I remember reading about a year ago that Maxim magazine had pronounced It's A Wonderful Life (1946), the ageless Frank Capra chestnut, one of the worst Christmas movies ever made.
That claim just seems silly, then and now, as the film is still widely acknowledged as one of our most touching and profound Christmas films. Perhaps Maxim was trying to be provocative or ironic, but they also sorely misled a lot of young people already distracted by whatever scantily clad young lady was gracing their cover that month.
Yet with passably funny Comedy Central take-offs undermining its stature as an important, enduring motion picture, and newer, glitzier fare squeezing out this special stand-by, is the new generation missing out?
At my son's high school two weeks ago, Life took second billing to a showing of Home Alone, an entertaining piece of broad farce to be sure, but as obvious as a pimple on your chin, and really having little to do with the spirit of Christmas, beyond Macaulay Culkin's ditzy parents going on vacation, leaving him to frustrate and injure some improbably inept burglars.
I think the school got their priorities mixed. Reportedly, few of the kids even stayed for the second (better) feature.
It's A Wonderful Life explores much deeper themes connected to what the holidays are traditionally supposed to concern: the values of basic goodness and sacrifice, the gift of friendship, the pitfalls of greed and commercialism, the sense of community and belonging that helps us feel truly connected in a society. As another classic film -- The Apartment -- poignantly evokes, there is no lonelier time for an already lonely person than in December.
For me, December is definitely the cruelest month, the month when years ago I lost my mother to cancer, and more recently, my father. This last sad and emotional experience actually helped me recover a cherished Christmas memory that involves both my late father and this indelible film.
This event would have occurred roughly 25 years ago. I was in the early stages of dating a young woman whom I knew only slightly, and who also had never met my father. I recall her arriving at my father's place, and prior plans to go out were put on hold when we learned that an uninterrupted screening of Wonderful Life was imminent. Suddenly and spontaneously, my father, my date and I sat down in front of the small kitchen television and began the movie, never planning to sit through it to the end. (After all, we'd each seen it.)
What followed bore out director Robert Altman's sage remark to me: "Always watch great movies again. It's worth it because even if the movie hasn't changed, you have. And therefore you'll always see something new." In just over two hours, my date, my father, and I had not budged and were each shedding copious tears, without embarrassment, fairly remarkable in that two people were virtual strangers to the third.
Yet the unlikeliness of it all didn't seem to matter at the time: we were all human, and thus inevitably moved by the heady blend of drama and fantasy unfolding before us once again. And it felt new as falling snow.
It's hard to believe that on first release, the immortal Frank Capra's favorite film received mixed reviews, lost money, and garnered not a single Oscar. (Life did have significant competition, as the outstanding, then more topical Best Years Of Our Lives had opened just a week earlier to rave reviews. It also won a raft of Oscars.)
Only years later, when a new generation discovered Life on TV each Christmas did the movie evolve into a beloved holiday staple. It's immensely gratifying to think that director Capra, James Stewart, the luminous Donna Reed (who almost lost her part to Capra regular Jean Arthur) and other surviving cast members lived to see their Christmas gem finally get its due -- and from the constituency that always counts most: the viewers. (Sadly, veteran character actor Lionel Barrymore, who so memorably played town banker Mr. Potter, the epitome of cruelty, died just as TV was hitting its stride in 1954.)
My Christmas wish: whether you've seen this film once or 20 times, don't let the magic of It's A Wonderful Life slip away or get marginalized by some newer, less demanding offering. If you haven't caught it in a few years, watch it again. Better yet, introduce it to that new generation who were steered wrong by the likes of Maxim. In itself, that will be an act that reflects the true spirit of the holiday.
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John, good 2 b back. True is the comment that while the movie hasn't changed the individual has - thanks Mr. Altman ! I look @ Wonderful regularly as Thanksgiving passes and I see my life passing in that so much of what the film is about - for me - always rings a bell. What if and how should I feel or act ? It follows a life in a narrative way and for that reason it tells us that while we aren't perfect we should remember the meassge. Hope that you had a good Christmas ... Happy New Year !
Two things. First if the movie critics and Liberals hate it chances are I will like it. Remember they also trashed Forrest Gump and Spangalish. Both are very good movies with "more to the story".
Second, the movie still shows that hard work delivers success...something Liberals have abandoned.
I have't read all your pieces John but this must rank among your best. I think it is wonderful. I hope I'm not the only one who thinks you deserve to be among the bloggers who get ther wings this Christmas.
This movie is more important to share with children, and young adults of all ages, and more so now than any time since it was released. The threat of our society with the subprime mortgage fraud and the impact as it crescendos throughout our economy. the abuse of authority by our government, the attacks on morality and common good, and the wholesale destruction and even demeaning MSM attitude towards having a sharing caring family unit and community. The story provides great insight on the roles of all the charactors portrayed and speaks to us as to how we are intimately weaved together, whether we recognize our contribution to mankind or ignore it.
I remember the first time I saw IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. Long before VHS. A friend was visiting me in my studio apartment in New York. They were going to run a Capra film I'd never seen at 2AM. My friend was pissed at my rudeness. He wanted to sleep. I apologized and said I'd keep the volume down. Grumbling, he joined me. We were both bowled over. Why had we never heard of this film? (That was probably 1969 or 1970.) My friend went on to become a film critic for VARIETY.
Soon after, Capra's autobiography came out. There were inconsistencies in the book -- statements based on philosophical premises that were mutually exclusive -- and they bothered me. Chunks smelled like hypocrisy. So I did what a teen would do. I wrote to Capra.
And he answered. Though I stupidly lost the letter, I remember it pretty much word-for-word. "Dear Mr. Sweet -- Anyone who is a friend of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE is a friend of mine. I hope you will take your inspiration from my films and not my life." Years later, I read a biography that revealed what a dismaying character Capra frequently was. And I read that Goodrich and Hackett, the team who wrote much of WONDERFUL, hated working with him so much that they refused to see the film, even when it attained classic status.
But however it came into being, it's a remarkable film. It seems simple and sentimental, but it takes a large collection of characters through several eras and an alternate world and the audience keeps them all straight and Capra pays off every story strand real depth and meaning. One of the things you learn is that people who make masterpieces aren't always nice people. Picasso, Wagner, Frost, Pound ... What the hell. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE is an astonishing film. Capra put his wisdom into his work and not his life. The life is gone, the film endures.
A little additional background: when the movie came out in 1946, Cabra did not intend it as a Christmas movie. Instead, he wanted to convey the message that even though WWII was over, Americans should not forget that it was still necessary to make sacrifices for the common good.
Unfortunately that was not the message people wanted to hear right after the war. This is the reason the movie did not immediately resonate. It was time for the peace dividend and the postwar boom. Most Americans were simply not in the mood for more sacrifices.
I believe the movie became popular again in the seventies, when the spirit of sharing resonated with more people, in the midst of inflation and job losses. So who knows, maybe the post-Bush generation will come to appreciate it anew.
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Posted December 24, 2007 | 10:06 AM (EST)