Tuesday 19 December 2017

Is It A Wonderful Life..? Ruining a Christmas classic


Newcastle boasts a fine independent cinema (The Tyneside) and one of its finest events is the annual screening of Frank Capra’s 1946 masterpiece It’s A Wonderful Life in the weeks leading to Christmas.  Massively popular, each year thousands of punters turn up to watch James Stewart’s George Bailey lose and then spectacularly recover his will to live, and in doing so help an angel get his wings.  70 years on and it has lost not an ounce of its power to fill the viewer full of hope and make them appreciate the good will of their fellow man.  For me, seeing It’s A Wonderful Life here marks the start of Christmas, and hopefully the only time of the year where I cry in public.

The gut reaction is that this is a wholly good and hopeful fable about a man who sacrifices himself time and again for the good of his town, and is rewarded for it in his time of need.  It makes you feel warm inside and makes you want to do good things; it reminds you that a kinder world is a better world.  And don’t get me wrong, this is the appropriate reaction to this film.  But I am now going to try to spoil it for you, so please stop reading if you don’t want your next Christmas ruined by a blogger who probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Made after World War 2, at a time when Capra and Stewart wanted to make people feel better after the world had been devastated by Holocaust, war and nuclear bombs.  The world was in a mess and people were struggling to cope with incalculable horrors, so a film culminating in an overwhelmingly positive message really meant something.  But consider George Bailey’s character: all he wanted to do was “shake off the dust of this crummy little town and see the world!” and by the time the story ends that’s the one thing he hasn’t done.  Bailey is our protagonist; Stewart, the ultimate everyman, is noble and normal, not what you’d classically call heroic.  As our onscreen proxy, he singularly fails to achieve any of his ambitions.  He never leaves Bedford Falls, never sees the world, never does what he so dearly wanted to do.  For such a wholly good man, he is not rewarded by getting the one thing he desires.  While this self-sacrifice, and the power of the individual, is largely what Capra is promoting as important, there is something very sad about George Bailey’s geostationary life.

In cinema, America often has a problem with small towns. Davids Lynch and Cronenberg used them as settings for violent and downright bizarre events in Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, and A History Of Violence. Hitchcock used one as a murderer’s hiding place in Shadow Of A Doubt. Viewing them as a microcosm for the larger society, films like Invasion of The Body Snatchers made barely masked political statements about perceived dangers of communism.  Bedford Falls is squarely aligned with the latter, with Capra using the town to demonstrate the importance of collaboration, of sacrifice, and of seeing your own importance to the rest of society.  What this implicitly does is criticise the self-interest and ambition that goes hand in hand with American capitalism.  That’s right: the all-American, staunchly Republican James Stewart made a pro-Socialist Christmas film.

Although the equally-Republican Capra likely saw his films as demonstrating a stance against corruption and in favour of individualism, it’s possible to view It’s A Wonderful Life as promoting social endeavour (the Bailey Building and Loan a ‘thorn in the side’ of the bank).  Imagine for a moment what an individualist George Bailey would do; a fully Capitalist George Bailey would not make his raison d’etre the welfare of a small town that he sees as a millstone around his neck.  A George Bailey following an American individualist ideology would have left Bedford Falls, made a fortune, and allowed that money to trickle on down to his former neighbours. But Carpa’s film preaches that there is more moral value in helping society than oneself; the antithesis of what would become the Reaganite mantra 40 years later.

The character of Potter would surely represent Capra and Stewart’s Republican ideal.  Somewhere between the Monopoly Man and Donald Trump, he is the arch Capitalist, loathsome and alone.  Capra even presents him in a Satanic light: the scene where he attempts to buy off George Bailey only to be thwarted by a handshake, Potter’s name is kept in frame, written in reverse. The fantasy of Pottersville, a sleazy, base version of Bedford Falls, is Capra’s warning about the danger of rampant capitalism leading to moral decay.  In short, Las Vegas.  What Potter represents is thus: there is only evil in the accumulation of wealth, in living life for oneself, yet there is nobility in poverty.  In a classical sense, this is not what you would call The American Way, but a humane, socially conscious view of life.  If I were Senator McCarthy, I would be starting my witch hunt at Carpa’s office.

Politics aside, why does It’s A Wonderful Life seem better with each passing year?  It seems to be because there’s an inversely proportionate relationship between it, and how wonderful life actually is.  Life gets harder, we live under increasing pressure to earn, to do the best for ourselves, and see the increasing damage done by Potter’s progeny across the world.  Pottersville is spreading, and there is an increasing need to cling to something wholly good and innocent.  We need more George Baileys; people who will put the needs of others before their own.


So while I’m doing my best to ruin what is probably the best Christmas film for you, I still love it, love what it means, and love how for 2 hours it can transport you into a more wonderful version of life.  For you, for me, for everyone in Bedford Falls; for everyone except George Bailey. 

No comments:

Post a Comment