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It's a Wonderful Life; Review from February 15, 1947
Topic Started: Dec 25 2006, 04:22 AM (252 Views)
Daniel\
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Fulla-Carp
James Agee, The Nation

It's A Wonderful Life is a movie about a local boy who stays local, doesn't make good, and becomes at length so unhappy that he wishes he had never been born. At this point an angel named Clarence shows him what his family, friends, and town would have been like if he hadn't been. As I mentioned several weeks ago, this story is somewhere near as effective, of its kind, as A Christmas Carol. In particular, the hero is extravagantly well played by James Stewart. But as I also mentioned, I had my misgivings. These have increased with time.

One important function of good art or entertainment is to unite and illuminate the heart and the mind, to cause each to learn from, and to enhance, the experience of the other. Bad art and entertainment misinform and disunite them. Much too often this movie appeals to the heart at the expense of the mind, at other times it urgently demands of the heart that it treat with contempt the mind's efforts to keep its integrity; at still other times the heart is simply used, on the mind, as a truncheon. The movie does all this so proficiently, and with so much genuine warmth, that I wasn't able to get reasonably straight about it for quite a while. I still think it has a good deal of charm and quality, enough natural talent involved in it to make ten pictures ten times as good, and terrific vitality or, rather, vigor--for much of the vitality seems cooked-up and applied rather than innate. (The high-school dance floor coming apart over a swimming pool is a sample of cooking-up that no movie has beaten for a long time.)

But mistrust, for instance, any work which tries to persuade me--or rather, which assumes that I assume--that there is so much good in nearly all the worst of us that all it needs is a proper chance and example, to take complete control. I mistrust even more deeply the assumption, so comfortably stylish these days, that whether people turn out well or ill depends overwhelmingly on outside circumstances and scarcely if at all on their own moral intelligence and courage. Neither idea is explicit in this movie, but the whole story depends on the strong implication and assumption of both. Stewart, to be sure, is shown as an "exceptional" man--that is, as a man often faced with moral alternatives who makes choices, usually for the good and to his own material disadvantage; but it is also shown that the whole community depends on his example and on his defense of the helpless.

Yet at its best, which is usually inextricable with its worst, I feel that this movie is a very taking sermon about the feasibility of a kind of Christian semi-socialism, a society founded on affecion, kindliness, and trust, and that its chief mistake or sin --an enormous one--is its refusal to face the fact that evil is intrinsic in each individual, and that no man may deliver his brother, or make agreement unto God for him. It iterests me, by the way, that in representing a twentieth-century American town Frank Capra uses so little of the twentieth and idealizes so much that seems essentially nineteenth-century, or prior anyhow to the First World War, which really ended that century. Many small towns are,to be sure, "backward" in that generally more likable way, but I have never seen one so Norman-Rockwellish as all that. Capra's villainous capitalist--excellently played, in harsh black and white, by Lionel Barrymore--is a hundred per cent Charles Dickens. His New Capitalist--equally well played by Frank Albertson, in fashionable grays--makes his fortune, appropriately, in plastics, is a blithe, tough, harmless fellow, and cables the hero a huge check, when it is most needed, purely out of the goodness of his heart. Like Stewart, he is obviously the salt of the earth. Some day I hope to meet him.

I am occasionally mystified why the Catholic church, which is so sensitive to the not very grave danger to anybody's soul of watching Jennifer Jones trying to be a sex actress--roughly the equivalent of the rich man worming around in the needle's eye, or Archbishop Spellman as Christ's Best Man--never raises an eyebrow, let alone hell, over the kinds of heresy and of deceit of the soul which are so abundant in films of this sort--to say nothing of the ideas given, in such films, of the life after death. Fortunately, I don't have to wait for ecclesiastical permission to say that I am getting beyond further endurance sick and tired of angels named Clarence, Mike, et cetera; I am not even sure I want any further truck with Israel. These John Q. Public, common-man insults against the very nature of the democratic spirit are bad enough, applied to the living. If the after-life is just a sort of St. Petersburg overrun by these retired Good Joes-- taking steam baths in nebulae, scratching themselves with stars, and forever and ever assuring themselves and Almighty God that they are every bit as good as He is and a damn sight more homey and regular, then heaven, so far as I'm concerned, can wait indefinitely.

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Daniel\
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Fulla-Carp
I watched part of it last night! It's hard for me to concentrate on it but it's kind of nice to have on. This reviewer got it all wrong though- he didn't seem to know it was going to become such a famous movie.

You can read all about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Wonderful_Life

I couldn't concentrate on reading all of this either but I like this movie anyway.

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The 89th Key
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I have never seen that movie. I know...you can shoot me if you want. :P
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QuirtEvans
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I Owe It All To John D'Oh
The 89th Key
Dec 25 2006, 07:48 AM
I have never seen that movie. I know...you can shoot me if you want. :P

It's hard to be a serious movie critic, 89th, if you don't have a grounding in the classics. They are a frame of reference, and they give your reviews perspective.

You can be sure that every notable movie critic and every serious actor and actress has seen a wide range of older movies. It's a Wonderful Life. Casablanca. Citizen Kane. Mutiny on the Bounty. Wuthering Heights. Gone With the Wind. Lawrence of Arablia. Marx Brothers stuff. John Wayne stuff. The list goes on and on.

