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It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
Jimmy Stewart served as a bomber pilot in WW2, flying 20 combat missions over Europe in a B-24. Over 2100 ‘Flying Coffins’ were lost in those missions. As an actor, Stewart was transformed, from the boyish Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) to the bounty hunter of The Naked Spur. It’s a Wonderful Life was Stewart’s first film following his discharge from the Air Force.
David Thomson’s comments (from Have You Seen . . .?)
There is a great tradition in the American movie of our heroes packing their bags with our imaginary energy and going out into space, adventure and the new. It is Charlie going to Gold Rush country. It is the great land race in Cimarron. It is Kit and his girl loping into the Badlands like wild deer. It is Rick and Louis strolling off into the fog together at the close of Casablanca. And then there are the films about people with too little courage or risk for the dream. It is the Smiths who stay at home in St. Louis; it is Dorothy getting ‘home’ again; and it is George Bailey.
He stayed in a backwater. He denied himself so much challenge, and in its place he took security, a sweetheart for a wife, a respected job at the savings and loan, the state of being trusted by a few people. But then there is the risk of that going sour because Uncle Billy lost the crucial deposit. And Potter will move in . . . and George, in that despair known most intensely in Frank Capra films, where the young men have the DNA of being haunted by guilt in their souls already – George must kill himself.
Yes, it turns out all right, thanks to an apprentice angel, Clarence, thanks to Christmas and it’s being a movie. But you can feel the ordeal and the agony, and you know what I mean when I say it’s also a film noir itching to get out and infect the small-town assurance. You know more. You know that since 1946, the United States has come to resemble Potterville, far more than Bedford Falls.
(Written by Thomson on the cusp of the 2008 financial denouement)
One wish for 2012 is that Wonderful not be remade but if it was . . . would George be a deeply underwater homeowner, berating himself on the bridge over signing those loan docs, and would his epiphany be realizing those docs had been falsified after signing, that his lender had bet against the MBS he helped to create, and would George then lead a local revolt against Potter's TBTF?
Jimmy Stewart served as a bomber pilot in WW2, flying 20 combat missions over Europe in a B-24. Over 2100 ‘Flying Coffins’ were lost in those missions. As an actor, Stewart was transformed, from the boyish Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) to the bounty hunter of The Naked Spur. It’s a Wonderful Life was Stewart’s first film following his discharge from the Air Force.
David Thomson’s comments (from Have You Seen . . .?)
There is a great tradition in the American movie of our heroes packing their bags with our imaginary energy and going out into space, adventure and the new. It is Charlie going to Gold Rush country. It is the great land race in Cimarron. It is Kit and his girl loping into the Badlands like wild deer. It is Rick and Louis strolling off into the fog together at the close of Casablanca. And then there are the films about people with too little courage or risk for the dream. It is the Smiths who stay at home in St. Louis; it is Dorothy getting ‘home’ again; and it is George Bailey.
He stayed in a backwater. He denied himself so much challenge, and in its place he took security, a sweetheart for a wife, a respected job at the savings and loan, the state of being trusted by a few people. But then there is the risk of that going sour because Uncle Billy lost the crucial deposit. And Potter will move in . . . and George, in that despair known most intensely in Frank Capra films, where the young men have the DNA of being haunted by guilt in their souls already – George must kill himself.
Yes, it turns out all right, thanks to an apprentice angel, Clarence, thanks to Christmas and it’s being a movie. But you can feel the ordeal and the agony, and you know what I mean when I say it’s also a film noir itching to get out and infect the small-town assurance. You know more. You know that since 1946, the United States has come to resemble Potterville, far more than Bedford Falls.
(Written by Thomson on the cusp of the 2008 financial denouement)
One wish for 2012 is that Wonderful not be remade but if it was . . . would George be a deeply underwater homeowner, berating himself on the bridge over signing those loan docs, and would his epiphany be realizing those docs had been falsified after signing, that his lender had bet against the MBS he helped to create, and would George then lead a local revolt against Potter's TBTF?
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