Written by J. Dobbs Rosa.
We’ve all seen It’s a Wonderful Life. Every year. It’s that old corny black and white Christmas movie that Grandma or someone makes us watch until we can get to Elf or National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation or Home Alone. What a snooze! I’m here to highlight in a little run of tiny essays things to look for whether you are telecommuting to Bedford Falls again against your will, or if you just want to freshen up your eyes for something you might feel like you’ve wrung out all the Christmas joy from.
“Boys and girls and music. Why do they need gin?”
As we enter the peak viewing season for It’s a Wonderful Life, an important aspect to remember is that it is, for a lot of the movie, a Period Piece. For all intents and purposes here in 2024 it is essentially the first significant Post-WWII Hollywood movie, and so a great deal of the lead up to the film’s big climax, the reverie in which George was never born, is a nostalgia fest for the years just post World War I through the experience of World War II Stateside.
There are at least two big details from the night George and Mary meet again all grown up that might elude modern audiences. Before he heads over to the graduation party, Harry and George’s Dad says, “No gin tonight, son.” This probably reads to most in 2024 as the equivalent of “Don’t Drink and Drive” advice to teens now, but this is taking place in 1928, 8 years into Prohibition and 5 years before its repeal. 1946 audiences would absolutely know and recognize that. I can only speculate the reaction from a 1946 audience, but I suspect it was sort of like showing someone with a Rubik’s Cube in an ’80s period piece. “Remember that? How quaint.”
Similarly, George and Mary win the “Big Charleston Contest!” at the dance. Again this scene is the end of the school year 1928, which is just a year after the peak of the Charleston craze. For the 1946 audience I’m sure this was met with a mix of nostalgia and probable embarrassment similar to a 2024 audience hearing something like “It’s time for the big Macarena Contest!” Although it’s worth noting that if It’s a Wonderful Life was made today, the Charleston contest would take place in 2006, not 1994. So maybe the more appropriate parallel than the Macarena would be if George and Mary were having a Krump Off before they fell in the pool.
“George fought the battle of Bedford Falls”
On March 22, 1941, less than one month after winning the Best Actor Oscar for The Philadelphia Story, James Maitland Stewart was inducted into the Army Air Corps. True to form in relation to his on-screen persona, he was actually turned away from enlisting a few months previous for being underweight. Stewart was one of the earliest and biggest stars to enlist as WWII was building, and at first was not surprisingly sidelined doing PR appearances and the like. He was also an experienced and licensed commercial pilot and wanted “in on the action” so to speak. By 1943 he convinced the brass to send him to the UK to fly B-24s. After the war Stewart rarely got into details of that part of his service, but by most accounts he was a changed man, as so many were, in the aftermath of WWII.
Stewart returned to Hollywood in 1945 and his first film back was It’s a Wonderful Life. Just as WWII sits as this transition point for America in the 20th Century, so much so to the extent that when using the phrases “Pre-War” and “Post-War” no one questions which war we are speaking of, It’s a Wonderful Life stands as a transition point for Stewart’s on-screen persona. As mentioned previously, a great deal of the film’s run time is a Period Piece starting in 1919 (just post WWI) up through WWII. Stewart shows he’s still got that Norman Rockwell “Gee Willikers” charm that made him a RomCom icon throughout a great deal of these scenes, even maintaining his pluck through a run on the bank that cancels his honeymoon, and every other curveball that keeps George Bailey from ever getting out of Bedford Falls.
This portion of the film is also an interesting recap of the Pre-War years all the way through WWII stateside for the 1946 viewers. Unlike Stewart, George Bailey can’t enlist and his brother goes off to become the war hero. It serves as a reminder of all the sacrifices made both during wartime and before, but also, through Capra’s often overly rosy glasses, how communities came together. Time and again, often with George and/or Mary’s urging, the common people pitch in. Cop Bert and Hack Ernie help Mary decorate the old Granville house for George to come home to after their honeymoon is cancelled. George and Mary pitch in to move Mr. Martini and his family out of Potter’s slums. During the run on the bank we get a primer on how the Building and Loan works and how the community’s combined wealth can help raise up everyone. We see wartime rubber and paper drives.