Much more important than Weekend at Bernie's 2.
It would be unwise to underestimate what large groups of ill-informed people acting together can achieve. -- John D'Oh, January 14, 2010.
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plays88keys
Pisa-Carp
The only time I've ever witnessed my brother with tears in his eyes (as an adult) was at the end of this movie. It remains his favorite of all time.

Yesterday, he sent me this uplifting story about "Zuzu."

http://movies.yahoo.com:80/mv/news/ap/2006...6687088000.html
You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.
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The 89th Key
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QuirtEvans
Dec 25 2006, 08:49 AM
The 89th Key
Dec 25 2006, 07:48 AM
I have never seen that movie. I know...you can shoot me if you want. :P

It's hard to be a serious movie critic, 89th, if you don't have a grounding in the classics. They are a frame of reference, and they give your reviews perspective.

You can be sure that every notable movie critic and every serious actor and actress has seen a wide range of older movies. It's a Wonderful Life. Casablanca. Citizen Kane. Mutiny on the Bounty. Wuthering Heights. Gone With the Wind. Lawrence of Arablia. Marx Brothers stuff. John Wayne stuff. The list goes on and on.

Much more important than Weekend at Bernie's 2.

I dont know if I'm trying to be a "serious" movie critic...just a movie critic on the side - just a member of the family sharing his thoughts on what he saw this weekend. However, this year I have made great efforts to see the classics. This year alone I have seen Godfathers parts I, II, and III, Casablanca, Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, The Conversation, Lawrence of Arabia, Blade Runner, Star Wars Ep 4 and 5, among others (a couple of those I saw along time ago and forgot how they were). I still have a long way to go, though...
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Optimistic
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HOLY CARP!!!
This is probably the first Christmas in about a decade that I *haven't* watched this movie. We'll probably put it on at some point today, though. What a great film!
PHOTOS

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up.
- Mark Twain


We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
-T. S. Eliot
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Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
This was the first year Lauren watched it.. she was so-so on it, but it was Christmas Eve and her thoughts were not on Mom and Dad's fogue movie.

That reviewer seems to read a lot more into it than I ever did! Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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Dewey
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HOLY CARP!!!
89th, you have to see the movie.

Sure, it's corny, but it's still my all-time favorite movie. I still end up crying at least at the end, if not other places. I don't think anyone who's weathered a given number of years and experiences won't find something in George's existence that they can't personally identify with that draws them into the real significance of the movie and diminishes the cornier aspects. Still, I suspect that people that grew up in a time or place where the trappings of the movie aren't something that they can identify with might not appreciate it as much as others might. Growing up in a land that time forgot that was much like Bedford Falls only years into the future, with too many similarities to people and places that I grew up with, and a few personal parallels with George that hit way too close to home, I don't think any other movie will really touch me the way this corny old one does.
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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The 89th Key
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Well the local theater is actually playing it tonight at 6:30, so I'm going to go! By myself, too. Merry Christmas!

I didn't realize it was so critically acclaimed. It's at #11 on AFI's top 100 movies list, which is the unofficial official list.
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Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
I think you will like it in the large screen, as it was intended. I love B&W movies that way.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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The 89th Key
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Yeah true...I couldn't have enjoyed Casablanca as much as I did had I not see it on the big screen. The same for Apocalypse Now and Lawrence of Arabia.

I've seen the Godfather, but I'm watching Part I tomorrow night and Part II on Friday night!
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The 89th Key
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Just saw the film, it was excellent and much more fulfilling that I expected. I'll write a review soon. Good suggestion everyone! :wave2:
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Dave Spelvin
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Fulla-Carp
The 89th Key
Dec 25 2006, 06:22 AM
QuirtEvans
Dec 25 2006, 08:49 AM
The 89th Key
Dec 25 2006, 07:48 AM
I have never seen that movie. I know...you can shoot me if you want. :P

It's hard to be a serious movie critic, 89th, if you don't have a grounding in the classics. They are a frame of reference, and they give your reviews perspective.

You can be sure that every notable movie critic and every serious actor and actress has seen a wide range of older movies. It's a Wonderful Life. Casablanca. Citizen Kane. Mutiny on the Bounty. Wuthering Heights. Gone With the Wind. Lawrence of Arablia. Marx Brothers stuff. John Wayne stuff. The list goes on and on.

Much more important than Weekend at Bernie's 2.

I dont know if I'm trying to be a "serious" movie critic...just a movie critic on the side - just a member of the family sharing his thoughts on what he saw this weekend. However, this year I have made great efforts to see the classics. This year alone I have seen Godfathers parts I, II, and III, Casablanca, Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, The Conversation, Lawrence of Arabia, Blade Runner, Star Wars Ep 4 and 5, among others (a couple of those I saw along time ago and forgot how they were). I still have a long way to go, though...

May I suggest The Passion of Joan of Arc, Metropolis, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu. These are all silent and you'll never forget them after seeing them once.

And if you haven't seen "M" and "The Third Man", you're missing two of the greatest.

And how about Psycho, Rear Window, Vertigo and North By Northwest.

Sullavan's Travels

Stagecoach

Victim, by the director of The Red Shoes, which is surely worth seeing as well.

Each of these should blow your mind.
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The 89th Key
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Thanks Dave!

I have seen those four Hitchcock films you mentioned though...he's an amazing director. As is Coppola and Spielberg.
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