Eight films into our little holiday movie marathon, we finally arrive at the one that most of our readers who haven't spent the last sixty years in the Witness Protection Program in a cave on Mars have probably already seen a dozen times or so: Frank Capra's legendary 1946 Christmas movie, It's a Wonderful Life. While there's been dozens and dozens of adaptations of A Christmas Carol, there's only one It's a Wonderful Life: despite decades of references, parodys, homages and metacommentaries, the big-screen adaptation of the Phillip Van Doren short story "The Greatest Gift" remains one of a kind. Thanks to an inexplicable chain of events that led to its falling into the public domain for a number of years, it was shown on pretty much every television station at Christmas for decades; finding someone in the U.S. who hasn't seen it is next to impossible.
The challenge when discussing It's a Wonderful Life, then, isn't to explain its plot or detail the great things about it: these are things most people know intimately from repeated first-hand experience. The challege is to think of something new to say about a movie that almost everyone of a certain age has seen, probably more than once. Frank Capra's surehanded direction, the solid script (primarily by Capra and Frances Goodrich), and iconic performances by screen legend Jimmy Stewart (whose interpretation of George Bailey is more responsible than anything for the cultural shorthand we now have for him), future television star Donna Reed, and Hollywood patriarch Lionel Barrymore are the building blocks for a film that defines the word "Capraesque", but what makes it resonate so? It it simple repetition that makes this the Christmas classic above all others?
Read More...