It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
Director: Frank Capra
Screenwriters: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra
Starring: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Henry Travers

Despite it bombing and falling short of its budget in its initial box office run in 1946, It’s a Wonderful Life has slowly and surely grown in popularity over the years. Mostly thanks to television syndication (through which it was annually broadcast at every yuletide), Frank Capra’s financial disaster has morphed into sell-out re-releases in cinemas across the globe. On this, its 75th birthday, It’s a Wonderful Life can enjoy its status as the favourite Christmas film of many a generation.

As the first production of the short-lived Liberty Films, a company formed by director Frank Capra, William Wyler and George Stevens, It’s a Wonderful Life was intended to be a film of conscience to soothe the traumatised masses in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Yet strangely its relevance hasn’t waned. In fact, adoration for this film is probably at an all time high…

For its youngest audiences, the portrayed lives of George Bailey (James Stewart) and Mary Hatch (Donna Reed) are parallel to those of their Great Grandparents (or even Great Great Grandparents), but surprisingly no element of relatability has been lost. Film is an art form, and like all great works of art, it should be an effective snapshot of the time it was created in. It’s a Wonderful Life provides an insight into the lives of these very relatives, giving a deeper understanding and appreciation of these people we may have never met but to whom we owe our very existences. The film’s continuing and growing popularity can also be attributed to its sincerity and earnestness: this isn’t only a story true to the spirit of Christmas but a film with a philosophy and message that has managed to resonate throughout the decades.

The urban myth surrounding the origins of It’s a Wonderful Life is that inspiration for the story came from a greetings card. In reality, Philip Van Doren Stern failed to get a publisher for his short story “The Greatest Gift”, so instead printed it onto Christmas cards to give to friends and family. This method of distribution eventually turned the relevant heads in Hollywood and the rights were bought by RKO. It passed through several hands and endured several rewrites resulting in a very different story to what was eventually produced, such as the starring role almost going to Cary Grant. It eventually landed in the lap of Frank Capra to become the auspicious return to Hollywood for both Capra and the film’s star, James Stewart, both of whom had dedicated themselves to the war effort, directing documentaries and training videos and serving in the US Army respectively.

It’s a Wonderful Life has become such a famous part of Hollywood’s Golden Era, its plot is familiar even to those who have never seen it. The story revolves around the character George Bailey (James Stewart) who lives in the fictional town of Bedford Falls in Upstate New York. Like millions of others, George is a typical member of the middle classes of the early 20th century in small-town America, but through the revelation of his life-story it is shown that George Bailey is anything but typical. George grew up with fierce and grand ambitions but instead of exploring the world as he had always dreamed of, he unwittingly found himself chained to a desk at a penny-counting job he hates at his late father’s Bailey Bros. Building and Loan company. This turn of events cannot be fully attributed to random unforeseen circumstances such as his father’s sudden death or falling in love with his childhood sweetheart, but instead through selflessness and moments of moral courage taken by George himself. The Bailey Building and Loan is not just a small time building society: it is the single institute that stands between Bedford Falls and the inexhaustible greedy machinations of local Millionaire, Henry F. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), and George knows this. The building society created by his father and uncle has allowed for the working class of Bedford Falls to be able to buy their own homes and escape the extortionate privately rented slums owned by Potter. And, with no one else competent enough to keep the family business going, George knows his abandonment of the company would effectively be throwing these same working masses to the wolves. He knows that Potter wouldn’t mind seeing these same people starve on the streets.

Despite having to extinguish the burning desire to stretch his wings and fly, life still isn’t too horrid for George as he lives within the warm arms of a caring community and loving family, with his wife Mary at the heart of it. This simple life marked by George’s altruism eventually takes its toll. On the fateful Christmas Eve at the epicentre of the film’s plot, $8000 dollars from the Building and Loan’s funds is misplaced, and as the bank examiner is in town, this big hole in the books will not go amiss. As George and Uncle Billy struggle to recover the missing thousands, the consequences of this accident begin to dawn on George: bankruptcy, scandal and prison. When considering his young family, this burden becomes insurmountable, leading George to contemplate ending his own life. It is at this moment in which the answer to the town’s prayers arrives in the form of the Clarence Oddbody, bringing with him the most unforgettable moments in cinema when granting George’s wish of never being born.

