Pursuit of happiness? Only if you stay put!

Rating: 3/10 (29 March 2006)

So, if Jimmy Stuart had really lived I wouldn't sip a Martini now - but I would know and maybe even befriend a valuable citizen called MISTER Martini who lives because Lionel Barrymore died at the right moment? Or is it the other way round? I liked to speculate along those lines, when I was a child.
Watching It's a Wonderful Life made me quite mad. The message is pretty cruel. It goes like: you are needed here and don't you dare planning to go on a world trip or anything like that. It's for other folks only. This strongly smells of Calvin's doctrine of predestination which, some say, is one of the foundations of the spirit of the USA. The main character is practically denied a free will, due to the circumstances a non too benevolent god arranged for him. I must admit, Stewart's hysterical shrieks on the bridge, as it dawns on him how valuable he is for the community, sounded to me like the first signs of full fledged madness.
Ironically, the Potterville Stewart's character prevents through his sacrifice seems to be a much more thrilling place than the Bedford Falls he preserves, at least to a modern day audience. I am not against modesty, a good community spirit and loyalty, but inertia and values that are declared absolute and unchangeable will not help to solve the world's problems. I don't know how Frank Capra weathered the HUAC hearings, but the rigid categorizations of the citizenship this movie makes in order to propagate American values could well have pointed at him as a Commie sympathizer".
James Stewart's George Bailey is the exact opposite of Gary Cooper's Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, made three years after this movie. The both represent American extremes in movies that I find overbearing and simplistic.