It’s A Wonderful Life

Directed by Frank Capra

Running time: 2hrs10 | REVIEWED BY CATHERINE BRAY

Ellen Corby in It’s A Wonderful Life

Sparkling lights looped from tree to tree along the main street, above an assortment of parked cars hummock in white. A small brass band umpahed discordant but cheery carols in the town square, as last-minute shoppers slushed through the snow, exchanged seasonal greetings and stopping occasionally to join in a favourite carol. In the fictional town of Bedford Falls, it was Christmas Eve. But then again, in the fictional town of Bedford Falls it was always Christmas Eve.

I spent an afternoon watching Frank Capra’s incomparable Christmas fable It’s A Wonderful Life again this month, with a group of friends at the cinema. Not seen it? Basically, a good man gets gradually beaten down by circumstance in a small town in America called Bedford Falls. If you’re lucky, it’ll be on at a cinema near you at some point during December. It’ll probably be on television, wherever you are. And it’s currently available to UK viewers to stream for free on Film4’s catch up service.

Humanity can be divided into roughly three groups: people who watch It’s A Wonderful Life and have a pretty nice time, people who are in tears by the end of the film, and people who are completely gone from the moment Ms. Davis (Ellen Corby) tells George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) that she can manage on just $17.50, during the bank rush scene just under an hour into the film. (Actually, there’s a fourth group too: shout out to my partner, who joined us after the film finished that afternoon, rather than sit through “a film for babies”.)

I suspect the reason that I am a fully paid up member of the $17.50 club, is the sense of place that Capra’s film creates. This stuff could play out in a different setting and I don’t think it’d touch me. But the little town of Bedford Falls is so brilliantly realised, so hermetically sealed in its own perfect universe, populated so effectively with such a plausible gallery of humanity, that it enables me to believe that I too live there, for a little while. 

That’s what good movies do. Hell, that’s what good fiction in any medium does. We don’t have to agree with the worldview, we don’t have to empathise, but we have to buy into being in the space that the storyteller has created, while the spell lasts. Some spaces aren’t for me. Some are harsher than my life. Some are more easeful than my life. Sometimes it’s cathartic to spend time in an apocalyptic wasteland. Other times… let’s book a hotel room and check into Bedford Falls, darling. Even if only for an afternoon.

That tension between living in a fantasy and living in the real world is one that I expect you’ve felt this year. Haven’t we all? The reality of where we’re at, globally, nationally, locally, has meant that fantasy has never felt more appealing or necessary. Look at the box office figures for 2022. The biggest success stories have largely boiled down to: take me away from all this, please. And “all this” isn’t necessarily external: isn’t it nice, sometimes, to take a little vacation from yourself, to check your baggage at the door?

The quote in italics at the top of this page is taken from a book that I can’t imagine engenders much respect from the literary establishment, but that I personally like a great deal: The Red Dwarf Omnibus (comprising Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers and Better Than Life). The Red Dwarf Omnibus is what the highly variable sci-fi comedy TV show Red Dwarf could have been if it had a blockbuster budget. In the novel, the characters become trapped in a deadly, addictive VR game, BTL (Better Than Life), where you get to live in the fantasy world of your subconscious dreams. The downside is, your actual life withers. Lead character Dave Lister’s fantasy turns out to be living in Bedford Falls. It’s a lovely piece of metafiction, balanced precariously on the knife edge between parody and loving homage, half in love with Capra’s world, while also alive to its limitations. The world outside may be burning, but in the fictional town of Bedford Falls, it’s always Christmas Eve. Happy holidays.

Bedford Falls was his own personal nirvana. His psyche had created a town and community based on his all-time favourite movie, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, and this was where he’d wanted to spend the rest of his days. He’d been aware, though he had never thought about it too much, that BTL would eventually kill him. His body, out there in reality, would gradually waste away and die. But it was a deal he’d been prepared to accept.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) Written by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett and Frank Capra | Shot by Joseph F. Biroc and Joseph Walker | Edited by William Hornbeck

It’s A Wonderful Life is available to watch now on Film4 online