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It's a Wonderful Life
Jan. 27th, 2013 12:59 amFrank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life - indeed, Frank Capra’s entire oeuvre - is often snidely described as “heart-warming.” Presumably these are the same people who deride Disney movies as sweet, fluffy tales, never mind all the manifoldly scarring moments in Disney movies: the deaths of Bambi’s mother and Simba’s father, the dragon in Sleeping Beauty and the forest in Snow White, Hell at the end of Fantasia, the entirety of Alice in Wonderland and Pinocchio...
I found Disney terrifying as a child. Oh, sure, it ends happily. But the suffering you endure on the way!
Frank Capra, similarly, is much darker than his critics seem to notice. Sure, It’s a Wonderful Life ends on a note of mutual cooperation, in which the townsfolk band together to help George Bailey as Bailey has helped them, but poor Bailey goes through the mill first. All he wants is to get out of his Bedford Falls: he scrimps and saves and every time he’s about to go anywhere or do anything Fate intervenes, trapping him in a job he hates (important though he thinks it is) in a two-bit town he yearns to leave.
It would be really hard being married to George Bailey. His wife must sometimes wonder if he includes her in the list of things trapping him.
My favorite Capra movie remains Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (another film starring Jimmy Stewart, though his Mr. Smith has fewer sharp edges than George Bailey). But It’s a Wonderful Life is worth seeing.
I found Disney terrifying as a child. Oh, sure, it ends happily. But the suffering you endure on the way!
Frank Capra, similarly, is much darker than his critics seem to notice. Sure, It’s a Wonderful Life ends on a note of mutual cooperation, in which the townsfolk band together to help George Bailey as Bailey has helped them, but poor Bailey goes through the mill first. All he wants is to get out of his Bedford Falls: he scrimps and saves and every time he’s about to go anywhere or do anything Fate intervenes, trapping him in a job he hates (important though he thinks it is) in a two-bit town he yearns to leave.
It would be really hard being married to George Bailey. His wife must sometimes wonder if he includes her in the list of things trapping him.
My favorite Capra movie remains Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (another film starring Jimmy Stewart, though his Mr. Smith has fewer sharp edges than George Bailey). But It’s a Wonderful Life is worth seeing.
