Another one of Capra's classics

Rating: 7/10 (19 January 2019)

I watched this movie late last year around Christmas and I would like to pose a review here. Like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and You Can't Take It With You (1938) it focuses on the common man and claims they can have a stay in the system despite rich people like Jim Taylor in the first film and Mr. Kirby in the second. This film features George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) as a buildings and loan banker, who fights against the evil banker of the town, Potter. He, George, has a guardian angel who shows what it is like if he was never born. Still the movie is not really socialist or a criticism of capitalism at all, as the banker suffers no consequences for causing problems in the town, so it is strange American smultzy movie.
Having said that, I think that the film deserves more than one paragraph to explain the 7 out of 10 rating. As a person whom generally likes science fiction, especially moves that feature time travel, I especially liked the part of this movie which was an imagined world if George had never been born. Not only does this show the effect one person can have on multiple lives, but the town he comes to is a bit like a version of Las Vegas, with Potter doing all he could to get money, turning the town into a sort of playground of sleeze. While this undoubtedly causes George some discomfort, he is more concerned with an absurdist, laughable quest to get people to remember him. This includes chasing down Mary, his wife in the regular world, whom is working as a stereotypical librarian, in what makes him out to look like a sexual predator. One of the best scenes is where he goes into a bar, asked people if they know whom he is, and when he says that everytime a bell is rung an angel is born, the bartender hilariously rings the bell 30 times. In some sense, I feel like that bartender with this movie, especially with its ending which is supposed to make you feel good with "what you have."
There's another aspect to this movie which is rarely mentioned is the weirdly stereotypical role of "Annie" (played by Lillian Randolf), a Black female housekeeper whom makes "funny" wise cracks. Obviously this is highly racist, that the only prominent Black character in this film was literally made a laughingstock, a blind spot for Capra which was in-keeping with the societal mores of the time. I'm not alone in this. As Jesse Daniels of Racism Review wrote in 2009, saying that as Annie offers all of her life savings to George which is followed by the "I been savin' this money for a divorce, if ever I got a husband!" line, this speaks to "the fictive notion in the white imagination that black women have no families of their own, but live to serve their white masters." Luckily Lillian Randolf went onto enjoy a "long career in radio, film and television" with many of her roles offering "a very different view of black women's struggle," to quote from Daniels. I think it is worth bringing this up because very few of the reviews on here mention this website, with one, by son_of_cheese_messiah in 2013, only calling her "a black servant" and not even giving her a name!
With that, my review of this film comes to a close.