It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)

izarre take on the biblical Book of Job mashed-up with Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

In Job a just character is tortured simply for the sake of a bet between two supernatural entities (God and the Devil). There is no moral, and it all happens simply for the sake of divine pride and divine/satanic entertainment.

Here, there is at least a moral (‘We could always make this so much worse for you’) but, other than the lesson to be learned there is no purpose to any of it.

George Bailey (James Stewart) is a just man with ambitious dreams, but his dreams are frustrated at every step of the way.

He doesn’t have a horrible life; in fact, he is blessed over the course of his life in many ways.

His problem is mostly that he was born with ambition: Despite undeniably having a wonderful life, he simply never gets his way. This is not the wonderful life he's wanted, it's the wonderful life he's forced into by circumstances and by his own kindness.

In The Twilight Zone (1959-1964, which this predates and may well have inspired,) we get characters who are deeply flawed (bigotry and such) and who need to be taught a lesson, (what entity decides this?) and get taken into The Twilight Zone with the hopes that they will emerge better men.

The horrible aspect of It’s a Wonderful Life is that George Bailey is hardly a deeply flawed man.

He is actually much better than the average man.

If divine intervention can be achieved so simply, why would higher wisdoms decide to take this particular guy all the way to the edge?

It’s not as if George hasn’t been wishing for a million dollars all his life.

When human beings are revealed to be simply the playthings of the gods, is it a wonder that they rebel? Is this not precisely the reason we pity, but also admire Sharon (Mimi Rogers) by the end of The Rapture (1991)? Would we also be able admire George Bailey if he rebelled against the heavens?

But of course he doesn’t.

Heaven intercedes at the last minute and sends an agent to put him back in his place. After all, isn’t there a divine, all-knowing plan in play?

George’s flaw is his ambition, and that needs to be smoothed out (with a sledgehammer, apparently.)

Imagine if George's story happened in real life, with no angelic intervention.

Result: He would have committed suicide and would never have found out that the town was ready and willing to help him.

From a Christian viewpoint George's loss of faith in God's plan is construed as a weakness and everything that happens to him is his own fault. He should have had faith in God.

From a Humanist viewpoint however, one can ask oneself the question that if God is willing to intervene to save a mortal life, why did He wait till George fell into utter despair? Why was there any need for him to suffer? Why pick on this guy, of all people!

Yes, this is the traditional, All-American Christmas movie, and has already been adapted and influenced plenty of others.

But other than its concluding setting, there is very little Christmassy about it.

What it does have is true blue Christian values instead:

• Spirituality is valued over materialism.
• Sacrifice is real: when you sacrifice for the sake of others, you lose something yourself.
• If you only take what you need for others to get their share you get no surplus by the end.

There is no room in this movie for Prosperity Theology.

Mr. Potter (a wonderfully mean Lionel Barrymore playing a contemporary Scrooge “Sentimental Hogwash!” with no redeeming qualities whatsoever,) is the embodiment of materialistic evil.

Unlike Scrooge, however, Mr. Potter never gets a chance at redemption, and is also never even punished.

Instead, and much to the audiences’ surprise, he gets away with his final crime, (not that $8,000.00 would make much of a difference to him, his potential benefit would instead be the ability to crush and jail life-long adversary George Bailey, plan which does not succeed.)

Also, unlike in A Christmas Carol, the miracle that happens to George is not time travel, (at least up to a point, the angel experiences sped up time to some degree,) instead George is allowed to experience an alternate, Universe in which he was never born.

In this manner, he can see the positive influence he has had in his community, on his friends and family.

The film does succeed, in the first portion, in exploring the undeniably emotionally rich life George has lived (despite his frustrated ambitions.)

Our consolation is that George did not get cheated this way.

And when he sees the dark Universe without him it convinces of it not only him but convinces the audience as well.

People might easily forget just how bleak this vision actually is.

Another thing the audience might not notice is Mary Bailey in the background.

George Bailey might be a just man, but Mary (Donna Reed) is not only just as just as he is, but she is also more full of faith.

She never balks at his generosity, (I can see a normal wife saying: “Why don’t you ever think of yourself, of me, of our own children? You are always choosing others over your own!”)

She is the one who offers their honeymoon money to the community when the bank closes.

She is there every step of the way backing him and supporting him.

It's a wonder that even Mary is not enough to stop the Pottersville dystopia when George is gone.

George must be an extraordinary fellow.

As with countless other films this one is, of course, subject to interpretation.

The weirdest one might be that the body George sees falling into the river is his own, and that everything that follows is (a la Jacob’s Ladder) his dying fantasy.

But if we play this game, we are not merely being unnecessarily ironic, we are being unfair to the proven earnestness of the film.

The presentation of supernatural beings as bodies of cosmic dust and gas is a bit strange, but is it any stranger than literal presentations of pearly gates and winged angels?

The Clarence character is already a nod to that (what with his white robe under contemporary clothing and his insistence on ‘earning his wings’.)

Mark Twain, in heaven, in cosmic gas form… is writing a new novel?

As a kid, I thought it was a bit disrespectful to have Clarence be as goofy as he is. Nowadays, I’ve come to feel his corny humor is welcome relief to the darkness he brings in his alternate vision of reality.

In the final scene the community unites and pools their resources to save their most valued member.

This is a message that now more than ever needs to resurface in our country… How is it that in one of the most conservative stories of our lives (Frank Capra, James Stewart) we see such progressive values?

Where has the United States of America gone wrong?

And as a couple of final side notes: This is the film that gave us the characters of Bert & Ernie. The film displayed in the marquee is The Bells of Saint Mary (1942.)

A true slice of Americana, tender, simultaneously funny but also a bleak nightmare; and a true Classic in all respects.