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It's a Wonderful Life film image; a bunch of children hugging a man

It's a Wonderful Life

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“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.

Director

Frank Capra

Cast

James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Henry Travers, Beulah Bondi

Credits
Country of Origin

USA

Year

1946

Language

English

Content Warning

Violence

G

Open to youth!

130 min
Liberty Films

Book Tickets

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Credits

Producer

Frank Capra

Screenwriter

Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra

Cinematography

Joseph Walker, Joseph Biroc

Editor

William Hornbeck

Original Music

Dimitri Tiomkin

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