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.
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