Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine It's a Wonderful Topic!

Okay, Christmas is over, but I've just completed my annual re-watch of It's a Wonderful Life--imo, it's hands down the greatest Christmas movie of all time and a contender for one of the very best films EVER.

One thing I try to soak in each year is all the nuances in the story, especially following all the characters and seeing how their roles play out throughout the film.

Of all of those characters, it seems to me that the one character that could have had an entire film devoted to exactly what was going on with her is Violet Bick, as portrayed by the stunning Gloria Grahame. Her story is barely touched upon, and most of it is left to the audience's imagination, particularly, I'd imagine, because of the pervading values of that age and how film would have been unable to explore such a seedy story.

About Violet, it strikes me that, unlike the other characters in Bedford falls, her life in the real timeline isn't all that much better than the version of it hinted at in the alternate timeline of Pottersville we were shown.It seems to me that, either way, she lived a troubled life fraught with poor choices and likely some abuse from men she associated with.

Who and what was Violet? What was she hoping to run away to New York, and was that really going to improve her life at all? Did George always give her money?

Violet had an intriguing, untold story that we'll never know all the details of or how things ultimately worked out for her. I'd be curious if other fans of the movie might have their own impressions of her based on the material and from their own extrapolations.

And of course, with such a great movie, I'd be curious about what other aspects intrigue and delight you all! Just cuz Christmas is over, it ain't too late!

I've actually never watched It's a Wonderful Life! This thread is just the incentive to needed to finally remedy that. Thanks, Lardy.

Nothing says Christmas more than a drunken suicide attempt... It's a Wonderful Life

I'd certainly be curious about your reaction. I myself didn't see it for the first time until the late '90s. Your mileage may vary, of course. Like a lot of older movies, women aren't exactly all that well-rounded. I will argue, though, that Donna Reed as Mary has a lot of inner strength, even though her life-long devotion to George seems a little simple.



I'm not sure if this is just your trademark acerbic wit or if it belies a certain dissatisfaction with said film. Either way, I'd love to here more of your thoughts and/or witticisms about it!

(Can't wait for a certain Legendary Poster to see this topic and comment, btw. I know he'll have LOTS to say! )

I just finished placing a request for the DVD at the local library website.

Indeed! And I missed seeing it this season.

Greatest Christmas movie? That honor goes to Home Alone.

I'll contribute more later, but for now I'll just say that it's one of the movies that has profoundly shaped the way I think about the world.

Also, I think Mary Bailey is just a fantastic character. It occurs to me you could have a really interesting alternate version of the movie where it's her importance to the lives of those around her that is the focus. Think of what a mess George would be without her.

Marlo Thomas did a version of It's A Wonderful Life with Mary (played by Ms. Thomas) in the George role. It is called "It Happened One Christmas" and Cloris Leachman plays her guardian angel Clara Oddbody.

I found that the Pottersville Violet was a lot more hard edged. Presumably because she faced greater hardships and made even worse decisions.

I think Violet originally planned to start a new life in New York, but in the end decided to face her problems. As to what her problem was, I am thinking that she was pregnant and unmarried. Extrapolating, I would say that the father was probably a married man and thus unable to solve the problem by marrying Violet.

I got the feeling that Violet had a thing for George herself. It goes all the way back to that scene in the drugstore where they were all kids and she walks in while Mary's mooning over an oblivious George. Maybe Violet felt from the start that she wasn't good enough for him? You can kind of see her thought process when later she blows off an exasperated George's offer to go with him on a hike because she likes to be pampered. It's really hard to say.

The DVD arrived at my local library branch yesterday, and I'll be picking it up on Saturday. Review of the movie to come this weekend.

It is, without question, my all time favorite Christmas movie. It's sweet, it's touching, it's well acted, and it has a great story.

I just finished watching it. I am stunned by how good it is. Review to come tomorrow. Thank you, Lardy.

YAAAAAAAY!!!!

Looking forward to it!!!

At the risk of sounding corny, the best way to put it in a nutshell is to say, "It's a wonderful movie."

The two-hour-plus running time, unusual for the 1940s, allows director/co-writer Frank Capra to infuse the film with rich, three-dimensional characterization.

I agree with EDE about Mary. She's truly a rock!

