Every year, around this time, a bunch of friends and I get together and head out for the Bloor Cinema Christmas movie night. It always includes festive snacks and apple cider and door prizes, and in true Bloor fashion the night is free for members, or just $3 for non-members.
We always smuggle in some Bailey’s, or some rum for the eggnog, and it always proves to be great holiday tradition – made especially festive this year, with the massive snowstorm we had to endure to get there.
This year the feature was Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”, starring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed.
This is one of my all time favourite movies, and I was reminded once again this year why I love it.
The film was released in 1946 to critical, though not box-office, acclaim. It was nominated for five Academy Awards but the initial release didn’t bring in the $6.3 million it needed just to break even.
Be that as it may, the film, which is almost poetic in its stark, black and white beauty, has gone on to become an international favourite.
Stewart plays George Bailey, a resident of the small town of Bedford Falls, which serves as a sort of ‘anywhere USA’ kind of place.
George's’s father started the Bailey Building and Loan Company as a means of providing struggling residents with the ability to own their own home, or business. George has run the business since his father passed away.
His story is a litany of failed dreams, mostly due to his propensity for doing the right thing, however unwillingly.
George’s lifelong ambition to travel the world, his goal of going to university to become a civil engineer, even his honeymoon to Paris – all are quashed as the circumstances in his life force him to remain in Bedford Falls.
He seems to handle the heartbreak well at first. After all, the payoff is a beautiful wife who loves him dearly, a family, and fairly high standing in the town as the one man who can stand up to the rich villain, Henry Potter.
But there’s a deep undercurrent of conflict running just under the surface, and you get the feeling that tension is building as George watches his dreams evaporate.
One of the most memorable scenes in the film is shared between George and Mary Hatch (Donna reed). Hatch, who has adored him since childhood, has returned from university.
At his mother’s urging George stops by her house. “She’s the kind of girl who will help you find the answers George…” his mom tells him, with the best of motherly intentions.
While George – frazzled and in a foul mood -- is at her house, Mary takes a call from a suitor and mutual friend of George’s named Sam Wainright. While they’re on the phone, he asks to speak with George as well, to tell him about a business opportunity in plastics.
The two of them put their heads close together to hear his voice over the line, and there’s an intense moment where George's voice trails off, and he just seems to get lost in Mary’s presence though he is visibly resisting it.
“Mary, will you tell that guy I'm giving him the chance of a lifetime? You hear - the chance of a lifetime,” Wainright says.
Mary looks up at George, and with her lips almost touching his, she repeats his words.
“He says it's the chance of a lifetime,” she says, obviously not referring to the business opportunity.
The phone drops to the floor, and George snaps, grabbing Mary by the shoulders in an almost violent grip.
“Now, you listen to me! I don't want any plastics, and I don't want any ground floors, and I don't want to get married -- ever -- to anyone! You understand that? I want to do what I want to do. And you're...and you're...”
And then you watch as George’s walls break down. With Mary in tears, he pulls her close in an almost desperate embrace, and they kiss.
In the next scene they are getting married.
While it’s a happy scene, it also represents another sacrifice for George. Like when his father died and he was forced to take over the business, or when his brother got married and took a job in New York instead of taking over the family business – his life has been a story of conflict between his desire to follow his dreams and “shake the dust” of Bedford Falls off his feet, and the desire to do the right thing.
But this is all background to the main story of IAWL, which is a true Christmas tale. The real crux comes when George’s absentminded and eccentric uncle mistakenly gives the bank deposit -- $8,000 cash – to the evil Potter on the very day the bank inspector is in town to check on the books.
George comes unglued. He gets drunk, shouts violently at his kids, smashes his car on a stormy night, and sinks to the very edge of despair, wishing out loud that he had never been born – and Stewart’s study of this level of emotion is deeply believable.
At his wits end, about to throw himself from a bridge, George meets his guardian angel, Clarence.
The “junior angel” who is attempting to earn his wings by saving George, pre-empts him, throwing himself into the river so that George is forced to jump in and save his life, rather than ending his own.
Though it takes a lot of convincing before George believes Clarence’s story, he tags along as the angel gives him a first-hand view of what his life would have been like if his wish were granted, and he had never been born.
Bedford Falls, in George’s absence, has become “Pottersville” and is run by Potter, with slums, bars and gambling halls transforming the sleepy town into a place of sin.
His wife, Mary, is an old maid who never married. His mother runs a boarding house. People that George has helped, without his assistance, have turned bitter and angry due to the cards life has dealt them. His own brother, whom George saved from drowning when they were children, perished without his older brother to save him.
The moral of this story, Clarence explains, is that George’s life has made a tremendous difference to countless people around him, and all is not lost.
Not surprisingly, George gets a new lease on life. One of the most famous scenes in the film is when George return to his life, and pure joy fills his heart as he runs through the town, naming all the places he has known since childhood – seeing them with new eyes and a new sense of appreciation.
In a tear-jerker ending to the film, Mary – the girl his mother promised “will help you find the answers George”, calls on the townspeople to help out her husband, who has done so much for them.
Surprise, surprise, they come through, in a heartwarming finish that cements the message that it’s better to give to receive, and that love, friendship and generosity are the things that matter in this life.
My heart is warming up now just thinking of this story and its moral about community and the importance of looking out for one’s neighbour. It’s a classic. If you haven’t seen it, don’t wait for next year. See it now! Merry Christmas…