Underneath its Christmassy exterior, It’s a Wonderful Life is a delightfully deceptive movie filled with illusions. Although it screams originality, the story is essentially an updated version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” with ghostly apparitions and alternate realities to boot. It delves into dark themes such as poverty, death and suicide, yet it is considered family viewing and is famous for its many lighter moments.

In dissecting It’s a Wonderful Life to try to understand its outstanding popularity, one has to consider the writing and the philosophy that shines out from the film. It doesn’t take much research to find out that the writing process was chaotic. The story had passed through several hands by the time it reached Capra’s team, and apparently the husband and wife writing duo of Goodrich and Hackett did not get along well with Capra who secretly rewrote much of their script, much to their anger. Despite this deception, and the fact that this was the first and only time Capra had contributed to a script, the end result remains impressive, especially as it conveys a consistent philosophy throughout: celebrating the magnificence of ordinary life.

Before the war, Frank Capra’s most famous works were screwball comedies such as It Happened One Night (1934) and comedy-dramas including Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), each of which tend to share similar themes and characteristics to It’s a Wonderful Life: the mixing of whimsy with moments of sobriety, and of course the victory of the underdog over the big bad (which is usually a manifestation of the rich and powerful). Simple moments from life are taken and illuminated to reveal the little joys that can be found within our own lives. One such a moment comes in witnessing a soaked George and Mary walking home from George’s younger brother Harry’s high school graduation party where they accidentally fell into the swimming pool whilst dancing. Singing off-key in the streets, wearing nothing but stolen oversized clothed from lost and found, throwing rocks at an abandoned house, this is where George and Mary’s love begins to flower, as it has in similar moments for normal people throughout history.

What differs It’s a Wonderful Life to its pre-war counterparts is: despite its reputation as an uplifting and inspiring film, a very dark tone bleeds throughout. Even in comparison to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in which the titular Smith is pitted against the corrupt system of the American political machine, George Bailey’s struggles against Mr Potter and indeed the evils of ordinary life feels so much more harrowing. No longer do the stakes within Capra’s movies feel as if they are there for spectacle, they instead appear to be a reflection of the horror and tragedy of reality. Capra even uses comedy to consolidate George’s pathetic circumstances, such as in the moment George realises Clarence, his supposed guardian angel, is only a second-class one.

“Well, you look about the kind of angel I’d get.”

Additionally, his expert timing is used to induce painful whiplash. George and Mary’s aforementioned wicked fun on the streets of Bedford Falls is cut drastically short as George’s family calls him home as his Father had just suffered a stroke. How true to the diametric highs and lows of real life.

Considering the time in which the film was made, it is not surprising that Capra’s work experienced such a tonal shift: Capra, alongside everyone else in the world, would have been shocked and appalled beyond belief by the atrocities that were unearthed during the war. The depiction of such exquisite despair turning into hope and joy required expertise beyond just writing – Capra’s direction drew upon all elements of production to create this masterpiece. Standing as a very expensive independent movie (notably, the set for Bedford Falls is still one of the largest film sets ever assembled with the main street being 300 yards long), it was in no small part Capra’s creativity that assembled a film that feels oddly modern.

Now a popular trope of contemporary cinema, over half of It’s a Wonderful Life is told in flashback, a fairly uncommon tactic only used by the boldest of directors of the time. Its use here gives us an all-encompassing bird’s eye (or heaven’s) view of George’s life, creating an act of deception in which a 2 hour run-time feels like a man’s entire life story. This narrative structure also ensures that we can’t help but to fall in love with George as we witness his private moments of frustration and anger, each highlighting the cost of every one of his sacrifices. Capra also indulged in the use of freeze frames before they were popularised – in that era of filmmaking, freeze-frames were used as part of a fantasy sequence, such as when time is frozen in A Matter of Life and Death (1946) as opposed to an editing technique. Capra used it as an opportunity to emphasise important details within the story, specifically through the medium of the unseen Joseph narrating George’s life to Clarence. There hasn’t been a film with narration released in the three quarters of a century since that doesn’t use the same technique.