After seeing the movie, I did some online research on it. The film's detractors claim it's about conformity, resignation, and never living your dreams. I'd counter that it's not about any of those, it's about sticking to principles of basic human decency! In the present day, with the real-life Potters pretty much running the country, if not the whole world, the movie is more relevant than ever!

As for Violet, she is a gem of character. Thanks to Grahame's performance and Capra's direction, she inspires sympathy despite her often horrible behavior. I pretty much concur with Quis about what her secrets might have been.

This is a beautiful, transcendental work of art that gets to the core of the human condition without any cursing, gratuitous violence or tasteless raunch. If I had to compare it to anything, it'd be not a movie, but rather Charles Schulz's evergreen comic strip Peanuts. Both are insightful, witty, and poignant.

I'm so glad you loved it, Le Ficque!

I'm not any kind of film buff at all, and in general, fairly or not, I don't usually care for older movies--the kind that generally populate the TCM channel. I tend to stereotype them for their generally overwrought and homogeneous music soundtracks, hammy acting and the lack of depth and realism inherent in what were essentially always G-Rated movies (even though the rating system didn't exist). I'm not saying this point of view is fair, but it's how I perceive them based on my lifelong impressions.

So, needless to say, there are very few "classic" movies that I really like or even love. "It's a Wonderful Life" IS FIRMLY in the "LOVE!!!" category for me because, even though it's not exempt from all of the elements that I generally criticize old movies for, it simply transcends all of its trappings to deliver just a perfectly endearing and well-told experience. And it's really not just some saccharine creation mixed to tug at your heartstrings artificially. The whole experience feels absolutely earned. We get to know George and so many other characters, and Bedford Falls feels like a real place that we care about. So when we see the alternate Pottersville and what's become of the characters, it affects us as much as it does George.

This is such a great, great movie--and I love it to pieces!!!

Awwww...merci, Monsieur Lardy.



I'm something of a lapsed film buff, having had similar reactions to many (though not all) of the "classics" I've seen. The pre-censorship (roughly pre-1932) movies have some interesting stuff to offer, though.



Agreed 100%, especially about the movie earning our emotional reactions. It feels totally sincere.

I highly recommend all of Capra's major films. IMO, he's one of the best directors of all time. Meet John Doe is another great one that sometimes gets shown at Christmas, though it's really only the climax of it that takes place at Christmas.

Same is true of IaWL, actually. I mean, the brief prologue takes place at Christmas technically, but it's really the only final act that makes it a "Christmas" movie. The holiday is the setting and provides context, but it really isn't a Christmas movie, strictly speaking. I don't think it was even in theaters that time of the year. (BTW, it was actually a failure at the box office! Can you believe it?!?!?)

I hesitated to post in this thread at all, but I think I need to voice my opinion.

I honestly don't care for this movie.

I sat through the whole thing once and was extremely disappointed. It just didn't live up to the hype for me.

Oh yes, and the cruel fate Donna Reed's character suffers in the alternate history is that she becomes a librarian? Worse things can happen.

If we're talking Christmas movies (and this being just before midnight of the eleventh day, going into the twelfth, it is still Christmas ), my very favorite is The Bishop's Wife. Any movie starring Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven would have to be awesome--especially with Monty Wooley and Elsa Lanchester in the supporting cast. Add to that a great story, sympathetic characters, and impressive-for-the-time special effects and it's just about perfect. On the other hand, please avoid the abominable Whitney Houston remake, the less said about the better.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Hey, to each his own, so no hard feelings, Rocky. I'd be curious, though, if you could expound a bit on how it didn't work for you. Even I don't think it's completely flawless, but I don't know of any movie that is.

For me, my relationship to this movie has nothing to do with any hype or word-of-mouth. It just resonates for me profoundly on a number of levels, in no small part because of the performance of Jimmy Stewart.

Jimmy Stewart's performance is fine.

Part of it is the hype. I usually am disappointed in movies that receive that much praise. That's one of the reasons I've never cared for Star Wars.

Another part of the reason I didn't like Wonderful Life is because its story has been copied so many times. When I finally read HG Wells' The Time Machine, I thought I had never read anything filled with so many clichés. Then I realized they weren't clichés yet when it was written. Again, I remember singing a choral piece by Mozart that sounded like a million other pieces that were, in part, derivative from Mozart. There comes a time when a work of art is copied to the point that the original work can be spoiled.

