York, George Bailey envisions a future of travel and achievement, hoping to jettison his hometown and experience success in the world. But a series of disappointments confines him to Bedford Falls, where the Bailey Brothers’ Building and Loan awaits him; forgoing travel as well as college, George remains in the family business to prevent the scornful plutocrat, Henry F. Potter, from buying out the final bastion of independent ownership and subduing the town. And in the despair of an evening some years later, having “misplaced” $8,000 on the day of an audit, George contemplates suicide on Christmas eve and gets the chance to consider his town as though he had never been born.
The contrivance of the plot and the halcyon, even staid, conception of Bedford Falls, belie the power of the story and the authenticity of its characters; but the authenticity and power affirm that both beauty and sentimentality have a place here, cheek by jowl, and that they are to be celebrated.
Undercutting its realism, the scene in which the galaxies discuss George Bailey’s fate introduces a wryness to the frame story. The admission that life, however poignant, cannot always be serious, occurs at a moment when Clarence, having been called by the gods, first hears of George Bailey: “A man down on earth needs our help,” to which Clarence responds, “Splendid. Is he sick?” “No, worse,” says the overlord, “he’s discouraged.” The swift departure from reality and a return to it, the inclusion of fantastical angels and gods, furnishes a plot device and signalizes that this is ridiculous–but so is life. Come and join the town.
The fantastical dovetails with the realism of the story, which begins the narrative proper with the life of George Bailey; it exploits the subtle mannerisms of the younger George, played by Robert J. Anderson, who acquits himself with a rascally exuberance that James Stewart brings to maturity. George is a lank and gregarious man-about-town, and his dialogue has the subtlety of his character. So many lines of the film have such panache and verve that the dialogue is the greatest pleasure of the story, George being uppermost in the bevy: standing in front the homecoming party to which his brother has brought a new wife, George speaks with his mother, who urges him to court the girl that he has long neglected, Mary; and responding to his mother, who has put a hat atop his head, he says, “here’s your hat, what’s your hurry,” continuing as he begins to walk, “I think I’ll go out and find a girl and do a little passionate necking.” With his idiom George reveals his character, in which wryness and sorrow churn beneath a boisterous exterior that often conceals them.
Other characters furnish dialogue that sparkles. The snarly coquette, Viola, says early in the story after hearing what George has said of her dress, “this old thing? I only wear it when I don’t care how I look,” and she saunters away to the sexual fanfare of many lookers-on. Henry Potter, a “scurvy little spider,” has his own share of vituperation, the best of which is his saying that George is “trapped into frittering his life away playing nursemaid to a lot of garlic eaters.” It is a startling piece of invective. The dialogue of these characters and others inspirit the story with a panache that moves in equal step with the trundling of the plot.
Having passed through the phases of life in Bedford Falls, the plot approaches in the final thirty minutes the climax when despair and hopefulness, bitterness and buoyancy, play integral roles and contribute to the heartwarming dénouement, which is so overwhelming that many viewers, having reflected on the film, find that it overshadows all else—a sentiment that Roger Ebert attests when writing that “the conclusion of the film makes such an impact that some of the earlier scenes may be overlooked.”[1]
The fantastical return of Clarence, whose presence was established from the first, induces a self-reflection in George that could not have been achieved with the same wryness, panache, and proportional gravity; affirming the effects of its realism, Peter Bradshaw writes of the story that “the fantasy or whimsy of Clarence’s existence does not greatly affect the realist tenor of the story as a whole, which is so important for inducing the audience to make an emotional investment in George and his family.”[2] Dousing the final scene, in which George receives the procession returning him to solvency and to life, exuberance and completeness prevail, the harmony of a rousing dénouement. It is the uplifting pinnacle of an authentic film, the capstone of a moving experience.
Writing for The Guardian, Andrew Gilchrist has noted of It’s a Wonderful Life that “it’s a picket fence of a film, nauseatingly wholesome as it trundles through 1940s America like a station wagon on its way back from the mall,”[3] making a claim that is trenchant and valid. The film depicts a staid Bedford Falls that could be stiflingly unlivable; its values are outmoded; it bears limited resemblance to a modern drama; and it is at times cloying and pathetic. But the authentic characters, imperishable dialogue, and the completeness rounding out a self-enclosed piece of Americana, counterbalance the film’s staid wholesomeness, so that it delivers what it entertains from the outset as we travel with Clarence to the stars. Such a station wagon could not be more desirable.
- Roger Ebert. “It’s a Wonderful Life,” rogerebert.com, 1 January 1999, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-its-a-wonderful-life-1946 ↑
- Peter Bradshaw. “It’s a Wonderful Life Review,” theguardian.com, 14 December 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/dec/14/its-a-wonderful-life-review-frank-capra-christmas-rerelease ↑
- Andrew Gilchrist. “It’s a Wonderful Life,” theguardian.com, 22 December 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2014/dec/22/most-overrated-christmas-movie-its-a-wonderful-life ↑
