195. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Directed By Frank Capra

Synopsis

Socialist Mr. Bailey fights the tentacles of fat capitalist swine Mr. Potter to the point of near suicide, only to find out that his red attitude to life did help some plebs live some kind of more salubrious life. He should have killed himself, fucking red, didn't even believe in angels!

Review

There is something funny in the way that Frank Capra's films are considered the all-American films, with Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant defending the American Dream... this is said by the same people who would be shocked to realise how socialist these films are. I think that has to do with the whole history of demonisation of socialism in the US.

And no Frank Capra film is more about socialism and a community helping each other against the greedy powers of the local corporation, personified by Mr. Potter, who owns the Bank, all the shops, everything but Mr. Baileys cooperative loan company which through its inherent humanism and sense of local community keeps being alive against all odds.

And then there's the whole more emotional part of it with the difference that Mr. Bailey has made in people's lives, after an angel shows him what the world would have been like without him in it. That difference can be seen in his family of course, but more touchingly in the people who had their lives destroyed by Mr. Potter instead of helped by Mr. Bailey, at an economic and personal level. A much deeper film than it is often given credit for and a lovely thing. It is a wonderful film after all.

No need to talk about the acting, Jimmy Stewart is always great.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film's success decades after its release came as a welcome but unexpected surprise to those who worked on it, including Frank Capra. "It's the damnedest thing I've ever seen," he told the Wall Street Journal in 1984. "The film has a life of its own now and I can look at it like I had nothing to do with it. I'm like a parent whose kid grows up to be president. I'm proud … but it's the kid who did the work. I didn't even think of it as a Christmas story when I first ran across it. I just liked the idea."

An even more satisfying ending: