It was on this day in 1946 that Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, based on a short story by Philip Van Doren Stern made it to the big screen. It was an expensive film and opened against a lot of competition, and did not do well.
But over the years in part thanks to endless Christmas season reruns on television gradually worked its way into the American heart. Even at the time it opened, however, while not doing much at the box office, people believed there was something to it, and it did garner five Academy Award nominations, including for best picture (Losing out to The Best Years of Our Lives).
For the benefit of both people who have not seen it, Wikipedia outlines the plot. “The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his dreams in order to help others, and whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched and how different life in his community of Bedford Falls would be had he never been born.”
Today Rotten Tomatoes give it a critics score of 94% and a viewers score of 95%, and calls it the “Holiday classic to define all Holiday classics.” The American Film Institute lists it at number eleven of the 100 greatest films, and number one American inspirational film ever made.
It is a lovely movie, similar in ways to A Christmas Carol, with some important words about priorities in this world of grasping and hatred. And in these hard times, perhaps, a good moment to recall that we don’t know what good we might be doing, when we care for others…
Those two who haven’t seen the movie, don’t watch these clips, see the movie. You can get the whole thing on Youtube for free. For the rest of us, you’re welcome.
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