Through the cruelty of another, a man's life is in ruins and he is faced with "bankruptcy and scandal and prison". He is about to take his own life when an Angel offers him the chance to see what the world would be like had he not lived. The bleakness that permeates the lives of everyone he knows and loves in his absence persuades him that he "really had a wonderful life". At this point, I start blubbing.
Then he gets his life back and I'm in floods of tears and he tells the Sheriff "isn't it wonderful, I'm going to jail" before his friends and neighbours gather around to save him and sing "Auld Lang Syne" and I get carted off to hospital and put on a saline drip having cried all of the salt from my body.
Frank Capra Jr is a wonderful feelgood Director and in "It's A Wonderful Life", whether intentionally or not, he passed off a serious message about the perils of rampant capitalism and the need for some form of communalism in the most capitalist country in the world at the outset of McCarthyism and got away with it. He made wonderful, life-affirming movies and this is the finest of them.
James Stewart gives a marvellous performance embodying the young, idealistic George Bailey and the warped, frustrated version a mere ten years on (he doesn't look the same man!) wonderfully. It's the performance of a lifetime from one of the world's finest actors.
The supporting cast of fully-realised and interesting characters are all excellent- especially Donna Reed as Mary Bailey and Lionel Barrymore as Henry F. Potter.
I have a good friend with impeccable taste who simply doesn't get this film. I understand that, I don't get The Clash- though I know that I should. It depends on if you're touched by what you're seeing or hearing and sometimes you're immune. Odd, but true. I'm the opposite, this just gets me. It just does. This truly is one of the most perfectly realised pieces of film-making I have ever seen. It is by turns funny, sad, dramatic, harrowing, heartwarming and wise and it is as clear an example of a 10/10 film as there could be.
