It’s a Wonderful Life: Frank Capra’s Gift to the World
Frank Capra’s 1946 masterpiece ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ has gone down in movie history as one of the greatest feel-good movies of all time. From its humble beginnings as a short story, ‘The Greatest Gift’, which its author Philip Van Doren Stern included in Christmas cards he sent to family and friends, has become, perhaps, the most treasured film of all, regularly surpassing to the best film. surveys on both sides of the Atlantic. Particularly in America, Christmas isn’t Christmas without the family gathering around the television to watch this incredibly moving holiday tale.
The main reason ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ continues to stand the test of time can be explained in two words: Frank Capra. Before the outbreak of World War II (during which he made the exemplary documentary series Why We Fight), Capra had established himself as one of Hollywood’s leading directors, with a string of blockbusters to his name. The most notable of which, the 1934 romantic comedy “It Happened One Night,” became the first film to win all five major Academy Awards, taking home Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay and, of course, Best Director. Capra had become a master craftsman and master storyteller, specializing in crowd-pleasing ‘moral fables’ about honest Joe, the everyday American, who stands up for ‘liberal’ ideals and values against corrupt businessmen and politicians. .
Screen giants like James Stewart and Gary Cooper had delivered widely acclaimed performances in Capra’s ‘Mr Smith Goes To Washington’ and ‘Meet John Doe’ respectively, and it was Stewart, his most trusted actor, that Capra turned to when he chose the role of actor par excellence. good boy George Bailey. One of the few major stars to enlist in the war against fascism, Stewart had been out of Hollywood for the better part of five years, and was distraught about getting back into acting when Capra called him to offer the part, which in last resort movie critics would consider it the best of his distinguished career. Fortunately, the director was able to convince Stewart and the rest, as they say, is history.
Stewart’s nuanced portrayal of the decent, selfless, but ultimately tormented Bailey offers us a master class in film acting, pulling off a succession of comedic, romantic and dramatic scenes with utter confidence. Stewart is able to convince us of George’s good heart and deep moral opposition to the scurrilous banker Henry Potter, while also capturing the frustration that eats at George’s soul, as he watches life pass and his friends leave to leave their own fingerprint. in the world. George Bailey is a man divided against himself, as Stewart’s thoughtful performance gradually makes clear.
Fortunately, the supporting cast is just as good, with Lionel Barrymore turning in the best performance of his career as Dickens’ villain Potter, who tries to ruin the Bailey family business in his quest to monopolize Bedford Falls’ wealth. And as the years pass, it becomes impossible to imagine anyone other than Henry Travers playing the very special emissary, Clarence Oddbody, whose heavenly mission is to save George Bailey from the tragic fate that awaits him on Christmas Eve.
The story begins with George Bailey, a boy determined to travel the world and “shake the dust of this little town off my feet.” He subscribes to National Geographic magazine and spends his days dreaming of “going out exploring someday, he looks.” However, family tragedy and financial difficulties combine to ensure that George’s ambitions are thwarted at every turn, and he finds himself trapped in running the family business Building And Loan, created by his father, and the only institution in town that is not owned by the slum owner, Potter. . George, though he seems unable to admit it, is loved by all of Bedford Falls for standing up to Potter and, in a pivotal scene that outlines Capra’s humanitarian worldview, confronts him about the way he treats his tenants:
“Do you know how long it takes a worker to save five thousand dollars? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, this rabble you keep talking about…they do most of the work, they pay, they live and die in this community. Well “Is it too much to have them working and paying and living and dying in a decent couple of rooms and a bathroom? My father didn’t think so anyway. People were human beings to him.”
Stewart is acting out of his skin here, visibly shaking with anger, to me it’s one of the most genuinely moving scenes in movie history.
Although George has quietly transformed the lives of all who reside in Bailey Park, he cannot find solace in his own achievements. He can’t shake the resentment he feels, first when his younger sister Harry takes his place at college and then when his old friend Sam Wainwright makes her way into the business world. Drunk and desperate on Christmas Eve, he wishes he had never been born.
Throughout the film, Capra remains in complete control of the story. Every scene is reproduced perfectly, the transition between episodes is smooth and the script consistent from start to finish. This is all the more remarkable given the number of writers involved in developing the script. While final screen credit went to husband-and-wife writing team Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, as well as Capra himself, three fully developed scripts were already in existence when Capra purchased the property from RKO in 1945.
Three of the biggest names in the industry had spectacularly failed to adapt Van Doren Stern’s outlandish fantasy. Not Marc Connelly, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and fully-paid member of the legendary Alongquin Roundtable, Dalton Trumbo (Oscar winner for The Brave One) or Clifford Odets, the notorious left-wing agitator whose plays with the Group Theater had revolutionized Broadway. in the thirties, he found a way to incorporate the various fantasy/reality elements of the plot into a cohesive whole.
While Connolly and Trumbo’s contributions were discarded by Capra, some key scenes from Odets’ script were retained. According to Jeanine Basinger, the curator of Capra’s archives, his scripts “focus on elements found in the final film: the ice accident in which Harry nearly blacked out; the Gower Pharmacy sequence; and George’s marriage to Mary”. It’s worth noting that at this stage the Potter character simply didn’t exist. The dramatic conflict in each of the scripts was between a good George and a bad George.
None of this confusion is reflected in the finished film. Capra was able to develop his story clearly, balancing the requirements of the plot with his need to deliver an uncompromising message to the audience. In the same way that Dickens, who was on a lifelong crusade to improve conditions for the poor, wrote ‘A Christmas Carol’ to try to ferment social change in Victorian England, Capra, who had just returned from World War II World War II, his film canisters filled with images of the horrors of the camps, he passionately wanted to tell a story that would make a serious statement about the era in which he lived.
Dickens’s plea to his readers was that they follow the example of a reformed Scrooge when, at the end of the novel, he vows to “honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it through the year”. Capra’s motivation was equally simple. He had in mind a restatement of John Donne’s view of the human condition.
“No man is an entire island unto himself; all man
It is a piece of the continent, a part of the main”
Still haunted by a war, in which historians now estimate as many as 70 million people died, Capra strove to point out how one man’s life affects another’s. The Christmas message from him was for all of us to extend a helping hand to the next fellow.
When I went to see ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ at my neighborhood cinema last Christmas, the usher, taking out my ticket, said, “I hope you brought a supply of handkerchiefs.” In fact, I had. I never get over the first scene, with a distraught Mr. Gower and young George Bailey, in Gower’s chemist, without breaking down. And, of course, the famous ending with George, having escaped his nightmarish existence in Pottersville, running merrily through the snowy streets of Bedford Falls on Christmas Eve, wishing everyone and everyone a Merry Christmas, makes me cry every time. I do. have the privilege to see it.
Watching ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ every Christmas, making it part of the ritual and tradition of the festive period, means it can be difficult to be completely objective about the film as a work of art. For better or worse, the film is imbued, perhaps even charged, with our own memories and associations. In the dark, as the credits start to roll, we suddenly feel the Ghost of Christmas walk past us in the cheap seats.
To others, Capra is too sentimental, and the derogatory term “Capra-corn” applied to his films by some cynics has stuck through the years. Look beyond the light-hearted and personable message of ‘It’s A Wonderful Life,’ though, and there’s a real darkness rooted in the heart of small-town America. Capra, having witnessed firsthand the atrocities of a World War, knew all about the evil that ordinary people were capable of, but he was an optimist above all else and a true believer in the brotherhood of man. Ultimately though, the fact that a movie, a piece of art can make us cry is what really makes us human. If he hasn’t already, put this movie at the top of Santa’s list and ask him for a box of Kleenex too.
