A Christmas Carol in Reverse

Rating: 9/10 (3 January 2013)

Supernatural fantasies were popular on both sides of the Atlantic during the late forties and early fifties, possibly because the heavy death toll during World War II had made people think about the possibility of an afterlife. "It's a Wonderful Life" is one of a number of such films from this period; others include "Portrait of Jennie", "The Ghost and Mrs Muir", "One Touch of Venus" and, from Britain, "A Matter of Life and Death" and "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman".
This is also an early example of the Christmas film, a genre which has today become ten-a-penny. The main action takes place on Christmas Eve and it was first released on December 20th 1946. The film was originally a disappointment at the box-office, but quickly became one of the most loved films in American cinema, and the tradition has grown up of showing it on television during the Christmas season. The plot has something in common with that other Christmas classic, "A Christmas Carol", although it might be truer to say that "It's a Wonderful Life" is "A Christmas Carol" in reverse. Dickens' story tells the story of a selfish, greedy man who is saved from greed and selfishness by supernatural intervention. Frank Capra's film rather tells the story of a man who has tried to live a selfless life but who needs to be saved from despair when he comes to believe himself a failure. The film also figures, in Henry Potter, an antagonist who has similarities with the unreformed Ebenezer Scrooge.
George Bailey is the manager of a small Building and Loan Association in the small New England town of Bedford Falls. We see his life told in a series of flashbacks. George was originally a man of lofty ambitions who, as a boy, dreamed of becoming a famous explorer and later wanted to be a great architect or engineer. The early death of his father, however, led to him taking over management of the Building and Loan, a business which his idealistic father had started with the express intention of helping the ordinary people of Bedford Falls to build or buy homes at moderate rates of interest. George, however, faces opposition from his arch-enemy Potter, a rapacious slum landlord and grasping capitalist businessman; Potter hates the Building and Loan because it can undercut the extortionate rates charged by his own bank. Potter's dishonest machinations lead to the Building and Loan facing insolvency and George himself facing criminal charges of embezzlement. In despair, George resolves to commit suicide. What saves him is the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody who, by showing George how different life in his community would be had he never been born, persuades him that he has done an immense amount of good in his life and that life is worth living.
The above synopsis could have formed the basis of a horribly sentimental story, and the film is not entirely free of sentimentality, particularly in its idealised view of small-town life and its treatment of the courtship of George and his wife Mary. The picture drawn by Clarence of what Bedford Falls would be like had George never lived also seems exaggerated; the town, renamed Pottersville, is dominated by Potter, who has filled it with sleazy nightclubs, gambling joints, pawn shops and bars. Its people are cynical, selfish and immoral. It struck me as rather extreme to suggest that the life of one good man was all that stood between Potter and his ambition of turning Bedford Falls into the Las Vegas of the North-East. (For one thing, small-town businessmen, however corrupt and unscrupulous, do not generally possess the political muscle to overturn State anti-gambling laws).
What saves the film from turning into pure treacle is the characterisation of the two main roles. Angels have traditionally been portrayed as young, beautiful, all-wise and androgynous, but Clarence is an elderly man who is not even very good at his job. He has been in Heaven for two hundred years, but has not yet earned his wings- according to the film angels are only given their wings after performing some meritorious deed- and his mission to save George is his chance to redeem himself. Although George may be an idealist, he is not idealised, and is far from flawless; he can, for example, be bad-tempered. It is the interaction between these two characters, Henry Travers' shambling, kindly, eccentric angel and James Stewart's flawed, frustrated idealist which lies at the heart of the film. Both actors are excellent, and Stewart earned a "Best Actor" nomination. Donna Reed is rather bland as the impossibly perfect Mary, but there is another memorable contribution from Lionel Barrymore as Potter. Stewart and Barrymore had earlier worked together with Capra in his "You Can't Take It with You", and Stewart had appeared in his "Mr Smith Goes to Washington".
Capra was born in Italy, but became an ardent patriot for his adopted country, and many of his films celebrate what he considered to be American values. ("Mr Smith Goes to Washington" is another example).The lasting popularity of "It's a Wonderful Life" can perhaps be attributed to its quiet celebration of small-town values, of basic decency, of friendship, of generosity, of idealism, of community spirit and of faith in a benevolent providence. Yet Capra is not afraid to criticise other cherished American values- the figure of Potter can be taken as a critique of untrammeled free-market capitalism- nor to face up to the darker side of life, to despair, to selfishness and to villainy. The false values of Pottersville may have been vanquished in Bedford Falls, but as audiences in 1946 would have been aware, those values still prevailed in many real-life communities. In the contest between good and evil, victory can never be taken for granted. 9/10