RogerBW's Blog

1946 glurge, dir. Frank Capra, James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore: IMDb / allmovie. You can't win, you can't break even, and God won't let you get out of the game.

Well, you could see it more positively, but that was very much the way it struck me: George Bailey had hopes, dreams, the possibility of making something of himself, but every time there was a chance that any of them might come true the pathetic people of the town got themselves into another fix and he, as the only competent man, had to give up part of himself to get them out of it. Ultimately, this seems to demand his life—because this is 1946, and if the town moneylender facing ruin "slips and falls off an icy bridge" no coroner is going to bring it in as suicide, so his life insurance will pay off the savings and loan one last time.

But no, apparently doing what's obviously being demanded of him yet again is not allowed this time, so instead he gets his own special corrective miracle, where he sees the town as it would be if he'd never lived… and there has been tragedy, sure, but at least there's something to do on a Saturday night, which original Bedford Falls singularly lacks. And so he has to go back, back into the world of wife and house and 2.4 children, and for once, just for once, the townsfolk lift a finger to help him. (This time. What about next year when Drunk Uncle Billy spends the bank's float on cheap whiskey?)

Meanwhile Mr Potter gets away with robbery and is not caught or punished in any way.

This is a story about how you should not try to do anything, just follow the path that life has laid out for you, and if you dare to dream of anything different God will smack it out of your head. And I don't think anyone involved noticed.

(Well, to be fair, what I think Capra's trying for is "make sacrifices for everyone else, and you will be rewarded". But nobody else gives up anything, so it ends up twisted.)

Meanwhile there's some fine acting, not forgetting that a year earlier James Stewart had been flying B-24s over Germany, and of course Lionel Barrymore is always a pleasure. Gloria Grahame does the usual Gloria Grahame thing, and while she may not have a wide range she does it extremely well. Visually there's less of interest, though the diegetic lighting in George's abandoned house (supposedly from police flashlights) is pleasing.

This film was something of a failure on release, and only got its reputation due to copyright shenanigans; it was widely believed to have entered the public domain, and so became cheap Christmas-time television filler. Now, of course, it is an Untouchable Classic.

I talk about this film further on Ribbon of Memes.