Years Later, It's A Wonderful Life Continues to be a Reassuring Holiday Spectacle!

Rating: 9/10 (20 April 2015)

What Christmas needs is schmaltz and snow and Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life has both by the hamper full.
Set in Bedford Falls, New York, the movie follows common man George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), who after getting married to his childhood sweetheart Mary (Donna Reed) takes over the management of the building and loan association in his hometown that acts as a charity organization. He tries hard to buck a local Scrooge – evil rival banker Old Man Potter (Lionel Barrymore), who never misses a chance to jockey him into a position where he could be dealt misery. However, all his troubles come to a head as his mortgage company is plunged into financial crisis, after being broken on the wheel of capitalism. Prodded by failure, incompetence and deceit, our hero is soon brought to despair by fate and the machinations of Mr Potter and teeters on the edge of sanity one snowy Christmas Eve. It is then that George, in a moment of weakness, wishes he was never born. A genial, bumbling 292-year-old wingless angel from heaven, named Clarence (Henry Travers), who is assigned to watch out for him, grants that wish. In the fantastic events that follow, George is brought to a realization of how much his apparently aimless existence has meant to others and shows him the futility of feeling futile.
What is remarkable about 'It's a Wonderful Life' is how well it holds up over the years. It has a simple message told elegantly, intelligently and with a whole lot of heart that never gets old. A socially responsible movie is entitled to the luxury of a heartfelt happy ending, especially if it has been earned! And this film so earns it! Capra's trick rests in the fulsome manner in which he allows a motion picture audience to share in the glory, investing the story with the tremendous heart that always stamps his offerings. This couldn't be other than a Capra picture, the humanness of its story the prevailing factor at every turn of situation. And essential to its extraordinary enduring power is the towering presence of James Stewart who with the supporting cast puts up an amazingly controlled performance, to give a simple but poignant script an unbending strength of character.
All these carefully devised components make it an absolutely enduring classic which does not wear down even as decades go by. The movie that defined the term 'Capra-esque' - and cemented Stewart's position as Hollywood's favorite everyman - is the ultimate winter warmer.