It's A Wonderful Life (1946): Questions and Comments

I always see something new or different in this movie. Here goes:

At the beginning in 1919, Mr Potter the richest man in town is being transported around in a horse and buggy. There are plenty of cars in the scene. Why doesn't he have a car?

Mr Gower was old in 1919 and looks exactly the same in 1945. No worse for the wear after 26 years.

Why are they singing Auld Lang Syne on Christmas Eve. Who does this?

The scene from 1934 where Potter offers George a job. Potter says back during the Depression. The Depression was over in 1934?

Was Mary away from school before turning 18? How did George not manage to run into her in such a small town?

How did Mary end up a spinster? She was attractive and popular with the guys - we can tell from the dance. She also has a college degree. I wonder in what?

Was Uncle Billy an alcoholic?

The strangest scene involved Mr Welch, the schoolteachers husband who punches George at the bar. He acts like he has never heard of the Bailey family who have been in business for years in Bedford Falls. How could he not know who George Bailey was. How many kids were in that class? George's brother was a war hero getting the Congressional Medal of Honor. Strange scene.

How was George not able to make money during WW2? If he just bought land he would have been wealthy.

I am one of the few people on the planet who is bored to death by this movie...have never understood why it is such a classic.

Amazon Prime removed the most importnat scene in the movie

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainm...fe/ar-AA1wrwis

Ah ... I was just praising it in the "What You're Watching Tonight" thread. I can grant you all these oddities, but I'm not watching believing it to be an authentic history of the life of a guy named George Bailey. To me it's a simple story of redemption and rebirth. (I'm not wanting to go down a rabbit hole of examining the theme in that particular point in history. Another time.)

But an anecdote.

For many years I lived near The Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, CA, which always shows Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve. It's a magnificent restored movie palace. Plush red seats, balcony seating, "Mighty Wurlitzer" organ to accompany the silent classics. Owned by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, which has been an avid sponsor of classic film preservation and restoration.

I was there many years ago when David Packard made a personal appearance to introduce their prized restoration of Wonderful Life. He talked a bit about the process, and particularly called out that scene where Potter is being driven in that carriage, with his initials, HP, emblazoned on the door. Well, he said, he wondered if perhaps they could have Photoshopped that to produce a name that was appropriately matched the evil character inside. Say, Microsoft.

Got a good chuckle from the Silicon Valley audience.

Also copy/pasting this from my other posting. Maybe this thread will attract some Wonderful LIfe gurus with more insight than me:

I remember hearing (or reading?) a story about the scene where he's in the bar, praying, begging god for a break. Apparently they'd done a setup for lighting, and he was supposed to go through the scene as a test. So the camera was far away at the edge of the room. And Jimmy Stewart gets into the scene and gives that wrenching performance. But he's too small in the frame for it to have impact. Capra asks him if he can do it again, and Jimmy Stewart says he just couldn't do that again.

So story goes that they pulled an all-nighter, enlarging the scene frame by frame. I've peered at it closely and can't tell if I think this is true. I've never run across this tale recounted elsewhere.

__________________
Scarecrow: I haven't got a brain ... only straw. Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain? Scarecrow: I don't know. But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they? Dorothy: Yes, I guess you're right.

I'll give it a go at answering. I see there are other replies but I didn't want to read them before answering. These 'answers' are just my best guesses. Because Potter was old fashion and a cheap skate. He could've bought a car but didn't want to spend the money.

The answer is in production cost. They didn't want the additional film cost of doing the aging makeup and maintaining it during shooting.

You got me, but it must have made some sense to audiences back in the day or they wouldn't have done it.

That was Potter being cynical and manipulative. George needed to help poor people keep their homes at the Savings and Loans during the depression, Potter knew that so he handed George a line of BS about the depression being over, trying to convince George to work for him. It also plays like a grumpy Potter being sour about George turning him down.

I thought George had known Mary back when she was younger and he considered her just a 'kid'. But when she's back from college he sees her as a young woman for the very first time.

It was a fantasy sequences that had Mary as a spinster, there's no logic to that it's just there to show that she had and empty life without George being around.

Either that or the world's biggest dumb ass.

Good question, I don't have a clue.
Because he was too nice of a guy and never grabbed the brass ring which was part of the movie's theme, as he never was rich in money but he ended up rich in love.

Don't analyze it too much. It was proverbial "Hollywood", relatively low budget and a quickie. It used the techniques of the time to tug at your heartstrings. There used to be lots of movies like this, but most of them ended up in the dust-bin; this one became a classic. Why did Wonderful Life survive to become one of the greats?

My guess is that it is so unrepentantly sentimental and that James Stewart really put his Everyman demeanor and fast-talking, staccato speech mannerisms into high gear to create a likable, relatable character. Who else would have an avuncular guardian angel. Most of the credit is due to Stewart and the whole movie revolves around him because his heart is right out there for all of us to see. It's all done quite competently, and is a highly relatable story and character. I can watch that movie in July and feel a warming chill.

It's not just a wonderful life; it's a wonderful movie. I can't imagine anybody making a movie like this today since we ARE so cynical now, but fortunately, being set in 1946 this one gets to pass our cynicism. After all, it's OLD.

It's worth noting too that, set in 1946, it's right after the apocalyptic horrors of war and facism and the Holocaust. The Bomb had been dropped on Japan and millions of people were murdered by the nazis. People wanted something to make them feel good again. George Bailey was it....small town USA and Christmas.

Good answers.

Jimmy discusses that prayer scene here

The conversation around this movie reminds me that, most people alive today grew up not having much of an idea why a movie like this hit such a nerve and has continued to do so. Just turn on the wayback machine and imagine a war that killed tens of millions worldwide, introduced the world to nuclear weapons, saw film of things you don't want to even think about and saw genocide and death camps. That came in the wake of years of economic depression, which followed not too long after the previous apocalyptic war.

Wonderful Life reminds me of the things I heard from old folks when I was a kid, like, "you have no idea just how lucky you are to have been born when and where you were". I don't think we did. This movie was 1946 and all of this was still fresh and personal for the people that had been there. A small town in upstate New York, where it snows for Christmas, the dinner is on the table and everybody's singing (except the town grouch) would have seemed like paradise.