Another first-time innovation worthy of note, especially because of its unexpected visceral power, is the snow. It’s a Wonderful Life was filmed in the summer on a sound stage, so of course the snow isn’t real.  Before 1946, falling snow seen on film was cornflakes painted white, and as one would expect the result was a lot of unwanted sound. Capra was very keen on recording the film’s sound live on set, and as such a way to make silent snow had to be found. The answer to Capra’s demand came in the shape of a mixture of foamite, soap and water being pumped through a wind machine at high pressure. Is there a more peaceful, natural silence than a winter’s night where the noise of the world is muffled by the fall of snow? The creation of this silent snow helped to heighten the emotion of what is now one of the most beloved movie scenes of all time: after wishing he was never born, George eventually wins his life back after praying for it from God; the answer to his prayer comes with the silent falling of snow that goes unnoticed to George, representing that he is now back in his own reality.

“I wanna live again. I wanna live again. Please, God, let me live again.”

Cinematic perfection.

Of course, Capra’s greatest innovation in directing It’s a Wonderful life was hewing out the performance of the movie’s stars, most notably those of Donna Reed and James Stewart. The influence of the Second World War on the pair’s performances is too vast to encapsulate within this review, and not enough credit can be given to these actors for utilising their own possibly traumatic experiences from that conflict to give such raw and truthful renderings of their characters. The pair’s chemistry with each other represented the two major emotions found in the war’s aftermath: George is the jaded cynic contemplating whether life will be the same again and Mary is the life-affirming optimist within this new found world. With this dynamic, Capra was generous in letting his actors explore their feelings. James Stewart’s return to the big screen did show a notable difference in performance: still very much the All-American Everyman, he was not quite as wide-eyed and naïve as his popular pre-war roles in the likes of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Destry Rides Again (1939). This more brooding appearance would eventually lead to the much darker roles he took on under Alfred Hitchcock. The actor himself had doubts about being able to perform certain scenes after his war experience, but these doubts turned out to be unfounded after reassurances from Capra who would let Stewart get his teeth stuck into a scene. By allowing the actors to run away with their own emotions, one of the most electrically charged kiss scenes was born as Stewart and Reed embrace over a fateful phone call. Critics to this day are still surprised it got through the censors.

Capra’s instincts and emotional sensitivity would especially pay off in creating It’s a Wonderful Life‘s biggest tear-jerking moment, in which George Bailey finally crumbles and resorts to prayer over a drink in a bar. Stewart reportedly became overcome with genuine emotion at invoking help from the “Divine Father” and is obviously and unabashedly crying. Capra loved it but had unfortunately filmed the whole thing on a long shot. Stewart had refused another take, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to convincingly act out that scene again, so at great cost Capra had that scene blown up. It remains transcendent to this day.

For a film that unabashedly deals in fantasy and the divine, there is oddly enough no Deus Ex Machina moment. When George returns home joyfully and triumphantly, he hasn’t had his problem’s magically fixed by Clarence. He has merely been returned to his own reality (with $8000 still missing). Furthermore, this isn’t a “be grateful with what you have” kind of story. Indeed, George has been shown the worth of his life by seeing the goodness that his generosity and integrity has brought to his community, and it is indeed these acts of goodness which save him. By helping others in need, those whom he has served have come to help him in his time of need, with it all coming to fruition in the finale as the townspeople of Bedford Falls fill the Bailey home, bringing George money but more importantly their love.

This is not an empty message. In its 75 years of existence, It’s a Wonderful Life’s truth still holds up. Despite the omnipresent darkness of the last few years, we have seen time and time again that we are capable of helping each other. People have fed the hungry, rescued those in peril, clapped for carers, looked after the sick and dying. There is always a danger that the humans that do this giving become weary as it feels like their work is all for naught, or times when it feels too difficult to fight the continuing corruption of those in power, but despite the Potters and Johnsons of this world, the wisdom of It’s a Wonderful Life still rings true.

For all those who have made sacrifices to help others in need, remember our own lives touch so many lives – you may not realise it, but the good you do has a huge and far-reaching impact, the absence of which would be keenly felt. “No man is a failure who has friends.”