In the context of 1946 where so many have had to go without due to rationing, not to mention the feeling of normal life being put on hold or worse for the previous 5 years or so, the frustrations that build in George as his dreams are deferred over and over would seem so very relatable, and maybe more so today for a modern audience than it was before 2020.
While George Bailey keeps going with aplomb, it still wears on him. The little disappointments are constant through life and he takes his lumps and keeps going, but there is a price. He keeps all the little indignities to himself, but then when the big things hit the strain becomes too much. He can’t tell anyone about Uncle Billy’s mistake with the deposit. The bank inspector is in town. Potter is leaning on him. The pressure builds until he viciously snaps at his family. This is a moment that many people recoil at as a modern audience in that kind of a “Men will yell at a banister knob instead of getting therapy” way, but this is one aspect of the film that I think is sorely misunderstood.
The film knows that this keeping it to oneself and bottling up all of those things is just what these men coming back from war are doing or are going to do, and the film knows that’s not a great option. One has to examine a narrative as a whole and if characters aren’t given the leeway to be wrong and to do bad things then they can’t change for the better. That’s not excusing the behavior. This is a fictional character after all, an actor saying lines loudly at actors, but the fact that people really get mad about this moment is clear that Capra et al are getting at something. It’s exposing it and hopefully in the big picture addressing it. “A teachable moment” in the parlance of our times.
Many are surprised by Stewart’s performance through this portion of the film. It’s dark, it’s desperate, and it’s so unlike that gawky impression of Jimmy Stewart people have been doing for more than 50 years. I’m not going to play armchair Freud and claim Stewart didn’t have these chops back in 1940 when he was Tom Hanks 4 decades before Tom Hanks, but it’s also easy to speculate that Stewart is drawing on some very real emotions in some of his rawer moments throughout the picture. It’s worth noting some amazing framing and lighting selection certainly comes together in a lot of these shots for a lot of masterful emphasis and amplification.
It’s easy to forget because of later day pastiches of the movie that solely focus on the alternate universe aspect where George was never born, that It’s a Wonderful Life is ultimately about a guy who has what externally would look like to anyone a pretty great (dare I say wonderful?) life who after what seems like just one bad day heads to the bridge to end it all. Without the interloping of a guardian angel, it would likely come as a surprise to virtually everyone who knew him. Obviously the lead up to that bad day shows us all the little disappointments in George’s life and helps us understand how he gets there, but we’re the audience watching from on high and all the other people on the ground don’t get the whole picture.
This aspect of the broken Post-War American man and that a supportive, caring community is what is needed most to heal is often overlooked in lieu of just a more simplistic “Don’t lose hope” message. Don’t forget that along with the passing of the hat to bailout Bailey Building and Loan, everyone has been out looking for him until Bert finds him on the bridge. As much as George feels like no one ever notices that he has always been there for the people of Bedford Falls, the people of Bedford Falls have always been there for him without him noticing either. It is very much a film about not just what George had gone through but what the audience of the day had gone through in one way or another and what was needed to survive it all in the context of 1946 America.
“Zuzu’s Petals!”
An aspect of It’s A Wonderful Life that often goes unremarked upon is its economy of storytelling. That’s not to say it’s a particularly terse film although we do cover 1919 through 1946 at a better clip than a great many Biopics made these days. It’s to say that a great deal of the film’s building blocks are reused or repurposed. Sometimes these building blocks are so deftly snuck in that can be missed or only noticed upon multiple viewings.
Some of those aspects are your traditional “Three Uses of the Knife” that David Mamet wrote about in his book of the same name:
“Huddie Ledbetter, also known as Leadbelly, said: You take a knife, you use it to cut the bread, so you’ll have strength to work; you use it to shave, so you’ll look nice for your lover; on discovering her with another, you use it to cut out her lying heart.”
To that respect something like Zuzu’s Petals are a nice example where George tucks the petals away in his pocket to simulate fixing the flower for his daughter who has caught cold because she didn’t want to button up her coat lest she crush her pretty flower. George now in a lather calls out Zuzu’s teacher on the phone for being careless and then exchanges cross words with her husband challenging him to a fight. Later at Martini’s bar George bumps into the angry husband and gets a sock in the mouth for his troubles. When we get to the reverie portion of the film both Zuzu’s Petals and George’s bloody lip serve as indicators as to which reality we are in.
