It’s a Won­der­ful Life (1946)

The sto­ry of how It’s a Won­der­ful Life became a hol­i­day sta­ple is steeped in mys­tery, error and bad luck. The first film direc­tor Frank Capra made after return­ing from ser­vice in World War Two, it was always intend­ed to be extra­or­di­nary. Jim­my Stew­art head­lines a sto­ry of a man who aban­dons his own hopes and dreams to help oth­ers, and whose heart is bro­ken to the point of sui­cide in the process.

Part of the myth sur­round­ing the film lies in the fact that it was a com­mer­cial fail­ure upon its release. Fol­low­ing the pre­war suc­cess of It Hap­pened One Night, Mr Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton and oth­ers, expec­ta­tion was high that Capra would deliv­er again. Philip Van Stern’s Dick­en­sian nov­el ​‘The Great­est Gift’, a tale that began life as a Christ­mas card, was deemed the ide­al source mate­r­i­al, but even after a script pol­ish by the great Dorothy Park­er, It’s a Won­der­ful Life was not the box office smash RKO Pic­tures had hoped. Still, Vari­ety enthused in 1946 that the film was a, ​“reminder that, essen­tial­ly, the screen best offers unself­con­scious, forth­right enter­tain­ment.” There was even a men­tion of the film’s inno­v­a­tive sim­u­la­tion of snow.

The mys­tery of Jim­my Stewart’s fever­ish per­for­mance, mean­while, might be linked back to his wartime ser­vice. Fresh back from active duty, Stew­art had been ground­ed in 1945 from fly­ing mis­sions due to what would now be diag­nosed as PTSD. After return­ing to his par­ents’ Penn­syl­va­nia home for brief respite, he even­tu­al­ly head­ed back to Hol­ly­wood. Hol­ing up with fel­low sol­dier Hen­ry Fon­da, Stew­art found few oppor­tu­ni­ties out­side of wartime hero roles that turned his stomach.

The war had not only tak­en a toll on Stewart’s boy­ish looks, but his diges­tion and hear­ing too. In hind­sight, the dis­traught char­ac­ter of George Bai­ley is per­fect for Stew­art, who was able to (per­haps sub­con­scious­ly) tap into his own sense of post­war rage, hys­te­ria and alien­ation. Play­ing a man who sees no point in liv­ing, Stew­art gives a per­for­mance that audi­ences implic­it­ly under­stood at the time, and which con­tin­ues to res­onate today.

Yet, Stew­art walked out of an ini­tial meet­ing between his agent and Capra. The actor want­ed to do a com­e­dy, not tell anoth­er sto­ry of tragedy and destruc­tion. But, as many actors return­ing from the war were find­ing, pick­ings were slim. Accord­ing to Stewart’s co-star Don­na Reed, the set was a tense, unhap­py place. Stew­art was hav­ing sec­ond thoughts when Lionel Bar­ry­more report­ed­ly asked him if he thought it was bet­ter to drop bombs on peo­ple than to enter­tain them. That helped Stew­art accept the role as worthwhile.

A cler­i­cal error meant the film’s rights were not renewed in 1974, leav­ing it in the pub­lic domain. For almost two decades, Amer­i­can TV net­works showed the film ad nau­se­am (I dis­tinct­ly remem­ber my moth­er telling me one year to ​“turn off that old crap”). There were days when the film was play­ing on every sta­tion, pro­vid­ing an It’s a Won­der­ful Life marathon whether view­ers want­ed it or not. It became a sea­son­al favourite by default – a film that had some­thing for every­one, and for every gen­er­a­tion. As Capra famous­ly observed, ​“The film has a life of its own now.”

While it may not be the first Christ­mas movie (that hon­our goes to 1898’s San­ta Claus, a British short that was itself a tech­ni­cal land­mark) It’s a Won­der­ful Life is the clos­est thing to a post­war Amer­i­can Dick­ens. Though Capra nev­er quite returned to the gold­en days of the 1930s, this is con­sid­ered by many to be one of the finest films ever made. Hav­ing per­son­al­ly tak­en the film for grant­ed for decades, see­ing it on the big screen made for a trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence. I saw Stewart’s hys­te­ria, Reed’s joy and wor­ry, the irri­ta­tion of being a par­ent, but also the sen­su­al­i­ty of whole­some small­town America.

Glo­ria Gra­hame co-stars as the sassy Vio­let, wear­ing a floaty sum­mer dress she claims is old and that she wears only, ​“when I don’t care how I look”. An inter­change fol­lows, con­clud­ed by Bert who says, ​“I’ve got to go home and see what the wife is doing.” There’s sex and death here, ela­tion and depres­sion, hope and despair. Pot­ter may win in the end but, real­is­ti­cal­ly, the char­ac­ters live with that because they must. It’s their only choice. As for the film’s acco­lades, it was nom­i­nat­ed for six Oscars and beat­en by the wartime hero­ism of The Best Years of Our Lives in all cat­e­gories but one: tech­ni­cal achieve­ment for fake snow.