“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
La Bola Negra
A big, old-school historical melodrama gets a thrillingly modern, queer makeover from Spanish duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, who artfully juggle three gay protagonists across stories set in 1932, 1937, and 2017. Winner: Best Director, Cannes. Screening on 35mm.
The 39 Steps
In our new film studies series, FRAMEWORK, film scholar Michael van den Bos explores the work of Alfred Hitchcock, across four monochrome masterworks. This week: The 39 Steps (1935), a witty and fast-moving spy thriller from Hitchcock's English period.
The Great McGinty
Preston Sturges' first film as writer-director is an omnivorous satire on endemic political corruption, the tale of a tramp who gets his entry into politics by casting 37 votes for mayor at $2 a pop. Eventually he'll be on the ticket himself...
To Be Or Not To Be
Strange but true: one of the greatest comedies of Hollywood's golden era was inspired by Hitler's annexation of Poland in 1938. Jack Benny is the renowned theatre actor whose performance of Hamlet is interrupted by the Germans.