It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Second viewing. First was on December 15, 1990.

There is a big banker who wants to wipe George Bailey's father's small bank out from the face of the Earth. George is not attracted to banking and has many plans as a young man, but, as Robert Burns once said to a mouse about best-laid plans...

There is a great film inside It's a Wonderful Life. It is the life of George Bailey, mostly as it is told in the movie. The story of a man who feels that he hasn't lived the life he wanted, who somehow feels his potential is being wasted, is a great story, full of rich meditations. The screenplay has many intelligent solutions, which are rendered into magnificent sequences. Perhaps it could use a little more sobriety here and there; just to give an example, in the scene where George and Violet are talking at a busy avenue, in my version there would not be a crowd coming out of the blue and making a lot of fuss about their private conversation. Above all, I would lose the proto-Twilight Zone angle, that is, all mention of supernatural creatures such as angels, gods, etc would be dumped. Would George kill himself in the end? I do not know. It would probably be best to leave that out of the movie, a suicide does not tell much about a person's character at any rate. What the hell, you could eliminate the whole episode of Billy losing the money and Potter stealing it. You could even soften Potter's villainy. You don't need to outdickens Dickens by making a common thief out of your Scrooge.

Rating: 63 (unchanged)