It's A Wonderful Life Review: Old Hollywood Even Did Christmas Better
Christmas is a time for good food, good people, and also good movies. While now we do have some incredible classics that can be watched year on year and never get old (Die Hard is a personal favourite) there are some that transcend the genre of “just a Christmas movie”. It’s A Wonderful Life is the perfect example of this, with most of the events actually not set during the holiday at all, instead across a variety of years and seasons. The most beautiful thing about this film is simply how well it all fits together. Throughout the film we’re constantly shown events that really don’t seem too important and just exist to prevent the narrative from stagnating, but by the third act we realise that was part of the takeaway from this film. We often underestimate the impact we have on each other’s lives, and this picture brings that message through beautifully. It frames it through the eyes of Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey character who also in a way serves as an audience view into the characters and their dynamics.
Jimmy Stewart puts on a fantastic (and incredibly convincing) performance as someone who just seems completely stuck and as if the world doesn’t care for him despite doing everything for the world around him, and that idea is constantly repeated for 2 hours. All of it reveals itself in a stunning climax reminiscent of A Christmas Carol where the ghosts escort Scrooge through time, in this case a guardian angel takes George Bailey through a world that never new of his existence in this beautifully written sequence that showcases why everything was important.
It almost feels like a movie such as this can’t exist now, purely because of how reliant on Old Hollywood filmmaking it is, you have movie stars in their prime and for a Christmas movie it’s taken as seriously as a Best Picture contender would be taken now. I’m not sure how pretentious that sounds but now in an environment where it’s a rush to produce something seasonal and often overly trope-y having a piece of art like this that has stood the test of time is such a thing to behold.
Throughout watching it, I was constantly thinking how it had taken me this long to watch such a classic, but I now have and am so happy that I finally sat down and watched it. Every time I shuffled my watchlist on Letterboxd and It’s A Wonderful Life came up first, it was so tempting (even in the middle of July) to just sit down and watch this masterpiece but I’m actually really glad I waited. Watching it during the Christmas season and being back home with my family really made this a lot more special and I think from now it’s just going to be one of those movies that I just have to rewatch each year because it’s that good.
(Watched on Amazon Prime, December 17, 2022).