Saturday Night Cinema: It’s A Wonderful Life

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You didn’t think I would let the Christmas holiday go by without a proper cinematic tribute, did you? Yes, there are other Christmas movies, but none better. Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema classic is, “It’s A Wonderful Life.” I don’t care how many times you’ve seen this holiday gem, it is always fresh, new, moving. It is the most well-loved of all Christmas movies.

“No matter how often you see this perennial Christmas favorite, you will be entranced. Flawless.”

Capra at his finest. Hollywood at her best.

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It’s A Wonderful Life from tappel on Vimeo.

The NY Times had this to say in 1946:

Movie Review
It s a Wonderful Life (1946)
By BOSLEY CROWTHER
Published: December 23, 1946

The late and beloved Dexter Fellows, who was a circus press agent for many years, had an interesting theory on the theatre which suited his stimulating trade. He held that the final curtain of every drama, no matter what, should benignly fall upon the whole cast sitting down to a turkey dinner and feeling fine. Mr. Fellows should be among us to see Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which opened on Saturday at the Globe Theatre He would find it very much to his taste.

For a turkey dinner, with Christmas trimmings, is precisely what’s cooking at the end of this quaint and engaging modern parable on virtue being its own reward. And a whole slew of cozy small-town characters who have gone through a lot in the past two hours are waiting around to eat it—or, at least, to watch James Stewart gobble it up. For it is really Mr. Stewart, who does most of the heavy suffering in this film, and it is he who, in the end, is most deserving of the white meat and the stuffing.

That is because Mr. Capra, back from the war, has resumed with a will his previously manifest penchant for portraying folks of simple, homely worth. And in this picture about a young fellow who wants to break away from his small-town life and responsibilities but is never able to do so because slowly they close in upon him, Mr. Capra has gone all out to show that it is really a family, friends and honest toil that make the “wonderful life.”

His hero is a personable fellow who wants to travel and do big things but ultimately finds himself running a building-and-loan association in a one-horse town, married and locked in constant struggle with the greedy old banker of the town. And when it finally looks as though the banker is about to drive him to ruin, he makes what appears a brash endeavor to take his own baffled life. Whereupon a heavenly messenger providentially intercedes and shows him, in fanciful fashion, what the town would have been like without him. The vision is so distressing that he returns to his lot with boundless joy — and is saved, also providentialy, by the financial assistance of his friends.

In composing this moralistic fable, Mr. Capra and his writers have tossed in a great abundance of colloquial incidents and emotional tangles of a mistful, humorous sort. The boyhood of his hero, the frolic at a high school dance, the clumsy pursuit of a courtship—all are shown in an entertaining way, despite the too frequent inclinations of every one to act juvenile and coy. And the heavier sections of the drama are managed in a tense, precipitate style.

As the hero, Mr. Stewart does a warmly appealing job, indicating that he has grown in spiritual stature as well as in talent during the years he was in the war. And Donna Reed is remarkably poised and gracious as his adoring sweet-heart and wife. Thomas Mitchell, Beulah Bondi, H. B. Warner and Samuel S. Hinds stand out among the group of assorted small-town characters who give the picture variety and verve. But Lionel Barrymore’s banker is almost a caricature of Scrooge, and Henry Travers’ “heavenly messenger” is a little too sticky for our taste.

