CATCHING UP ON THE CLASSICS: It's a Wonderful Life

Courtesy of Paramount

(Note: This review was originally published in last year's holiday edition of West Georgia Living. I recently discovered it never made it to my personal site for some reason.) 

Since 2008, I’ve intermittently used my weekly column (which you can read in the Times-Georgian and the Douglas County Sentinel) for a series known as Catching Up on the Classics. That’s when I get real and admit that – even though I’ve been writing about movies for nearly 14 years – there are still plenty of iconic films I’ve yet to experience.

Over the years, I’ve discussed my first impressions of The Apartment, Vertigo, North by Northwest and It Happened One Night, all of which I now consider some of my favorites. But for this holiday issue of West Georgia Living, I’m admitting what might be my most shameful secret of all: I somehow made it to 34 years-old without seeing It’s a Wonderful Life, the heartwarming movie that most families consider a Christmas tradition.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not Amish or anything. I know all about the story and I’ve absorbed most of the quintessential lines through cultural osmosis. But there’s a big difference between knowing a movie’s plot and becoming emotionally invested in the characters.

Even though I’m still new to Frank Capra’s most beloved work, the fictional people he co-created now seem like close friends. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the power of great cinema. I can’t even imagine how strong those connections are for longtime fans who have watched the movie every year since childhood. Every viewing must feel like a family reunion.

It made me feel a little better to learn that I was not alone in my later-in-life viewing of such a revered work. When I announced my plans for this column on Facebook and Twitter a few weeks back, several friends and family members told me they either still hadn’t seen it or didn’t watch it until they had kids of their own.

I wonder if those people had the same realization I did during my initial viewing: that I’d spent most of my life with a fundamental misunderstanding of the plot. The most famous part of the story is when bumbling angel Clarence (Henry Travers) shows the eternally decent George Bailey (James Stewart, in arguably his best performance) what the world would’ve been like if he’d never existed.

I always figured that was how the movie got its name and what took up the bulk of its 130-minute running time. But I was wrong – that’s just the last half-hour. Instead, the title refers to the entirety of George’s life, which viewers get to experience in several beautifully ordinary vignettes.

Those are the moments that communicate what a fine man George is, and why it hurts so much as fate deals him one nasty blow after another. When he loses his hearing in one ear because he saves his younger brother from drowning in an icy lake? I figured that was a small price to pay for his sibling’s life.

When he can’t go to college because he has to take care of his ailing father’s affairs? Well, that just proved George is a good son. When a run on his family’s bank – the one he continues to run, even though he loathes it – prevents him from taking his wonderful bride Mary (the phenomenal Donna Reed) on their honeymoon? That’s when I started to think this guy had the world’s worst luck.

Then, when things are finally looking up, George’s dunderheaded Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) flat-out hands the villainous Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore) an envelope stuffed with every dollar they own. I’m not exaggerating when I say it felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. At that point, I honestly couldn’t blame poor George for considering a swan dive into that freezing river.

But those moments, as wrenching as they are, prove that George Bailey – in large part because of Stewart’s performance and the quietly devastating screenplay – is one of the most fundamentally decent characters in cinema history. (He’s right up there with Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.)

When young George (Robert J. Anderson) takes a beating from his boss because he knows the grieving pharmacist was about to poison a patient, my throat tightened. When George uses his honeymoon savings to keep his bank’s customers afloat, my eyes got watery.

But the dam finally burst during the famed final sequence, when the citizens of Bedford Falls prove just how much George means to them by donating baskets full of cash to keep him out of jail. Even though I’d seen the ending a million times, thanks to its pervasiveness in pop culture, experiencing it in context for the first time absolutely destroyed me. I’m glad I watched it alone, because I was a sobbing mess.

From a cultural and technical standpoint, “It’s a Wonderful Life” mostly holds up in the modern era, a small miracle considering it was released nearly 70 years ago. The one hilarious exception is when Clarence tells George he’s not supposed to reveal what Mary is like in a world where George doesn’t exist because it’s too unspeakable. Turns out she’s single and enjoys being a librarian – the horror!

And, even though that previously mentioned cultural osmosis prepared me for the fact that the story concludes without tying up all the loose ends, I was still gobsmacked that the era’s production code allowed Mr. Potter to remain unpunished for his treachery (even though that’s a far more realistic outcome).

Oh, well. Looks like I’ll have to go through life pretending that the hysterically dark “lost ending” depicted in an old Saturday Night Live sketch – which features Uncle Billy suddenly remembering what he did with the money, leading to an angry mob breaking into Mr. Potter’s home and beating him to death – is how the movie actually wraps up.

I’m not exactly proud that it took me 34 years to see It’s a Wonderful Life, but I’m glad that I finally corrected the oversight. I have a feeling it’ll be the first of many viewings to come, as I’m adding it to the list of Christmas movies our family watches every holiday season.

It’s a Wonderful Life is not rated.