It's A Wonderful Life

Cast: James Stewart, Donna Reed, and Lionel Barrymore  

Director: Frank Capra

130 minutes (U) 1946

Paramount 4K Ultra HD  

Rating: 8/10

Review by Debbie Moon

It's A Wonderful Life has been a cinematic landmark for so long now that it’s difficult to get past the history and examine the film objectively. Indeed, society has changed so radically over the years that Bedford Falls has been transformed from an idealised present to a past that never really existed, a comment on the death of the ‘American dream’ itself.

Yes, there is saccharine here, but less than you might remember. The film is warm-hearted, even sentimental, but it retains a sharp humour and genuine eye for character that many modern films would do well to emulate. The glimpse we finally receive of a world without George Bailey is genuinely shocking, a moral catastrophe on a positively Shakespearian scale, and despite their logic problems, the final scenes will melt even the hardest hearts.

James Stewart gives a career-best performance as an ordinary man driven to the point of suicide by one mistake, who subsequently finds himself the unwitting key to the lives of everyone around him. The supporting cast are excellent and, despite its considerable length, the film simply flies by. In the unlikely event that you’ve never seen this world-class classic, go out and obtain a copy immediately. You won’t regret it.

This 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray release is digitally restored and re-mastered in B&W, with a screen ratio of 1.37:1 in pillar-box format.

Rating: 10/10

Review by Jeff Downes

What is the charm, or indeed ‘magic’, that director Frank Capra utilised in the making of this film that still gives it appeal today? Apart from its expert story-telling, there’s three universal themes: the supportive small-town/ community life, the strength of the family unit, and finally - a masterstroke - the Christmas setting, which grants added meanings to the first two themes. It is on Christmas Eve in 1944 that the film’s story begins. The central character, George Bailey, is about to commit suicide. On Earth, many people are praying for George, while, in Heaven, in answer to those prayers, trainee angel Clarence (whimsically played by Henry Travers), is to try and prevent George ending his life. Before he goes down to Earth, Clarence (and us) are shown highlights from George’s life up to the present.

As an aside, and to give you something to do later, watch the first five minutes of this Hollywood film and compare it to another picture of the same year, British fantasy drama A Matter Of Life And Death (aka: Stairway To Heaven). While the narratives are different, these two films have many themes in common and both, initially at least, present Heaven in much the same way.

Anyway, back to the plot and the highlights of George’s life. We see how he saves his brother’s life, and stops a chemist from accidentally poisoning someone. Then, as the young man grows up, he turns into Jimmy Stewart. George’s ambitions remain the same: to leave behind the town of Bedford Falls, and go off to explore the world. However, all of his attempts to leave end in failure. George Bailey’s life becomes inextricably linked to his father’s Building and Loan company, a small firm that offers the only real hope for the people of Bedford Falls. Everything else, including the bank, is owned by old man Potter,  a mean old miser. His ambition is to destroy the Building & Loan Co. - and Potter almost succeeds when George’s father dies.

George realises that if he leaves town, the family firm would fold, and so he stays there. The years pass and every time George organises a way out, something conspires to keep him in the small town. Eventually, George marries his childhood sweetheart, Mary Hatch (Donna Reed), and they raise a family of four children. All this time, George keeps his frustrations at being unable to leave Bedford Falls hidden. 

We are now up to date, Christmas Eve, 1944. George’s absent-minded Uncle Billy has the job of transferring the company’s takings to the bank. Billy accidentally places the money in Potter’s care, and Potter seizes his chance to discredit the Building & Loan Co., as well as have George Bailey arrested for fraud. Now desperate, George believes the only way out is suicide, giving his family the means to survive this crisis. Leaving Bedford Falls, George prepares to jump from a bridge into the fast-flowing river below. At that moment, another person jumps into the river and, forgetting his intentions, George dives in to rescue the other man. He soon finds he has rescued a strange looking man named Clarence, who then proceeds to tell George that he has come to save him. In a moment of self-pity, George remarks that he wishes he had not been born at all - a request that Clarence grants.

When the two return to Bedford Falls, they find it no longer exists. The town is called Pottersville. The people’s only hope, the Building & Loan Co., had closed when George’s father died. Pottersville is a town of squalid accommodations for rent, cheap alcohol-related entertainment, and peopled by men and women whose spirits have been crushed by Potter’s power. In short, a town based on rampant capitalism. Confronted with this Hell on Earth, George begs Clarence to take him back to his reality. And, in an emotion-filled finale, George finds that his many friends have raised the necessary money to save him, and that he has learnt the true meanings of family and community life.

