What's the AFI Project, you ask? For more information, or if you just enjoy my bemused ramblings, read here: http://www.spout.com/blogs/pippin06/archive/2008/3/1/25756.aspx
It's a Wonderful Life is on the following AFI lists:
The Original Top 100 (#11)
100 Years...100 Passions (#8)
100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains (Mr. Potter is the #6 villain, and George Bailey is the #9 hero)
100 Most Inspiring Movies (#1)
The Revised Top 100 (#20)
10 Top 10's (#3 Fantasy)
True confessions time: up until now, watching this film for my silly little AFI project and reaching #11 on the original list, I had never watched It's a Wonderful Life all the way through (ducking, anticipating tomatoes). That's why the title of this bloggy review says "sort of;" I mean, it's impossible not to catch at least part of this movie during its annual hundreds of rotations on cable at Christmastime, but that was really the trouble, you see. I managed to catch bits and pieces of this classic, usually around the time George Bailey (James Stewart) gets desperate and suicidal, but I have never had the privilege of watching the film start to finish. It's a good thing I had this project, then, and that my parents consider this a necessity for any self-respecting DVD collection, or I couldn't begin to call myself any kind of "maven" in the Spouty vein (I don't really call myself maven anyway, but that's for another entry at another time).
For the two people who don't know, It's a Wonderful Life is about a man - an any man and an every man. George Bailey had dreams of sailing the world and engineering modern cities and skyscrapers, but life happened to him first. He sacrificed for his kid brother Harry and got a deaf ear. He gave up college and a trip to Europe to save his father's struggling Savings and Loan in the face of the money-grubbing Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore). He stayed in the "two-bit" town of Bedford Falls, only to fall in love with and marry the beautiful Mary Hatch (Donna Reed) and have four glorious children. On Christmas Eve, when the Bailey Brothers Savings and Loan is facing bankruptcy and the bearing down of the villanous Mr. Potter with jail time ahead for George, since money was misplaced by his Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell), George becomes a desperate man at the end of his rope. The answers of many prayers from the friends he's come to make and the family he's come to build result in Clarence Oddbody, Angel Second Class, in pursuit of his very own set of wings, descending from Heaven to help George see that his is really a wonderful life after all.
This is one of those films that, especially for newer generations, you want to believe is cheesy and dated and for the "old folks" to enjoy at Christmastime. You never expect it to creep up and hit you the way it does, in a way that makes you relate to the characters, especially George. It's a Wonderful Life seems at first like a hokey movie, filled with cliched idioms of Americana; a schmaltzy Frank Capra special, designed to yank at the heartstrings in all sorts of obvious ways. What people, especially from newer generations, I think, fail to realize is that this film contains some universalisms that transcend the time and year in which it was made. It's a dark movie on one hand, bevied just enough by a comedic prologue and a happy ending, that speaks to despair and hope and love and friendship and to things that all generations have in common, even if now, they seem to be on a larger, worldwide scale. There will always be a Mr. Potter out to line his pockets on the sweat of the backs of the working class, and there will always working class heroes, fighting for some independence and some slice of the American dream. There will always be men and women with lost hopes and dreams, ideals forgotten in the face of realities. There will always be times of desperation that yield unexpectedly miraculous fixes.
It's the themes of this movie, and the touching and brilliant performance by quintessential everyman Jimmy Stewart, that makes this film its own sort of masterpiece, worthy of several AFI lists. It walks a fine line, examining both sides of human nature but not compromising on the dark side in the telling.
In fact, as a story, it really is quite perfect because it never sugarcoats the portrait it's trying to paint. I don't know that there's anything spectacular about the filmmaking itself; nothing about the technical elements like the art direction or cinematography or music jump out at me. It's just the way this story unfolds and how well it's performed.
In many ways, this film reminds me of A Christmas Carol, only putting Bob Cratchett in the place traditionally occupied by Ebeneezer Scrooge. The Scrooge in this film would be Mr. Potter; George is Bob, but in his most desperate hour and in need of a little guidance from his guardian angel Clarence. By the same token, this original take on that story has been often imitated and never duplicated. It's a Wonderful Life has been something of a groundbreaker for fantasies in which men and women examine what the world might have been without them. This theme gets used a lot even now - Adam Sandler's Click was a recent example.
This movie makes me laugh and cry and smile and nod and relate to the characters, and that's really what watching a film should be about. Its universal themes are what give it its place in film history. Reading the blurbs on the film's Spout page, it's surprising that the film did not become successful until the 70s, when it's copyright lapsed, but in many ways, that's just how tellingly ahead of its time it was, even though It's a Wonderful Life, itself, is a snapshot of a bygone era when small towns and their way of life were more mainstream than that of the big metropolises. The film contains truths that resonated with audiences three decades after its release and continue to resonate today.
As to my own personal feelings about It's a Wonderful Life, I think it definitely gets a 9 for being perfectly entertaining. I also think that it passes the test. After all this, I'm glad I finally got to watch the whole film, as I related to George Bailey quite a bit. The film is both inspiring and bittersweet, but at its core, it reminds us all to celebrate what we have, for we're all richer than we know, and it's a great film to strike that kind of balance with that wonderful message.