Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (rewatch thoughts)

 (4K at Barrymore Film Center... Clarence, I somehow managed to give this 4.5 Stars previously, which seems like an error in retrospect. Of course it's a five-star movie; aside from being a little too cynical 20 years ago when I fitst watched this, I think I just looked at the year of 1946 and see a lot of other films - like Shoeshine, notorious, paisan, the Best Years of Our Lives, A Matter of Life and Death my number one pretty easily - that I put above it which really speaks more to how great a year it was then anything lacking in this film. Just thinking about certain scenes and moments are raising it in my estimation even before I sit down to watch it again.)

Seeing this again... yeah, still pretty great. I do wonder why there is a random raven at the Bailey brothers office though. Just like... what's his story?

Frank Capra puts that big South Parkian You know, I Learned Something Today at the end where Clarence leaves the note for George, "Remember, no man is a failure who has friends." That may be true, and that could also apply to Mr. Potter (who are his friends, that guy who is Not Mr. Smithers always by his desk?) But I think there is a much stronger and potent takeaway with how George acts around people throughout the film up to and including when he flips out on his family: if you are honest about what you are thinking and especially feeling, that will make a difference with those who don't take you for granted.

In so many scenes George is an open book emotionally and intellectually, whether he has a bit of sarcasm about him and when he is genuine, like when he gets the townspeople to stick with the Bailey brothers during a real financial problem and gives the little speech about why Mr. Potter is bad news, or when he is with Mary both when he is younger and playing around at night as well as when they are reunited and his frustration is not well hidden and then to the point that Mary (and as much as this is Stewart's movie Donna Reed's purity of spirit and warmth and her "no, don't give me that" when she is pushed is so important to the film) nearly explodes with heart-ache until they have that passionate grasping for life kiss. And that is a genuine kind of quality to have as a person, especially for a man.

I have no way of knowing if that was on Capra and his collaborators' minds when they were writing this, but I think why this endures as a movie people keep watching- up to and especially including those who usually won't watch like 90% of movies made before 1980- is because of both Bailey as a character and how Open-Book Stewart's performance is. 

I think that is a really good message especially for a time like the 1940s when men were often told not to show their feelings and emotions and so on, which endures. There is also Capra's not only acknowledgment but warning that if people let the Potters of the world rule then they will take any chance to do that....

(As a side note in this fucking year of our lord 2025, I wonder if there is some George Bailey type out there who actually did go for the "I was never born" lock stop and barrel and that is why we have had the last ten years or so of Trump. I would bet my car and my blu ray collection that Potter was redacted like 10,292,391 times from the Epstein files. But the more unsettling part is just how many sitting around me at this mostly packed screening on a Sunday night voted - more than once - for Trump and scowled at Mr. Potter not seeing a single connection to the endless pit of need and misery inside of them both. Digress? Nah, every time a bell rings a digression gets its wings)

... but the power of It's a Wonderful Life is how it depicts what life can be in the You Can't Always Get What You Want sense (why do you think that song ends with an angelic chorus, eh?) You are going to have times where life punches you in the gut and throws you for a loop; as I get older that especially hits hard with me, not to mention on a personal level as someone who once did step in to take on a family-run business (this happened between my last and this viewing), but moreover that you need to hold on to those things that are good in life, like love most of all, so that when the chips are down you are not left in tatters.

And not everyone is going to save a brother from drowning or stop a guy from poisoning someone, those are dramatic devices of course. What sticks about It's a Wonderful Life, aside from how funny (it is largely a comedy in many places) and heart-rending it is is that it is true about what we are and aspire to be *and* how far down into misery and loneliness we can get as seen in that last half hour when it is the prototype Twilight Zone pilot.... 

Oh, and the one scene I have thought about the most over the years, when Potter offers George the job and 20k per year and he turns it down, was more visually striking simply because of that decidedly evil chair that makes George and anyone opposite Potter look so small!

This is all to say the wonder of that ending is simply this: Capra depicted the first successful GoFundMe in Bedford Falls history! (FYI adjusted for inflation to this year, $8,000 is $132,973.13)