This sounds clichéd and sentimental, and, to a degree, it is. The trick is, Capra was aware of going too far over the top into farce. It therefore plays far better than the synopsis above makes it sound. After repeated viewings, the film’s ending never fails to be moving. Even with all of these elements in its favour, like many other classic films, It’s A Wonderful Life was a flop on its initial release. This fantasy was ignored in favour of the realism found in William Wyler’s The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946). The de-mobbed soldiers and their families just didn’t want to watch a film in which the hero wants to escape from his home-town. They had just done so (admittedly, not at the best of times for a European holiday), and now wished only to settle in the towns and suburbs that George Bailey wanted to leave.

Times changed and the death of Capra provided many retrospectives of his work, with this film being heralded as his masterpiece. Justly deserved, but at the same time, let’s not undermine the performance of James Stewart, who does his very best work in this feature. At that point of his career, Stewart was looking to switch from the rom-com roles, that he had been mainly associated with, to more dramatic parts. It’s A Wonderful Life showcases his comic talents and is a foretaste of the dramatic challenges yet to come. His comic timing is much in evidence in the early part of the film, such as the dance night at the school, and George’s initial courtship of Mary. However, as the film continues and becomes darker in tone, George’s inner frustrations are expertly captured by Stewart.

All of the actors turn in fine performances. Many of the cast were never better, and some, like Donna Reed, continued to play that type of role for the majority of their careers. Lionel Barrymore most certainly portrays Potter as “the warped, frustrated old man,” that George calls him at one highpoint. It is interesting to note, however, that while George triumphs at the film’s finale, the evil that is Potter is not defeated. Indeed, to take this idea still further, the film can be seen as politically to the Left. George (the ‘Everyman’ character) fights for the rights of the individual against a capitalistic overlord - a seemingly continual struggle during which battles may be won, but there can never be a complete victory.

Of course, it is not for its politics that this film is remembered, but the upholding of traditional values. In cinema terms, these values have inspired a direct remake, the TV movie It Happened One Christmas (1977). Despite the novel idea of changing the lead character’s sex - James Stewart is replaced by Cloris Leachman - the movie was something of a disappointment. In less direct terms, the influence of Capra’s classic can be seen in such diverse movies as Gremlins (1984), Field Of Dreams (1989), and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989).

It’s A Wonderful Life might never been acclaimed as the greatest in cinematic Art, but its influence continues to inspire, and it remains of the very best moving movies of all time.

Rating: 9/10

Review by Steven Hampton  

This review is about 2007’s colourised version of a revered classic that is, institutionally and culturally, already bullet-proof against any major criticism except for, in retrospect, the struggle to forgive it’s sadly meandering sentimentalism. An anti-capitalist message still shines through the gauzy haze usually identified as central to the otherworldly drama’s overly romanticised narrative, that  illuminates a tragedy of personal apocalypse and loss of humanity at its charming core. It’s A Wonderful Life has long since become the iconic essence of Capra-styled social un-realism, exploring its senseless misfortunes with a suitably ironic and heart-breaking clarity of purpose, to change minds and win the day for traditional family values against soulless business interests.     

As a portrait of villainy, Potter (Lionel Barrymore) lacks any principles but for increasing his wealth, bullying ‘riff-raff’, and buying people that oppose him. A greedy manipulator of every honest man, Potter practically oozes a poisonous intent, so his obviously slimy handshake is off-putting to sealing deals, except with a devil you know. Especially when he’s always most smugly content when profiting from the mistakes of others, and then ultimately promoting suicidal despair in erstwhile small-town hero George Bailey so that he wishes he’d never been born. When his wish is magically granted, in the alternative reality without George, the housing estate in Bedford Falls is tellingly now a cemetery in Pottersville. George’s wife Mary and mother of his four children is now a lonely spinster. George’s return to the town, that his ambitious side has always tried to leave, is cleverly depicted as a Christmas miracle. Finding happiness is not always about getting what you want. More often than not, it’s just about wanting what you’ve already got. 

Legend Films have produced a magnificent version of It’s A Wonderful Life. So everything here, from skin tones and clothing, to backgrounds and incidental lighting effects, has all been carefully updated, and yet this visual presentation remains styled to fit the times of its original production-era. Colourisation is actually a natural progression of the cinematic arts, not a dilution of artistic purity driven by grubby commercial interests. Many of these post-war pictures were, after all, products of limited budgets unable to afford colour film-stock. And earlier pre-war cinema were projects of a technology still in development after the ‘talkies’ introduced synchronous sound to transform entertainments of the ‘silent’ era. 

Following the creative philosophy that ‘no work of Art is ever finished, only abandoned’, it makes perfect sense to attempt improvements of golden oldies to re-polish their lustre, if any classic movie’s appeal has faded with time and the relentless march of progress. Any 21st century viewers might appreciate a refurbished version of a movie that’s admired by their parents, or grandparents. This excellent colourised edition of It’s A Wonderful Life is likely to please fans of the original and newcomers alike.