Posted on 12/02/2016 9:03:16 AM PST by heterosupremacist
Sub title : "It's a Wonderful Life" shows us a flawed man who transcends himself, and we recognize in him our own wish to do the same.
One of the best things about this season is that, invariably, someone writes about It’s A Wonderful Life, and muses on the complex, sometimes dark character of George Bailey.
Portrayed so perfectly by the perpetually likable James Stewart, it is easy to miss the fact that George Bailey is not a simple and good-natured cornpone from upstate New York; he is a man whose heart and faith are essential to him, because they balance out a real bitterness that shows itself in little ways. A man who has had to cast aside every dream in order to do “the right thing,” Bailey is — thanks to an old injury — denied even dubious adventure of soldiering during World War II. Watch him spit in disdain at himself and his situation, after he has responsibly handled a blackout drill in his neighborhood. When the big man from the small town comes beeping by in a slick, shiny car with a shinier woman, see George Bailey’s lip curl, not because his wife is wearing a baseball cap and sitting in his old clunker, but because she is so clearly content with the cap, and the clunker, and with comfortable, sacrificing, trapped old George, who always wanted so much more. He adores his wife; he wants what she wants, but why doesn’t she want more?
He kicks the car door...
(Excerpt) Read more at aleteia.org ...
Interesting take.
I really enjoy Frank Capra’s work.
I remember Donna Reed was hot. :-)
I was not raised as a Christian but even as a child, then a teen, then a young man, I immediately caught the moment when George is praying at the end, first to Clarence. Then when he prays to God, his world is brought back to him. It starts to snow; his lip bleeds again; Zsu Zsu’s petals are in his pocket. The absence of one good man makes the world a little darker, a little meaner. Not only was Harry Bailey able to save the ship, his mere presence and the way he interacted with others also spread good because he saw and experienced the good of George, and none of the bitterness.
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