“Frank Capra died yesterday.”
Nonetheless I think Capra was a great artist. Especially in It’s a Wonderful Life he expressed some deep truths about America and Americans–maybe some truths about ourselves that we don’t even want to know.
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George, as we all know, has lived his entire life in Bedford Falls, although his lifelong dream has been to escape that little burg and explore the world. He’s worked all his adult life in the Bailey Building & Loan, although his ambition was always to be an architect. He never got to go to college–stepped aside for the sake of his brother, for the sake of the bank. He didn’t really want to get married, either, but circumstances and Mary Hatch (significant name–she’s had her eye on him since they were both kids) conspired to rope him into it. Now he’s living with Mary and three kids in a refurbished house he once called a drafty old barn and swore he’d never be caught dead in. Today–Christmas Eve–dotty old Uncle Billy has mislaid $8,000 of the bank’s money, an amount neither George nor Billy can possibly make up, and the bank examiner has just come to look at the books. George, his life’s dreams unfulfilled and facing the probability of ruin and disgrace, throws himself off a bridge, determined to end it all.
It’s a Wonderful Life came out in 1946. Three years later an American postwar classic, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, was staged in New York. Miller’s bleak modern tragedy seemingly expresses the very antithesis of Capra’s optimism–but think about it: less than a hair’s breadth, in fact, separates George Bailey from salesman Willy Loman. Each is a small-time businessman faced with financial failure; each, forced to the realization that his dreams have been illusions, decides to kill himself.
Saved by an angel and made to see the value of his life, George rushes home to his family, a home soon besieged by friends bearing money (they’d heard he was in trouble). The film ends with a reunited family and community, all beaming to the strains of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” It’s affecting as hell–a really big emotional payoff–and almost hides the fact that (aside from the immediate fiscal crisis) none of George’s basic problems has been solved. Still mired in responsibilities, with no chance he’ll ever fulfill his dreams, he’s been brought around by guilt and dread, then patted on the head and assured that he really has had, does have, a wonderful life.