24/24

Grand Hotel (1932)
Director: Edmund Goulding
Screenwriter: William A. Drake
Cast: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery

In 1932, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer enlisted director Edmund Goulding and five of Hollywood’s biggest names to produce what would be that year’s second highest grossing film and winner of the Academy Award for best picture, Grand Hotel. The capability of all involved is something that can still be felt close to a century later in the airtight script, spectacular performances, and air of professionalism that pulsates through the screen. At the time of its release it was a success, but in the contemporary era the film has been misremembered by critics, historians and film lovers as nothing more than a “star vehicle”, as if the all-star cast is a detriment rather than an asset. In fact, Grand Hotel is a jewel of the pre-code era, featuring engaging human conflict without going past the point of believable melodrama.

The William A. Drake written feature follows several characters as they navigate human conflict over two nights in a Berlin hotel. In many ways, Grand Hotel is a film of transition. As the title would have you assume, it takes place entirely inside a hotel, a locale of brevity and travel in which the population changes on the daily. The year of the film’s release, 1932, was similarly as transitional, both in film and world history – it came after the few years during which Hollywood struggled to come to terms with sound technology, for example. Films made just after the arrival of sound, until around 1931, were often awkward and unsure of themselves, as if unfinished. This period would see countless giants of the silent era lose their careers, such as John Gilbert, Clara Bow, and Mae Murray. Conversely, a few years after Grand Hotel, the Hayes Code would introduce a mandatory list of requirements and prohibitions that would force films to be upstanding, clean, and non-offensive. In 1932, they could still get away with such lines as “I don’t suppose you’d take some dictation from me sometime, would you?”. Unlike films of later years, Grand Hotel acknowledges that sex exists, and is not punitive in its treatment of the matter. In addition to only touching taboo subjects with a ten foot pole, later films would often be flooded with excessive music cues and closeups to ensure that audiences knew exactly how to feel. Grand Hotel, while having a lovely melodic score, trusts its audiences to think for itself and avoids saccharine earnestness. Such frank treatment of human behaviour allows the film to remain timeless and familiar, the sweet spot of 1932 therefore essential to the film’s essence.

Grand Hotel takes place during the Great Depression, a toll that can be felt as many of the characters sit just on the precipice of financial destitution. Its setting in Berlin comes a year before Adolf Hitler rose to power as the German Chancellor. Despite this, the film feels as if it could take place in any city in any year, as outside politics and society are left unmentioned. This hotel is purgatorial, where, as repeatedly uttered by actor Lewis Stone playing a grizzled WWI veteran doctor, “People coming, going…nothing ever happens”.

The film’s status as a “star vehicle” existed before its release. In a feature by Photoplay, the leading film magazine of the time, it was triumphantly heralded as “the mightiest array of stars ever corralled in Hollywood’s history!”. Charming footage of the film’s premiere at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre can be found on YouTube, attended by the likes of Norma Shearer, Constance Bennett, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Marlene Dietrich, and studio heads Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg. It is perhaps this enthusiasm with which the film was promoted that has retrospectively made it unappealing to film snobs. It is more fulfilling to cheer for the underdog, the film that didn’t win Best Picture, the indie that was overshadowed by a blockbuster. Would we feel the same way about Citizen Kane had it won Best Picture as it deserved?

The all-star cast consists of a wide range of Hollywood legends who fit perfectly within their respective roles, as if they are playing parodies of themselves based on their images as presented in the media. John Barrymore, whose Baron von Gaigern serves as the film’s central pillar, was a legend of the stage and prominent in the silent era, but had a tumultuous career following the arrival of sound and struggled with substance abuse. Baron von Gaigern similarly possesses the air of a once great man who has fallen on hard times and is desperate to climb back up. He strikes up a sweet friendship with the terminally ill bookkeeper Mr. Kringelein, who is at the Grand Hotel to live his last few weeks of life in luxury. Kringelein is played by Lionel Barrymore, older brother to John. The elder Barrymore’s performance is the most touching of the film, as he plays his character with unbridled optimism mixed with exhaustion brought on by a lifetime of under-appreciation – much like how Lionel’s career would only grow more notable after Grand Hotel compared to John’s decline, Kringelein ends the film in a considerably better
position compared to von Gaigern. Coincidentally, Kringelein is staying at the same hotel as his boss, Mr. Preysing, played by the imposing, barrel-chested Wallace Beery. His tyrannical disposition is easily believed as Beery was noted to be quite aggressive and difficult in real life. Even as the film’s only true “villain”, the audience is given time to know him as an individual with reasonable internal conflict, thus contributing to the film’s tension and believability.

