ABSTRACT
Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), a film that grew in popularity years after its initial release, pulls its hero and its audience in many directions as it tries to reconcile post-World War II anxieties with a story that wants to be upbeat and morally responsible in a conventional way. In the process, the film tries to make up its mind whether it is a comedy, a fantasy, a nightmare, or a melodrama. It is full of high emotion but also has plenty of jokes and silly characters; an angel guides the main character through a dark alternative world; and the film ends, as comedies do, with a reconciliation, a reaffirmation of harmony and happiness. Everyone forgives; everyone appears ready for long-term happiness. But the film’s central character, George Bailey (James Stewart), is not a comic figure. He is wracked with doubts; he fights against the calls of his community, he wants to break with his father and leave the constraints of the small town of Bedford Falls. During much of the film, he is represented as a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He attempts suicide and is saved only because he has a guardian angel (Henry Travers), who brings him to his senses by presenting him with a vision of the town as it would be without him: dark, corrupt, violent—almost like the inside of George’s mind.
