"How Beautiful Life" was born in 1946 and has not diminished its charm to this day. It's one of those films that will always be young, like Casablanca and The Third Man, which adds up over time. Some films, although good, can only be seen once. When we know how the ending will be, their attraction and mystery disappear. Another type of film can be watched countless times, just like great music, and the more familiar you are with it, the better you feel. "How Beautiful Life Is" belongs to the latter. Director Frank Capra and his star, James Stewart, both listed it as a favorite.
George (James Stewart) and his family
The film is like a strong and basic fable, an inverted "Christmas Carol": the latter is a scene in which the ghost shows joy to a miserly old man, while the protagonist of "How Beautiful Life" is plunged into despair. He is George Bailey (Stewart), a man who has never stepped out of the town of Bedford, where he was peacefully born. As a young man, he dreamed of shaking off the dust off his shoes and traveling far away, but one thing after another prevented him from escaping — especially the responsibility for his family's savings and loan cooperatives. Only this institution protects Bedford from the greedy local banker, Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore).
George marries his high school sweetheart (Donna Reed, her first time playing the lead role), settles down and starts a family. He helped half of the local poor buy houses so they could have their own homes. Then, George's forgetful uncle (Thomas Mitchell) loses his bank fund during Christmas, and the evil Potter is finally about to commit adultery. George loses hope and begins to become resentful (even his face darkens, though he still looks kind and rosy in the colored version). Desperately standing on a bridge contemplating suicide, a second-degree angel named Clarence (Henry Travers) shows him what Bedford Would be like without him.
Clarence, George
Frank Capra never intended to make "How Beautiful Life Is" a "Christmas movie." It was his first work to return from service in World War II, and he wanted to make something special—a celebration of the lives and dreams of ordinary American citizens who did everything they could to do good on themselves and their neighbors. Prior to this film, Capra had produced a series of excellent allegorical films representing the general public ("One Night Flow", "Mr. Dietz Goes to Town", "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", "Floating Dreams"), and thus became a civilian poet in Hollywood in the 1930s. When he found the idea for "How Beautiful Life" was in the story of Philip Van Doren, the former had been dusting the studio shelves for a long time.
The film's gloomy atmosphere gives such a strong impression that brisk scenes can be overlooked—like the high school ball burlesque, where the floor of the dance floor cracks to reveal the pool below, and Stewart and Reed dance the gittba and accidentally fall straight into the pool (this floor-covered pool isn't built in the studio, but is a Hollywood high school scene). There are also several dramatic scenes, such as George running to save his brother from falling into the ice water; Donna Reed losing her bathrobe, so that Stewart can only talk to the bushes; such as the scene on the phone," where the angry Stewart and Reid find that they can't resist the attraction to each other," full of romantic emotions.
A drunken George Bailey stumbles down the town he wants to hate. Later, with the help of a gentle angel, he returned to the town to see another possibility. It was here that the face that Stewart first showed would later appear in many other films, such as Hitchcock's Vertigo or Anthony Mann's Western, The Bloody Car. Andrew Sarris writes that he is "the most complete actor in American cinema." If this is true, then this film is his turning point to completeness, revealing the dark side that was rarely seen before the war. In pre-war comedies like The Philadelphia Story (1940) and The Shop Around the Corner (1940), he was a thin and cheerful protagonist, but now he was untrimmed, bitter inside, swinging from bar to bar, thinking of suicide.
Stewart's active Experience as an Air Force pilot undoubtedly influenced his performance. While the other stars either stayed in the country or were merely literary and artistic personnel in the army, Stewart enlisted as a soldier and later promoted to colonel. He flew many combat missions and was eventually awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and was a veritable war hero. What he had seen and heard during the war must have been reflected in George Bailey's face, especially when he was on the bridge in the town of Bedford.
In later years, Stewart further played the role of murderer, bounty hunter, beauty seeker, and moral depraved, abandoning the optimistic image of the pre-war period. It was a shrewd step that not only extended the life of his career, but also linked him to some of the most creative directors— notably Hitchcock, Mann, and John Ford. Capra's film can be seen as a transition period. George Bailey stared into the depths of despair and lost faith in the townspeople, but he was on a cliff at the last minute. The film acknowledges the existence of evil, acknowledging that the world can sometimes become sad and lonely, but at the end everything is back in place, and the traditional values of Bedford Town are re-consolidated.
Capra's approach here, as elsewhere, relies on potential allegories to provide an arc of cinematic development. We can feel that there is still hope ahead of us, even in the darkest moments. Capra is not a complex director, and one of the reasons he went into recession after the war may have been his failure to make adjustments in time like Stewart did. The war has shaken the basic optimism of Americans. Still, the tension between The Dark Side of Resturt and Capra's Hope in How Beautiful Life brings life to the film. It saved even the oldest parts of the galaxy that blinked as Heaven discussed George's fate. It's bold and easy to deal with, but it's not annoying. A more complex approach to George's life story may seem lengthy.
"How Nice Life" contributed little to Frank Capra's postwar career as a director. In fact, he never regained his thirties glory at the box office. Later works like One Federal State and Trick Of The Jungle book still had a Capra-like texture, but lost that magic. After 1961, the director never made any films again. But he remained old and strong until after a stroke in the late eighties, when he eventually died in 1991. In the early seventies, a group of film students asked him at a seminar if there was a way to make films that reflected Capra-like values and ideals.
"Well, if not," he said, "then we'll give up." ”