Third viewing; previously viewed on December 15, 1990 and May 9, 2013.
George is on the brink of suicide and is helped by an angel who gives him a new perspective on his life. The core of his problems is the greed of a banker who wants to take over George's small town.
This fantastic drama is generally viewed as a sentimental parable about self-sacrifice and the value of the individual, but there is another side to it which is equally important and perhaps more interesting, namely the dramatization of the perennial debate between free-marketeers and keynesians (or to a certain extent socialists). This aspect of the movie hasn't aged much, and one can see this issue being still being debated on books and on the opinion pages of newspapers. There is one detail, however, which somewhat obfuscates that economics issue: the State is complete absent from the movie's dramatic equation; that places all the burden on private actors. At no point in the movie its protagonist, or anyone else, considers running for office or otherwise engaging State institutions. While this allows for the specific dramatics here to develop, it's also the source of its more implausible elements. Further considerations about this movie may be read on my 2013 review. Perhaps I should add that the notion that bankers are lonely and frustrated creatures is another deeply flawed notion which has no counterpart in the real world.
Rating: 63 (unchanged)
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