It’s an Angry Life


Dan Eisenberg of Cinemathematics put out a call for a one-day Blog-a-thon on It’s a Wonderful Life. He wants people to either explain what all the fuss is about, or agree that it could be added to Mary and Yale’s Academy of the Overrated (joining Gustav Mahler, Isak Dinesen, Karl Jung, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lenny Bruce, Vincent Van Gogh, Ingmar Bergman.)

Oh, the fuss is very well deserved.

MARY’S VOICE
I love him, dear Lord. Watch over
him tonight.

JANIE’S VOICE
Please, God. Something’s the matter
with Daddy.

ZUZU’S VOICE
Please bring Daddy back.

It’s a Wonderful Life tells a story that would exist whether Philip Van Doren Stern had ever written his short story “The Greatest Gift” or not. It’s part of being a sentient person to wonder what would things be like if you weren’t here, either from your death now, or backdating the idea to never being on the planet.

But what raises it up to a great film is its earthiness and common-sense sensibility. It draws situations with just a few strokes that have deep resonance for the experience of the solid middle class after World War II, like the family dinner scene before the high school graduation dance, the father’s fatigue at working at a job he doesn’t like, and George’s ideas of getting out: “I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world.”

But most importantly, it captures the anger that lies just beneath the surface of so much of “nice” domestic life, a byproduct of all the primal life forces held in a precarious balance for family life to be possible at all.

Jimmy Stewart’s performance is strong throughout, and his anger is particularly convincing in various scenes.

In the phone call scene with Mary he portrays “panic of commitment” without cliché.

Script direction:
George can stand it no longer. He drops the phone with a crash grabs Mary by the shoulders and shakes her. Mary begins to cry.

“Now you listen to me. I don’t want any plastics and I don’t want any ground floors. And I don’t want to get married *ever* to anyone! You understand that? I want to do what I want to do.”

He’s angry and his sexual energy is dangerous as he’s drawn to Mary, his lust overwhelming his wanderlust. This is not a sentimental vignette. It is a clear-eyed look at one of the age-old realities of civilization: men don’t particularly want to participate.

George’s anger at Uncle Billy when he discovers the money has been lost is sharp: “Where’s that money, you silly stupid old fool? Where’s that money? Do you realize what this means? It means bankruptcy and scandal and prison. That’s what it means. One of us is going to jail - well, it’s not gonna be me.”

When George gets home he isn’t able to tell Mary what’s happened, he can only rage against the pedestrian details of his life: the broken banister, the kid banging on the piano, how cold the house is, the teacher who sent ZuZu home sick.

He is a hulking presence, terrorizing the family with his anger: Mary (in an outburst) “George, why must you torture the children?”

That’s when George runs out of the house and to his appointed destiny with Clarence.

PETE
Is Daddy in trouble?

JANIE
Shall I pray for him?

MARY
Yes, Janie, pray very hard.

TOMMY
Me, too?

MARY
You too, Tommy.
(on phone)
Hello, Uncle Billy?

George’s sojourn in the universe where he never existed is carefully plotted, and the details are deep. The town is ugly and the people mean and crass. He finds his mother is a harsh, suspicious landlady and Mary a withered, mousy woman. Mr. Gower is a rummy child murderer, his brother is in the cemetery and by extension, all the men in the transport because his brother wasn’t there to save them. The dots are strongly connected, and his actual impact on these lives is clear. Again, I see no mawkish sentiment here.

George’s nightmare is short-lived, as he returns to the bridge and prays to live again: “I want to live again. I want to live again. Please, God, let me live again.”

The snow returns and he is back to his life. My favorite part is him running through the town; it is the perfect visualization of a feeling of unbridled hope and joy. For the moment, anger—which is fueled by the maddening details of life and experience—is banished by the desire for life itself.

I think it is an excellent film. I think if Clarence’s line “Ridiculous of you to think of killing yourself for money,” helps one person gain perspective when things are grim, then it’s more than an excellent film. And I like its depiction of prayer. It reminds us that we don’t know how that grace works, but people have experienced its power, and so it should show up occasionally in our cinema lives.

Here’s a great gift from Imdb: the whole script is online.

http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/It’s-a-Wonderful-Life.html

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December 16th, 2007
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Viewing 5 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    I used to love IAWL, but during the 1980s, when the film was in copyright limbo and Ted Turner was on the prowl for cheap programming content, TBS ran it into the ground and I grew sick of it.
    I think I'll be ready to enjoy it again in 2015. Eggnog at my house!
    • ^
    • v
    David, that's the great thing about Wonderful Life. It will be there waiting for you in 2015. There just isn't much you can count on like that :)
    • ^
    • v
    Oh, Ms. Peel, thank you.

    I've never entirely understood how IAWL became a Christmas movie (apart from the Christmas tree in the background of the final scene), nor how it got its reputation for mawkishness (apart from the saccharine mewl of ZuZu's final line). It's such a dark film, dark as the darkest parts of "Meet John Doe." Capra has a reputation for sentimentality and, yeah, you see it in stuff like "Mr Deeds Goes to Town," but the best Capra remembers the darkness of his earlier films, like "The Miracle Woman" or "The Bitter Tea of General Yen." He was knowing about relationships, too, and about the power of sexual attraction--just watch another great, early film, "Platinum Blonde," with its amazing performance by the tragically short-lived Robert Williams.

    Capra's choice of Stewart was inspired as well. He needed a sympathetic actor, since he was going to send him so far down into Hell that the flames might not reflect well on him. But he saw the kind of darkness in Stewart that didn't really get drawn out again until the thrillers of Hitchcock and the westerns of Anthony Mann.

    The alternate Bedford Falls that George Bailey sees is not so far-fetched, either. The roads not travelled are perhaps less likely for the lovely Mary, but the fate of Violet, for example, or the Martini family truly could be but for the grace of God and George Bailey. The movie came out not long after the end of the war, and most of the people in its audiences had probably seen just the sort of hard times that the alternate Bedford Falls presented; it wouldn't have been hard for them to believe, either.

    I confess that the film still and always makes me tear up throughout, from the heart-wrenching scene with Mr Gower right through to the end. Perhaps it's the notion of redemption that makes it a Christmas film but, frankly, that's a message that's not unwelcome or unnecessary any time of the year.
    • ^
    • v
    Karen, dark. That is the word for IAWL. The Mr. Gower hitting young George scene always chokes me up.
    • ^
    • v
    It's an incredibly dark film, one of the finest ever made in American cinema - and too often dismissed by the elite as pablum for the masses. In truth, its style and storyline are accessible - but that's part of Capra's brilliance, cloaking a battle between the idea of human redemption and a cold existentialism in a small town (and what a set they built).

    Also brilliant was the casting - it's an amazing group of veteran character actors. In some ways that's why the movie feels so familiar - there's Ward Bond and Henry Travers and Lionel Barrymore - and on and on. They're the familiar faces of OUR home town, the one we (used to) live in at the movie theater.

    And MA, you're right about that face-slap - a huge, gut-wrenching cue that things can go very badly indeed in this (and any) little town.
 

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