Indeed, the weakness of this picture, from this reviewer’s point of view, is the sentimentality of it—its illusory concept of life. Mr. Capra’s nice people are charming, his small town is a quite beguiling place and his pattern for solving problems is most optimistic and facile. But somehow they all resemble theatrical attitudes rather than average realities. And Mr. Capra’s “turkey dinners” philosophy, while emotionally gratifying, doesn’t fill the hungry paunch.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, screen play by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett and Frank Capra, with additional scenes by Jo Swerling; directed and produced by Frank Capra for Liberty Films; released by RKO-Radio Pictures, Inc. At the Globe.
George Bailey . . . . . James Stewart
Mary Hatch . . . . . Donna Reed
Dr. Patter . . . . . Lionel Barrymore
Uncle Billy . . . . . Thomas Mitchell
Mrs. Bailey . . . . . Beulah Bondi
Ernie . . . . . Frank Faylen
Bert . . . . . Ward Bond
Clarence . . . . . Henry Travers
Mr. Gower . . . . . H. B. Warner
Violet . . . . . Gloria Grahame
Harry Bailey . . . . . Todd Karns
Ruth Dakin . . . . . Virginia Patton
Pa Bailey . . . . . Samuel S. Hinds
Cousin Millie . . . . . Mary Treen
Cousin Eustace . . . . . Charles Williams
Mrs. Hatch . . . . . Sara Edwards
Mr. Martini . . . . . Bill Edmunds
Annie . . . . . Lillian Randolph
Sam Wainwright . . . . . Frank Albertson
George, as a boy . . . . . Bobbie Anderson
Nick . . . . . Sheldon Leonard
Potter’s Bodyguard . . . . . Frank Hagney
Jane Bailey . . . . . Carol Coomes
Zuzu Bailey . . . . . Karolyn Grimes
Pete Bailey . . . . . Larry Simms
Tommy Bailey . . . . . Jimmy Hawkins

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felix1999
felix1999
4 years ago

Great movie in better times.

How times have changed!

I couldn’t believe this… if the UK snowflake campaign to recruit for the military wasn’t outrageous enough, they have a new theme – ‘Belonging 2020: Army Confidence’. The previous campaign, entitled ‘Your Army Needs You’ and launched in January, sought to recruit certain types of millennials, such as ‘snowflakes’ and ‘binge gamers’.

UK Army to use Kim Kardashian’s bottom as its new recruiting tool: Military chiefs’ new advertising campaign encourages people to serve in the Armed Forces because it instils greater confidence than receiving
‘likes’ on social media

* The concept is that serving in the Army instils greater confidence than ‘likes’
* This message will be underlined with a mock-up of Kim Kardashian’s bottom
* The ‘Belonging 2020: Army Confidence’ campaign will be unveiled next month
By MARK NICOL DEFENCE EDITOR FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

PUBLISHED: 17:20 EST, 21 December 2019 | UPDATED: 20:09 EST, 21 December 2019

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7817755/New-campaign-encourages-people-serve-Army-instils-confidence-receiving-likes.html#newcomment

She is totally DISGUSTING! Where are the feminists? This is a perverted caricature of a female.
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Michael Garfinkel
Michael Garfinkel
4 years ago

Bosley Crowther was an excellent critic, and here he has written a smart, insightful and naturally – a contemporaneous review of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Three-quarters of a century later, we have the opportunity to regard the film from the commanding heights that distance provides – and we appreciate it’s true value.

There were only a few films that captured the sensibilities of American popular culture at its height – to which the American film industry ascended in the last century, perhaps never to be approached again.

This was one of those films, although at the time it lost money for Republic Pictures.

Frank Capra was at his best, but for Stewart, the film provided an opportunity to give his greatest and most heart-felt performance, a performance that never loses its power to move us deeply.

Stewart had returned from Bomber Command deeply troubled by the savagery of the war, and struggled with this role; confessing to Lionel Barrymore that he couldn’t see the point in acting anymore – a profession he regarded, in light of what he had seen, as merely trivial.

Barrymore is reputed to have been encouraging: “In the end, he said, isn’t it better to entertain – and perhaps uplift people, than to drop bombs on them?”

There’s a kind of mid-century innocence in that comment, but like everything else that came together so seamlessly in this film, it was the best of all possible advice – and the result was an enduring masterpiece of American cinema.

knightsstrength
knightsstrength
4 years ago

Always a heart warming movie, with a good ending

Sideshowjoe
Sideshowjoe
4 years ago

Please don’t confuse this movie with the Democrat re-make: “It’s a Wonderful Lie”, now playing in DC!

poetcomic1
poetcomic1
4 years ago

That scene with Donna Reed and James Stewart on the telephone together when he lashes out in fury that he must give up his youthful dreams of travel and at the same time is almost helpless with love for her. All the gauzy lush sensual romantic tosh that has come since – nothing matches it.

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