It’s a Wonderful Life (60th Anniversary Edition)

In one of the most exquisite performances ever given in an American film, James Stewart is superb as George. It's not an easy role to play because so much screen time is spent focusing on George's subtle reactions to the world around him. One incredible moment comes at the train station when George slowly begins to absorb the news of his brother's recent marriage and new career opportunity, and how his brother's fortune will destroy his own hopes of leaving Bedford Falls and the family business. Stewart's face is extraordinary in this scene, as surprised realization fades into quiet disappointment and finally, gentle graciousness and acceptance. Stewart's tour de force is given strong support by a superb cast of Capra stalwarts, including Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, H. B. Warner, and the phenomenal Beulah Bondi (as George's mother). And Donna Reed, in one of her first romantic leading roles after a number of years playing supporting ingenues and bits, is excellent in the warm but unglamorous role of George's loving wife, Mary.

The Republic Home Video DVD is definitely the edition of this classic to own. Like the LaserDisc before it, the DVD offers a crystal clear, beautifully restored film-to-video transfer which will amaze and delight anyone who is familiar only with the horrible multi-generational VHS cassettes, or the awful colorized version, that were commonly screened back in the late 1970's and 1980's. There are some nice bonus features on the DVD, including a "making of" documentary and the theatrical trailer. This is one DVD that you'll never regret adding to your home theatre collection!

Trivia note: If you're a fan of this movie, try finding a copy of film historian David Thomson's 1985 novel "Suspects" which continues George's story and relates the characters from this movie to many others (did you know that Donna Reed's "Mary Bailey" is actually the sister of Gene Tierney's "Laura"?!, etc.) ... great fun!

The film is so well-known that any further comment on it may seem superfluous, but one of the main reasons why I find IAWL ultimately so successful is that unlike, say, Roberto Benigni's recent (and similarly titled and oriented) Life is Beautiful - to my mind, much overrated - IAWL's highly stylized story, beyond its own very obvious fantasy premise, always remains a relatively plausible one. Good, on closer examination it may still seem just a little improbable and contrived, and, for some tastes, perhaps a bit too sentimental at times, but that's not so critical here. For me, Benigni's film loses much of its impact because Benigni stretched credibility way too far in adapting and softening up its holocaust setting to meet the needs of his story. True, fans of Benigni's film argue that it was only meant as a fable anyway, and that is a valid point, but unfortunately the holocaust itself was no fable, and that leaves me seriously questioning the honesty and credibility of the film's message as indicated by its title. Capra's classic fable does not make such a mistake. Instead, it depicts the central protagonist, George Bailey, as a believable, sympathetic character in small-town America who has to suffer constant disappointment and loss throughout his life. His desire to end his life at the film's climax seems quite understandable: it seems that he has lost just about everything.

From a storytelling point of view, the whole buildup to this climax, the depiction of George's life story, can be seen as a spectacular piece of risk-taking on Capra's part, since it is so long and drawn-out. The first half of the film can seem slow, but it is precisely the extreme length of this buildup, and the level of detail of George's life that it depicts, that makes the ultimate resolution of the story so unexpectedly powerful. For the still uninitiated, this means: stay with it. For by the time Clarence the angel finally appears, the viewer is intimately familiar with George's dilemma and can identify with it accordingly. George seems to have had a dull and uninspiring life, has never fulfilled his former dreams and ambitions, and now has a financial crisis on his hands, at Christmas of all times. And just when he's at his most down, he's been further humiliated by his arch-rival, the Scrooge-like Potter, socked on the jaw by his daughter's schoolteacher's husband, and, in his drunkenness, has rammed his car into a tree. Most perceptive; life can be just like that, sometimes the misfortunes pile up just when there's enough of them already. After indulging in often overt sentimentality earlier in the film, Capra depicts this ultimate crisis in George's life in a surprisingly chilling and dark fashion, adding still further to the overall impact. Anyone who thinks that the actors weren't really challenged by their material should reconsider in view of this part of the film - for example, the way James Stewart plays George's climactic breakdown in front of his family, and his later despair in the bar, is truly masterful. Stewart was a genuinely great actor.

The genius of the film is then how Clarence (the most unlikely angel imaginable) is still able to turn George's (and the viewer's) perspective around, despite such a long, dark setup. Here, too, the alternative Bedford Falls "time line" (Pottersville) is both chilling and sure in its logic. Hence, when George finally realizes what would have become of his family, friends and acquaintances, and even his town had he never been, the effect is for both him and the viewer an unexpected and thrilling revelation. When he finally beams with joy at the end, both he and the viewer are appreciating his true riches in an entirely new light. Again, credit is especially due to James Stewart for portraying this so convincingly.

Capra once said that he made this film not for critics, but for those he most admired. So, one might claim that IAWL is, like Benigni's Life is Beautiful, "not a film for the jaded," and yet its great strength is that it can, in fact, also speak so well to some of us who might otherwise be potentially skeptical about its message and make us think a little differently about things. (For me, as far as this aspect of the film is concerned, it wins over Benigni's film hands down.) As for the film's little unspoken messages ("you can only take with you what you've given away" and Clarence's final message to George that "you're never a failure if you have friends"): they speak for themselves.

Incidentally, to a reader from Wakefield, MA, December 25, 1999: don't get the wrong idea about critic Leonard Maltin's comment about the film seeming to improve with age, he wasn't "incredulous" about that all. In fact, IAWL gets his maximum rating of four stars in his Movie and Video Guide (I wish Amazon would include his ratings in their listings), and of the 1970s TV remake, It Happened One Christmas, he says "[it] only shows how wonderful the Frank Capra original was - and is."

As for the DVD version, doesn't get any better than this. The movie quality itself if better than any of my VHS Tape versions by a long shot, the addtional information about the film, actors, etc. is AWESOME!

I love the movie and now I have a verison of it that brings it all back to me.