Working class despair aside, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)

Posted by Stephen Jannise

In recent years, critics have wondered how Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life became such a beloved Christmas tradition, considering how dark and chilling the film’s final act can be. Sure, the film culminates with a wonderful display of gratitude and affection that will have you in tears whether you’ve seen it dozens of times before or, like Daniel, you are seeing it for the first time. But in order to get there, one must sit through not just the noir-esque dread of a Bedford Falls without George Bailey, but a film that I would argue is teeming with unhappiness from almost the first frame.

I think credit for this underlying sadness belongs to Jimmy Stewart, whose career-topping performance here is too often overlooked in all the holiday merriment. I don’t want to undervalue the contributions of Frank Capra, who made one of my favorite films(It Happened One Night) but also directed a film that I believe to be one of the most overrated and grossly sappy films ever conceived, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Jimmy Stewart played the lead roles in both Mr. Smith and Wonderful Life, but by bringing seven years of additional acting experience into the latter film, I feel that Stewart has the confidence to give a darker, more nuanced performance that undercuts some of Capra’s more maudlin tendencies. Sure, his character George Bailey forsakes his dreams of adventure and personal success to stay in Bedford Falls, save his family’s building & loan, and marry the small-town girl who has always loved him. But the way Stewart plays it, you can’t help but feel that he is making these decisions begrudgingly, building up a silent animosity toward these people who are asking him to sacrifice his own plans that will explode into loud displays of anger in the final act.

Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in.

Thanks to Stewart’s performance, George Bailey is a man who seems caught in a current, losing control over the future of his own life. Despite his desire to leave town, every decision he makes and every bad break that comes his way bonds him even more inescapably to Bedford Falls. It is important to remember that George was a man who not only had big dreams but who was also clever and ambitious enough to make them come true. Thus, the ending is not entirely uplifting but instead bittersweet; it observes a man who had always measured success by personal achievement deciding that simply having friends will do.