Back when I did the AFI Challenge in 2018, I did not much care for It’s a Wonderful Life. I was actually somewhat surprised by that. True, I had somehow never seen the film before, but why I would not care much for it in the end was a bit of a surprise. I think part of that is due to the fact it’s so well-known even if you haven’t seen it. Just about every traditional TV sitcom, or at least ones of a certain age, have the done the old bit where a character learns what it would be like if they had never been born around Christmas, only to learn they do matter in one form or another. Heck, even Al Bundy learned that lesson, though he did so in reverse in true Married…with Children style, such that he wanted to go back to make sure his family would continue to be miserable with him there and not happy without him. But the actual Frank Capra original film, I just found it too sentimental, and I don’t generally like the sentimental in films, especially ones set around the holidays. Just put a little cynicism in there, and I am a lot happier as a result.
But I do want to be fair, and I did want to find a new angle to discuss It’s a Wonderful Life on my second viewing. And while I think I appreciated parts of it more this time around, I do have a very different angle this time: I don’t think this is much of a Christmas film.
I realize that that statement doesn’t make a lot of sense. The most famous scenes in the film are set around Christmas. Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey, after seeing how much he really matters, runs down the Bedford Falls main street shouting “Merry Christmas!” to every building he passes and every person he sees, including that nasty old Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore). His big emotional crisis happens around Christmas. His trip to a world where he was never born is on Christmas Eve. Why wouldn’t this be a Christmas film? Admittedly, those factors make up the most famous scenes in the film and are very important to the overall narrative. They’re also the moments I find the most fault with the narrative. The other world where there’s no George, one that posits he might be the only force for good strong enough to keep people happy and friendly, to the point where his wife Mary (Donna Reed) somehow has weaker vision as she’s now the town’s old maid librarian, strikes me as something where George must be kinda dumb seeing as how he somehow never quite gets it when Clarence (Henry Travers) has to keep explaining how he’d never been born, so no one would know him. But that doesn’t explain Mary’s weaker eyesight or why everyone is so mean over there.
Then again, my mother suggested Mary’s worse eyesight comes from reading books all day in poor light as the town’s librarian. OK, I can see that.
Plus, there is a part of me where George’s desire to just get out of town once and see the world is repeatedly thwarted by dumb luck because his father’s health or his Uncle Billy’s stupidity keeps him from leaving every time he plans to go, like, anywhere. He can’t even get drafted and go off for the war since he damaged an ear saving his kid brother from drowning in a frozen lake. It’s like the universe itself conspired to keep George in Bedford Falls. And don’t ask me how the film expected me to think an obviously-too-old Stewart could be a high school grad when George and Mary meet up at that school dance.
Wait, I was trying to say why I thought this film was better the second time around. I should probably start over or something.
Here’s the thing: I really appreciated the way this film set up George’s crack-up. The first time around, I mocked the film a bit on how George asked, in front of his kids, why he had to have so many kids. That’s, like, cruel. But in the effort of being fair, I watched the scene a little more closely, and it is George behaving out-of-character in large part because he’s looking at prison time because Uncle Billy is an idiot and Mr. Potter is a cruel, cruel man that has probably never known love. As a result, this is George under a lot of pressure, back in the house that is constantly falling apart, one kid sick in bed, another practicing the piano for a party George doesn’t feel like attending but is in his own house, and a whole host of problems seeming to come to roost all at once, and he doesn’t even tell Mary or the kids about the Building and Loan’s fiscal problems. There’s a moment when George holds one of his children, his face showing pain, and for the life of me, I think this might be the best scene in Stewart’s career. At the very least, it’s the best one I’ve ever seen. I like Stewart and a lot of his work. But this one moment, I saw a character that I don’t think I’ve ever seen him play before, and I really liked it.
Yeah, that’s why my views on It’s a Wonderful Life softened a bit. This film is still too sentimental for my tastes, but I do appreciate it more. Essentially, as I said above, I don’t think it’s a Christmas film. The film is more the story of George Bailey, and it covers a lot of time that isn’t Christmas. The only thing that makes it a Christmas story is the most famous part of the film is set on Christmas, but there’s no talk of the birth of Jesus or of Santa. The film is half over by the time the Christmas stuff starts. It’s Frank Capra doing his usual “American small towns are the best” sort of material, and that doesn’t generally work for me. But this is also a family drama with angels from 1946. It probably should have been overly sentimental.
I mean, I like to say Die Hard is my favorite Christmas film. And I will point out that Die Hard has a lot of Christmas music on the soundtrack, is set at Christmas time, and ends with a family brought together by the magic of the holidays…OK, that last one is a bit of a stretch. It’s a Wonderful Life doesn’t really have those. The spiritual angle of this film is very generic. It’s Christian without referencing Christ or any specific religious beliefs beyond “be a good person and treat others right”. No one credits the holiday for bringing George and Mary together. They always were. There’s nothing specific about what happens to George Bailey that suggests it could only happen around Christmas time. Christmas is more incidental than required for this film.
And that’s why I am not sure I would call this a Christmas film.
By the by…why did I not notice the cop and the cabbie in this film, the two men who team up to give us a George and Mary a nice honeymoon when their trip abroad is canceled by once again George needing to use his own savings to hold the Building and Loan together, were named Bert and Ernie? I must have been off my game when I watched this film the first time.
NEXT: No Jimmy Stewart again for a while. But it is time for another animated Disney feature, namely the first time an animated film was up for the Oscar for Best Picture, 1991’s Beauty and the Beast.
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