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It’s a Wonderful Life
(film, 1946)
Sometimes a work of art is in danger of being so familiar that we can miss the artistry and depth behind it. It can become visual muzak—background noise to which we pay only scant attention. It’s a Wonderful Life is one of these works of art, a film broadcast on television seemingly hundreds of times every Christmas season and a holiday tradition for countless viewers. Many have viewed it numerous times and treasure it as a feel-good classic whose positive message accords well with the season. For them, it simply wouldn’t be Christmas without It’s a Wonderful Life. Though it was a box-office disappointment when it was first released, over time It’s a Wonderful Life began to be discovered and embraced, until it took up its place as an indisputable film classic.
It’s a Wonderful Life has its detractors. For those who are wearied by it, it is another example of what some critics have labeled “Capra corn,” a dismissive term suggesting that it is another of the sunny, silly, and sentimental films created by Frank Capra, one of the most successful filmmakers in Hollywood during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Perhaps, however, the cultural divide that opens whenever this film is mentioned is based on an overly simplistic perspective of the film from each side. For Capra’s classic film has depths and ambiguities that make it anything but a simplistic purveyor of holiday cheer. Sure, it veers close to the saccharine in a couple of scenes, but its earnest message concerns the dignity and importance of an ordinary human life, as well as how we relate to each other and to God.
Still from It’s a Wonderful Life [Wikimedia Commons, CC-PD-Mark]
Based on a short story by Philip Van Doren Stern, Capra’s film tells the story of George Bailey, a kindly everyman unforgettably portrayed by Jimmy Stewart, who spends his life having to put his own dreams aside for the good of others. He wants to travel, to experience life fully, and ultimately to escape his small town of Bedford Falls. “I want to do something big, something important!” he tells his father.
But life continually throws obstacles in the path of George’s dreams, and he finds himself having to choose between the needs of others and what he really wants from life. He works hard, and settles into operating his father’s small-town building and loan business, following the dictates of his heart and investing in the lives of people who are trying to pull themselves up out of poverty, which means taking questionable financial risks on their behalf. His nemesis, the greedy banker Mr. Potter, uses George’s reckless goodwill to his own advantage and is finally able to drive him into ruin. When the crusty old man venomously spits out the words, “You are worth more dead than alive!” we see something in George Bailey’s eyes that reveals he may believe this to be true. George concludes that the world would have been a better place if he never existed.
George finds himself on a bridge, preparing to jump to his death in the icy waters, when he receives divine intervention in the form of a bumbling guardian angel named Clarence. By giving George glimpses of the dark alternative world that would have existed if he had never been born, Clarence helps him to see that his seemingly small and insignificant life was actually very significant—that the world would be a much poorer place if not for the actions he had taken during the course of his life. These actions sent ripples out for the good, like a stone dropped into a still pond.
Capra once said that he wanted his films to illustrate the truth of the Sermon on the Mount. They are unabashed modern morality tales. He said that making films gave him “a golden opportunity to dramatize ‘Love thy neighbor’ ” and that “Christ’s spiritual law can be the most powerful sustaining force in anyone’s life.”1 If these movies are not works of profound theological reflection, they are certainly works of profound human reflection—meditations on how goodness can be a force for making the world a better place. His message is not one of Pollyanna-like cheer, for George Bailey (and other protagonists in other Capra films) must pass through much sacrifice and suffering and injustice and rage in their attempt to stand for what is right and true. There is a theme of revelation and repentance that works its way through many of his films, a dissection of his character’s motivations as they come to see themselves more clearly and discover things within themselves that must be overcome if they are to do good.
The youngest of seven children, Frank Capra was born in rural Sicily in 1897. His family immigrated to the United States in 1903 and settled in Los Angeles. Always aware of the limitations placed upon him as an immigrant, Capra worked hard to overcome them and eventually put himself through college, earning a degree in chemical engineering. He bluffed his way into a job in the movie business by pretending to have knowledge that he didn’t have—yet—and soon demonstrated great talent, first as a gag writer for Hal Roach and then for Mack Sennett. Before long he was working as a director of silent comedies, showing a skill with visual and physical humor that would add spice to his subsequent films. During the 1930s he directed a string of hits, including It Happened One Night (1934), which won the Academy Award in all five major categories, American Madness (1932), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and Meet John Doe (1941).
During World War II, Capra was commissioned by the US Army to direct a series of documentary films about the war effort, entitled Why We Fight (1942–45). The year after the war ended, he directed It’s a Wonderful Life, which would be his last undisputed classic. Though he helmed a few other pictures, he never achieved the level of greatness shown in his earlier work. Many critics dismissed his body of work as corny and sentimental. But in more recent decades film historians have revised their opinions and now view him as one of the greatest directors of all time.
The typical Capra hero is an intelligent and compassionate man who has risen from humble beginnings but must be reminded of the deep and abiding values of simple, ordinary people. Such values, he learns, are deeper than those of the upper classes, who are usually portrayed in Capra’s films as avaricious—more worried about their financial prosperity than the good of society as a whole. The wealth of the greedy upper crust allows them to buy influence from the government and the media, both of which prove to be eminently corruptible. Capra’s grand theme is the individual who takes a stand against injustice and wins the masses of good ordinary folk to his cause, though usually only after much suffering.
His idealism was deeply rooted both in his patriotic convictions about democracy and in his faith, but he was also realistic enough to show that evil is never finally and completely overcome in his films. There was as much pessimism as optimism in Capra’s view of human nature. As we see in Meet John Doe the masses may be inherently good but they are also gullible, and they can be easily manipulated and used for the purposes of those who are pulling the strings. Unthinking conformity, therefore, was one of the prime targets of criticism throughout his pictures.
Although raised in a devout Catholic family, Capra initially rejected his heritage, until a midcareer crisis led to a gradual return to his faith. His early sound film The Miracle Woman (1931) is one of the few instances where Capra focused directly on a religious theme. This story of the transformation of a woman (the daughter of a minister) who becomes a fraudulent preacher and healer before finally seeing the error of her ways gives evidence of the distrust that Capra seemed to have about organized religion. But while he distrusted the institutional church, he could not ignore his inner urges toward God.
For much of his life Capra was what he called a “Christmas and Easter Catholic,” limiting his attendance mostly to the major Christian feast days. When he did show up, however, he wrote of the transcendent effect it sometimes had on him:
On those holy days I sneaked into a Catholic church to kneel; to smell the incense, hear the angels sing, and be lifted out of my shoes by the passion and resurrection of Christ. It may happen to you only once in a hundred Masses—but it will still happen. You walk back from Communion with the Host on your tongue—a nobody. You kneel, drop your head in your hands. Slowly the wonder of it fills you with joy—the dissolving Host in your mouth is the living Christ.2
Although Frank Capra rarely dealt directly with religious issues in his films, his faith was an underlying foundation for his artistic vision. His movies show that the power of goodness can overcome evil and transform human nature. With his character George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, he showed that it is never too late to offer up a desperate prayer (“Lord, I’m at the end of my rope!”) and that we often find God has answered such prayers through the power of a loving community of family, friends, and neighbors. “My films,” Capra said, “must let every man, woman, and child know that God loves them, that I love them, and that peace and salvation will become a reality only when they all learn to love each other.”3