The movie It's A Wonderful Life is an established American Christmas classic. For many people, the Christmas season would be incomplete without it. This movie is so well-loved that it has its own WebRing, and a Google search on this movie turned up a whopping 1.16 million hits. I think everyone I know has seen It's a Wonderful Life at least once, whether they loved it, or found it to be sappy, sentimentalist trash.
In addition to being a heartwarming, ultimately uplifting story of the value of being a good person, it is also a rather scathing commentary on American values. I find it disturbing that the monetarily focused values of the villain, Mr. Potter (played with incredible coldness by Lionel Barrymore), are values still very much evident in society today.
THE BACKGROUND
This movie is the story of George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart). He is a good and decent man, a member of a good and decent family. Even as a child, George always did what was right. He saved both his brothers life when he fell through the ice, and his bosses career as a pharmacist when the boss, Mr. Gower, accidentally dispensed poison to a patient in his grief over his sons death in the Army.
George grows into a kind young man, who is loved by everyone is his home town of Bedford Falls, NY. Like all young men, George has dreams. He dreams of traveling the world and seeing exotic things and places by taking a job on a tramp steamer, supplemented by his meager savings. He is all set to go, when his father, a kind-hearted man who owns the small Bailey Savings & Loan, suddenly dies. Either George, or his younger brother, Harry, must stay to run the family business, and keep it out of the clutches of the evil Mr. Potter. Since Harry is off to college, George sacrifices his plans, and remains in Bedford Falls. In the interim, he falls in love with Mary (Donna Reed), who is also a kind and good person.
A series of circumstances (his brothers marriage, a run on the Savings & Loan, the outbreak of World War II) keep George in Bedford Falls every time he is on the verge of getting out. He abandons his dreams, and settles into marriage with Mary, fatherhood and running the family business. Although he does not realize the dreams of his youth, he is happy enough.
One year, soon before Christmas, Georges Uncle Billy, lovable but not too bright, who works at the Savings and Loan, misplaces a large sum of money. Through the greedy machinations of Mr. Potter, who has always coveted Bailey Savings and Loan, the bank inspectors are called in. If he cannot come up with the missing money, George will go to jail for embezzlement. In despair, George, believing his life to be worthless, and himself to be a burden to his loved ones, gets drunk, and attempts suicide.
ENTER CLARENCE
Up to this point, the story of George Baileys life has been told in flashback for the benefit of Clarence Oddbody, a second rate Angel who is seeking to earn his wings. Clarences mission is to convince George that his life is worth something, to bring him back from the precipice of suicide. He does this by giving George a vision of what the world would be without him.
Without George Bailey, the world is an awful, bleak place. His brother dies when he falls through the ice, and Mr. Gower goes to jail for murder, because George wasn't there to save them. His mother becomes a bitter old childless widow, and Uncle Billy a drunk. Mary never marries, becoming instead the spinster town librarian. Since Bailey Savings & Loan went under at the death of his father, Mr. Potter was the only lending alternative for the local people. They live in squalor and misery, paying Potters exorbitant interest rates and being evicted at the drop of a hat. Even the nature of the town itself is changed. Instead of being nice, quiet Bedford Falls, it is loud, raucous 'Pottersville'.
Seeing that his life does, in fact, have value, George chooses to live. He goes home, reveling in the everyday joys of his real life along the way. He is ready to face the bank examiners with his head held high. This becomes unnecessary when everyone he has ever helped, which turns out to be the entire population of Bedford Falls excepting Mr. Potter, chips in what little they have to save him. George, and the movie watcher, comes to see that leading a good life has a value above and beyond money, and that financial success does not equate personal success as a human being. Mr. Potter will always have more money than George, but he will never be the man George is.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
This movie is even more relevant today than when it was made in 1946. Apparently, Americas worship of the almighty dollar has, far from diminishing, increased in the last fifty years. Having a simple, happy, comfortable life satisfies many people today no more than it did Mr. Potter back then. Many people, like Mr. Potter, put money before the needs of others.
A woman I work with, Mrs. X, rents out an apartment in her home. The people who live in her apartment were a month and a half behind in the rent. They have a young infant, and a toddler. Two weeks ago, when rent was not forthcoming, she evicted them. In Montana (freezing cold). Less than a month before Christmas (two small children). The next day, while discussing Christmas movies with our co-workers, she said her favorite holiday movie was, you guessed it, It's A Wonderful Life. Do you find this sad and ironic, or is it just me?
WHO ARE YOU?
This Christmas, and year round, try to decide who you are, and who you want to be. Are you Mr. Potter, or are you George Bailey? Do you value money more than the people behind it? I think this movie is the classic it is not only due to the uplifting and life-affirming ending. It is a timeless classic because it does, and should, make people think. Every year, when I see it, it reminds me that, at the final analysis, I'd rather die as George Bailey than as Mr. Potter.
George Bailey has so many problems he is thinking about ending it all - and it s Christmas! As the angels discuss George, we see his life in flashback...More at Buy.com
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