It's A Wonderful Life | A McCarthy Christmas

If you’re reading this article on the day it was originally published, the 20th of December, then you’ve stumbled upon a rather wonderful coincidence. On the very same day, although in 1946, It’s a Wonderful Life was originally released in American cinemas. For me, a viewing of Capra’s finest comes just once on the same day, every year - Christmas Eve. Never the day after, and certainly never the day before. The film has a magical sensibility to it, that encapsulates so wonderfully the associated season in a manner that few films can similarly achieve. I can’t think of another sequence in Hollywood film that exudes such excitement and optimism as George Bailey sprinting down the snow-clad sidewalks of Bedford Falls, screaming at every man, woman, movie-house and building & loan that’ll listen: yet, I have found that in my recent experiences in preparing to write this very article that my thoughts have been less of carols and Christmas, and more of context and Capraesque. 

One would have to be living in Pottersville to comprehend the reality of Capra’s classic not being an instant success upon release, with it taking three decades and an expired copyright for It’s a Wonderful Life to gain popularity and prominence. Rather, the film recorded a loss of $525,000, the equivalent of 8 million dollars today, at the box office for RKO. Furthermore, in 1947, the FBI issued a statement of concern - ‘the film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a 'scrooge-type' so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This is a common trick used by Communists. [In] addition, this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show that people who had money were mean and despicable characters’. Do not be surprised dear Reader, for this is not the first masterpiece of the post-war American zeitgeist to fall under McCarthy’s gaze - look no further than Death of a Salesman. Like Miller’s play, Capra’s film is about disillusion and death, about the incongruities and inevitable frustrations inherent in the American dream, and the contradictions among traditional American ideals – altruism and morality versus striking gold, the value of community against the loneliness of success and of doing good as opposed to doing well. Such juxtapositions are illustrated poignantly in both works, but the overwhelming optimism present as It’s a Wonderful Life draws to a close could not be further removed from the ending of Miller’s play, which places any reader in the same headspace as Willy Loman.

The FBI’s statement concerning It’s a Wonderful Life is little more than a worried glance in comparison to the near witch-hunt that Miller faced during the McCarthy era and which eventually inspired The Crucible. The military banned performances of Death of a Salesman on army compounds, whilst Columbia Pictures asked Miller to sign an anti-communist declaration upon the release of a film adaptation. The playwright refused. Later, Miller was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, chaired by Senator McCarthy. He again refused, this time to name writers he believed were communists, and was subsequently convicted of contempt of Congress. Though this was eventually overturned in 1958, the damage had been done and it’s clear that the contemporary political establishment saw a significant difference between the two cautionary tales of post-war American business. Surely though, Harry, I hear you cry out, that perhaps Joseph McCarthy’s tenure as Senator for Wisconsin beginning in 1947 and hence past the release of It’s a Wonderful Life, as aforementioned in the beginning of this here article, explains why the film was not severely reprimanded in the era of McCarthyism. This would be a fantastic argument, had the Wisconsinite not waged a war against Charlie Chaplin for the silent films he’d made over a decade before his tenure in the Senate even began.

Rather, the reason for such selectivity is the Capraesque quality in Capra’s films, in which such never has been more prominent than in It’s a Wonderful Life. When interviewed about the film, Capra insisted that it ‘sums up my philosophy of filmmaking. First, to exalt the worth of the individual. Second, to champion man, plead his causes, protest any degradation of his dignity, spirit or divinity. And third, to dramatise the viability of the individual, as in the theme of the film itself’. Hence, for a film to be christened Capraesque, it must contain a sentimentality that favours the triumph of the everyday man, bask in the idealism of a protagonist and embrace the individual as the driving force in enacting social change. However, what social change does George Bailey actually bring about? To view It’s a Wonderful Life as a tale of purely good and evil between Bailey and Potter respectively, presents a marxist tale of class conflict and sticking it to the rich! However, George Bailey is still a banker and the Building & Loan, often represented as a beacon of collectivism, as if it were a twentieth century example of the Rochdale cooperative society, is still a bank. This isn’t a criticism of Stewart’s most famous role, one of cinema’s greatest ever heroes, but rather a comment on Capra’s attempt to illustrate George Bailey as the individual whose sense of morality and acts of charity combat those who attempt to exploit the prevailing social order, despite not being a member of the exploited class himself. After all, would Mr Potter extend the same lucrative job offer he provides George Bailey to Giuseppe Martini? 

Frank Capra himself was a conservative republican, later a Reaganite, who criticised Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal throughout his tenure as governor of New York and later as president; receiving such a statement from the FBI must’ve been quite the shock. Yes, because Capra was far from a communist, but also because It’s a Wonderful Life is a wholly American film. In its drama, in its liberalism and in its patriotism. Capra’s classic has an idealistic view of society, that presents the establishment’s missteps as the wrongdoing of evil individuals rather than the system itself, and later turns into pure fantasy in imagining just how much worse it could be. For the Federal Bureau of Investigation to misinterpret Hollywood cinema’s greatest underdog story as propaganda against capitalism, rather than its intended rallying cry in favour of individual social and economic liberty indicates just how fragile the American establishment was in the midst of the post-war red scare, so much so that they cut off their nose to spite their face. 

In reality, few films are more unabashedly American and every Christmas Eve, so too am I. 

Written By Harry J. Wormald | IG: @harryjwormald