At the time of the film’s release, Joan Crawford had starred in several films that took advantage of her dancing skills and was married to Douglas Fairbanks Jr, son to Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and stepson to Mary Pickford, equivalent to Hollywood’s royal family. She was not quite at the same caliber of fame as her co-stars, but this film would put her over the edge of stardom. Her real-life ambition as an actress is mirrored by her character, a stenographer/occasional model named Flaemmchen, who appears to be more interested in climbing the social ladder through sexual trysts than scribing. As previously stated, her use of sex to get ahead is hardly a source of scandal, but rather treated matter-of-factly and with no sense of condemnation. She is both sexually liberated and shown to be a genuinely considerate, caring person, something not many female characters were permitted to be at the time or in later decades.

Part of the film’s promotion was used to speculate how the two female leads of the film, Garbo and Crawford, got along on-set. As the two women never share a scene together, it is possible that they never met at all. Garbo’s first talking picture, Anna Christie (1930), is a prime example of an early sound film that stumbles in its delivery. The film is objectively poor, containing awkward silences, subpar acting, and a laughable plot that is overly concerned with propriety. Garbo, despite her magnetism, was not quite ready to lead an English language film in a serious role. However, audiences clamoured to see the most famous actress in the world talk on screen for the first time, and her career continued to flourish, allowing her to be top-billed in Grand Hotel in the role of the fading Russian prima ballerina, Grusinkaya. In this film, rather than most of her filmography where she brooded around the screen in period-costumes, she gets to be funny. The few times when the androgynous beauty was allowed to make people laugh led to some of her greatest performances, such as in one of her last films, Ninotchka (1939). Just like those of her cast members, Garbo’s role is an exaggerated version of herself. Garbo was extremely private and reclusive, never attending parties, premieres, and rarely interviewed. Thus, she was assumed to be a diva that was difficult to work with, as is her character in this film. Her signature line, and what the film is perhaps best remembered for if at all, “I want to be alone.”, was in fact said by Garbo (with some variety) in several of her films before and after Grand Hotel. These four words encapsulated her, or at least, the image of her.

At the fifth Academy Awards ceremony, Grand Hotel accomplished a very specific feat, one that has yet to be repeated: it won the award for Best Picture without receiving a nomination in any other category. Not the director, not the adapted story, not the art direction, not the actors, not the cinematographer, nothing. The fact that the cast of the film was so largely promoted yet none were recognized for their wonderful performances is baffling. All perform with such grace and subtly (save Garbo, whose extravagance is essential to her memorable performance) that they could be considered masterful by today’s standards.

The climax of the film is the death of one of the main characters, one that is genuinely shocking and heartbreaking. It happens so quickly, so unceremoniously, it almost feels like a trick. Did that just happen? It was by no means unusual for a main character to die at the end of a film in 1932, but typically this occurred in a dramatic fashion, with a character succumbing to a disease, or dying bravely on the battlefield. Death was an event, its own scene, with fluttering eyelids, a clutch of the heart, and prophetic last words. In Grand Hotel, much like the matter-of-fact manner in which sex is treated, death is portrayed with a degree of maturity not often seen in classic era cinema. Just as the Doctor says, “People coming, going…nothing ever happens”. Of course, something does happen, but our other characters will keep living, will make new friends, will forget each other. And tomorrow, someone else will fill their rooms.

From its costumes to its set to its performances, Grand Hotel exudes sophistication and understands itself. Why it has been ignored by the modern film community is perhaps unanswerable, but hopefully its reputation will be restored in the near future, especially if this reviewer has anything to say about it.

22/24

Written by Eve O’Dea

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