ODE TO IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (IN 3 PARTS)

ODE TO IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946, dir Frank Capra) PART 1 of 3: For the next three days, we'll be posting a three chapter appreciation of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. Frank Capra's holiday classic is one of those movies that just gets better every time you see it. Like the Coen's THE BIG LEBOWKSI, Jean Renoir's THE RULES OF THE GAME, or even Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT (another holiday movie we wrote about earlier), you almost age into this movie. It tells the story of everyman George Bailey (played in a career best performance by Jimmy Stewart) who forgoes all his dreams of travel and adventure to stay in his hometown to help his community and family rather than see them exploited by local millionaire misanthrope Mr. Potter (a deliciously miserly Lionel Barrymore). Before George knows it, the years have passed by, he's married to resourceful Mary, they have four children, and they go through the ups and downs of the first part of the 20th century (the Roaring 20's, the Depression, World War II). Then on one fateful night, Mr. Potter decides to take his revenge on George in the most mean-spirited way imaginable. George (and the whole town) prays for guidance. And the clumsiest most unexpected angel Clarence (a wonderfully clueless Henry Travers) gets sent down to try to prevent George from committing suicide so his family can get the life insurance. You probably know all this if you've seen the movie. What you only know after repeated viewings is how this ONE movie is a sort of Rosetta Stone for everything that movies can do. Every contributor on this movie is firing on ALL pistons. Capra directs the HELL out of this picture with hilarious gags, visual bits, cinematic flourishes throughout. The cast may be THE BEST CAST EVER ASSEMBLED. Jimmy Stewart (more on him in Part 2), Donna Reed, Thomas Mitchell, Lionel Barrymore, Henry Travers, Gloria Grahame, Ward Bond, and a dozen other Capra regulars breathe so much life into their characters you almost feel as if they existed before and after the shooting and just happened to wander into the movie for two hours. But the most secret of the secret sauce may be the hook that inspired Capra in the first place. Capra read a Christmas Card that had a short fable in it about a man who got to see what the world would have been like without his existence. From this spark of genius, Capra and his team, all inspired by it, crafted a story that would pay off in the biggest of ways in the third act. More on that later (Part 3) as well! But for now, let's start this appreciation with a hoist of the glass to all the members of a moviemaking team. When they all are encouraged to and allowed to contribute their best, you get a movie that is much much greater than the sum of its parts.

ODE TO IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946, dir Frank Capra) PART 2 of 3: This Christmas classic is one of those movies where the lead actor, here Jimmy Stewart, is in nearly every single scene of the movie. Stewart is rightfully beloved as one of the greatest of the classic Hollywood performers but this somehow still feels like underrating him. Stewart was a method actor BEFORE method acting existed. For MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON he stayed up all night and had his throat doused with a chemical so it would be hoarse and strained for his filibuster scene. And for the scene pictured here (where George Bailey prays on Christmas Eve under tremendous stress), Stewart himself has said he completely lost himself in that moment. He really was praying. He really was crying. Stewart's pre-war roles are wonderful (MR. SMITH, DESTRY RIDES AGAIN, THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, etc). Yet his post war work is an even bigger revelation. Stewart was the first big Hollywood actor to enlist in World War II and would advance to the rank of Colonel because he refused to take a safe glamor job. Stewart flew bombing runs over Germany for years. The stress and reality was so much that Stewart had a kind of PTSD breakdown at the end of the war and rarely spoke about his military service. He brought this pain, stress, understanding of the duality of man to his great roles in his post war career. When George Bailey starts to feel the full stress of Mr. Potter's evil plan on Christmas Eve (without knowing Potter is behind it), Stewart fully commits to the darkness of this. He yells at his family. He manhandles his forgetful Uncle. He rages, he cries. You so believe that George Bailey is going through the worst day of his life that it sets everything up for the miraculous third act. That only works because of what Stewart brings to the role. Great actors are, in many ways, uncredited writers on great movies. They adjust lines (or rewrite them entirely). They figure out ways to make scenes work in practicality. They are our conduit into the soul of a movie. Jimmy Stewart was one of cinema's greatest conduits. He's the lead or co-lead in MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, REAR WINDOW, VERTIGO, ANATOMY OF A MURDER, THE NAKED SPUR, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, all stone cold all-time classics (that also show his ridiculous range from romantic comedy to psychotic western to morally flexible thriller). So tonight, on Christmas Eve, let's hoist our glasses to the actors. Actors are the life's blood of cinema. Cinema thrives on great acting.

ODE TO IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946, dir by Frank Capra) Part 3 of 3. Discussion of movie scripts and stories often revolves around "the 3 Acts". Someone once helpfully distilled the formula to "Act 1: get your main character(s) up a tree. Act 2: Throw rocks at your main character(s). Act 3: Get your main character(s) out of the tree." And while there are many variations on this formula (tragedy is after all an inversion of it), it is helpful to know the rules. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE has, for this programmer's money, one of the greatest third acts of all cinema right alongside Akira Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI. In fact, if you wanted to be cheeky, you could say the story in this movie doesn't really begin until the third act. The first two acts are essentially an extended prologue showing us the life of George Bailey before his fateful Christmas Eve. But putting it that way is too cheeky by half. Billy Wilder once said "If you've got problems in your third act, the real problem is in your first act." So I suppose you could restate the rule "If you have an amazing third act, you have an amazing first act." I find it really helpful as a writer to think of this holiday masterpiece in this light. It's in the third act where George's guardian angel Clarence shows George what the world would have been like had George never existed at all. George actually gets to wander through this waking nightmare (this alternate reality is brilliantly given narrative unity by occurring on Christmas Eve as well). To his dawning horror and cathartic realization, he really DID love being alive and really did accomplish a tremendous amount. When he miraculously returns to the reality he knows, he suddenly appreciates it with an intense gratitude. He hugs his wife and children anew. He cherishes just the ability to be connected again to his friends, family, community. And it's here where Capra lands his greatest cathartic punch. All the people George helped, through the intercession of his indefatigable wife Mary, come to help George. The ending of this movie always makes me cry. It always increases an understanding of all the stresses we are constantly under. Yet how utterly critical it is to always work to be a decent person and help others. Probably especially when it is most tempting to be selfish. I've long felt the real currency of this world is people and our relationships with them. George, by living his life in service of others, truly is "the richest man in town".

Written by Craig Hammill.Founder/Programmer of Secret Movie Club.