“This story is the lousiest cheese,” Frank Capra admitted to his star after making a rotten pitch. James Stewart stuck by his favourite director. “Frank, if you want to do a movie about me committing suicide, with an angel with no wings named Clarence, I’m your boy.”
Although the picture has become synonymous with homespun, small town values — values Stewart personified and Capra obviously cherished – it achieves its profound emotional resonance precisely by stressing their limitations, even to the point of suicide. This is the tragedy of a man who dreams of traveling the world, building cities, and making love to Gloria Grahame, who never leaves his hometown, works in his dad’s office, and marries Donna Reed. The “unborn” sequence where Clarence shows George how things might look if he hadn’t been around is chilling not because it’s morbid fantasy, but because “Pottersville” was and is so much closer to contemporary society than the nostalgic gentility of Bedford Falls.
For both Capra and Stewart this was their first movie after service in WWII, and it’s riven with their anxieties about coming home. Whether you believe in angels or not, it’s a wonderful film.
Frank Capra
James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Henry Travers, Beulah Bondi
USA
1946
English
Violence
Open to youth!
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Frank Capra
Screenwriter
Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra
Cinematography
Joseph Walker, Joseph Biroc
Editor
William Hornbeck
Original Music
Dimitri Tiomkin
Also Playing
Thelma & Louise
In this iconic feminist road movie BFF Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon take off for a weekend getaway that turns violent when one of them is attacked. The stakes get higher as they flee the scene. Winner: Best Original Screenplay (Callie Khouri).
Boyz n the Hood
Twenty-three-year-old writer-director John Singleton's groundbreaking portrait of three young men growing up in South Central is a film of integrity and compassion. It's a far richer portrait of Black lives than Hollywood's gangsta exploitation pics.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
In 2029, Earth has been ravaged by the war between the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet and the human resistance. (Yep.) James Cameron's all too relevant action movie is in some ways unsurpassed. Linda Hamilton is the mom we all need right now.