Hopefully no one watching the film has ever felt the need to pull up a 45 minute YouTube video called “Zuzu’s Petals Explained” as it’s such a deft piece of storytelling that flows right from one beat to the next. So much so that when George notices his lip is bleeding again back on the bridge it reminds him to check for and then exclaim “Zuzu’s Petals!” and we all feel the same relief and joy that George does at having regained his family.
There are tons of other examples of reusing little things throughout the film, such as indicators to remind us which characters are which when they change actors, like Sam’s “Hee Haw!” or Violet’s “Georgie Porgie.” George’s promise to lasso the moon which returns both with Mary’s sketch in her mother’s parlor and when Mary tells him “George Bailey lassos stork” to let him know she’s “in a family way.” Pointing these out isn’t revolutionary or anything, it’s just praising and highlighting good storytelling and structure.
This brings us to a single line that I think is usually overlooked, which unlocks something about easily the most mocked moment in It’s a Wonderful Life by modern audiences. In the reverie where George was never born, at the cemetery, Clarence reluctantly informs George that Mary is “an old maid” who is about to close up the library. I totally understand the impulse to laugh at this moment. As many have remarked, if George wasn’t around surely a gal who looks like Donna Reed and can remodel an abandoned house isn’t going to be hurting for suitors. And even if there was just no other man in the universe for her than a man who never existed it’s unlikely that would cause her eyesight to degenerate requiring her to wear glasses. I get it.
Two things to remember in the reverie can illuminate what is happening in this much maligned moment. First of all is the obvious aspect that everyone is played burlesque broad throughout the fantasy sequence. Capra only has eighteen minutes to work with 104 minutes into a two hour ten minute movie. We need to get to the point quickly, but also we’re trying to scare George straight in Clarence’s version of a holiday hell house. The accent on Nick the bartender at Martini’s, the Scrooge-esque graveyard, the gun happy Bert the cop shooting out light fixtures as George runs away. Even in a movie that’s already as broad as It’s a Wonderful Life has been, the World Without a George is as subtle as a 1980s Just Say No PSA.
Secondly we need to remember that this world is magically cobbled together from the George Bailey CliffsNotes that make up the first portion of the film, which is also Clarence’s heavenly briefing we are watching. I used to have to explain this idea more in an era before the Multiverse went mainstream, but in 2024 I think anyone who likes movies gets it. To that end I posit the main reason that Mary is portrayed as a lonely librarian is a throw away line when a brooding George leaves his brother’s wedding party. He heads downtown instead of stopping by to see Mary as his mother urges him to do. There he sees Violet and when she asks him where he’s going he says, “I’ll probably just end up down at the library.”
Ending up at the library is George’s mopey resignation to what will happen to him without any romantic entanglement to distract him. Again I totally understand, especially in a modern context, Mary in Melodrama Old Maid Drag, wire-rimmed glasses and all, is not a paragon of feminist storytelling and I don’t begrudge anyone their laughs, but it doesn’t come out of nowhere. I partially think Mary’s first appearance is supposed to get a bit of a laugh just to alleviate some pressure as her understandable panic when a crazed stranger won’t leave her alone is genuinely unnerving.
So if you’re on your umpteenth viewing of It’s a Wonderful Life this year and you feel like you’ve seen it all, look for all the little things that reappear throughout the film. One of my personal favorite little doubled up details is that behind George’s dad are two frames of mounted butterflies on the dining room wall. Later on Christmas Eve when we see the Baileys’ living room you can see both of the frames of butterflies as well as a portrait of George’s late father on the wall. No attention is ever called this piece of set decoration, it’s just there as one of many echoes throughout the film. Find some more this year.
Editor’s note: It’s come to my attention that the version of this film on Prime Video is riddled with inexplicable edits that include omitting most if not all of the “Bedford Falls without George Bailey” sequences. In December 2024, the only complete version streaming is on Peacock.
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