Just my tuppence worth.

Yeah, hype can ruin a movie when it doesn't live up to it in the beholder's eyes. In this case it's not the overall plot points you mention that have been copied over the decades but the execution, the nuances and the performances that endear the movie to me. I'd avoided watching it for years and years as all I'd ever heard was it being mentioned every year as being over-saturated around the holidays with continual TV airings between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

But at some point a wise decision was made to show it (almost) exclusively once every season on Christmas Eve. I think somehow that decision worked on me subliminally and caused me to finally catch it one year. I was immediately enthralled and have been ever since.

But I can certainly understand someone being underwhelmed after all the hype and build-up. As you say, it's a well-trodden formula in the decades since its debut, even if it was pretty original at the time.

Part of the reason it was cut back had to do with copyright regulations. The movie had fallen into public domain for years and it could be shown without having to pay royalties. Copyright protection was resecured and suddenly networks and TV stations had to pay to show it.

Rocky, EDE, thank you both for the film recommendations.

The Wikipedia article has a good explanation about the public domain issue.

I never knew a major network aired it on Christmas Eve, but then I'm otherwise engaged that evening.

I recently watched Casablanca. It is a great movie. The pacing of the movie is great. Things move along, but are not rushed. The only problem with it was that I knew the ending having seen the ending many many times.

Casablanca is incredible, though it *is* one movie which could benefit from the main female character being stronger.

What I love about Casablanca is how funny it is. That's something people never seem to talk about in all the "Best of" discussions.

to bring a few topics together:
Bogart and strong female lead: African Queen, ya buddy.

Bogart and Christmas: anyone else see We're no Angels? Love that movie.

The Bishop's Wife, mentioned by Rocky, this one is becoming more popular I think, seen it this year on a couple different message boards about Christmas movies but don't recall it mentioned in previous years. David Niven stars in one of my all-time favorite WWII movies so I definitely need to track down this one.

African Queen is pretty solid, despite the "Hollywood ending" compared to the book.

There's a book?

I read one of those once.

Wait, wait, what happened in the book?

The novel is by C. S. Forester, of Horatio Hornblower fame.

The movie follows the book pretty closely up until the end. The main difference is

Hm. Though not created for that purpose, I would've thought this topic would be Cobalt bait for sure!

He's busy working on his fanfic about that guy who pushes Mr. Potter's wheelchair around!

Well his one about Sam Wainwright's girlfriend/mistress/wife was riveting.

I was actually looking at the Wikipedia page of Frank Hagney earlier. He apparently appeared in over 350 movies and over 70 television programs over his career, but "is perhaps best known as Mr. Potters's wordless wheelchair pusher" in It's a Wonderful Life.

I find that amusing.

I always liked the little accounting guy at the end as he cheerfully adds up the donations. I don't think I realized until this last viewing that he worked at the Building & Loan. I thought he was with the IRS or whomever. Doubt that he has many lines himself.

That's one of the things that makes it a really great movie... that you pick up on all these little details on repeated watchings.

It's a Wonderful Life really wasn't a flop. It was 26th out of 400 films released in 1947. Disappointing, given Capra and Stewart, to be sure. It didn't make it's budget back, so it definiely wasn't a 'success'. But not a flop, quite. Still, it did lower Capra's position in top rank directors.

Donna Reed wasn't Capra's first choice. He tailored the script with Jean Arthur in mind (she was his favorite actress, with Stanwyck up there, too). I wonder how different the movie would have been with Arthur as Mary Bailey? Ginger Rogers, among others, was offered the role before Reed was cast.

One Christmas movie a lot of people have never heard of is Remember the Night. It stars Barbara Stanwyck as a shoplifter and Fred MacMurray as the D.A. who ends up taking her home with him for Christmas. It has it's share of 'corn', but it's well balanced by a pretty realistic ending.

Christmas in Connecticut, the original, is entertaining, too, if you appreciate set design.

Catching just that crucial last act tonight as I post. Even so, it's still absolute magic!

Such a beautiful ending. Gets me every single time. Tears.

This time, in an amusing way, it strikes me that the ending was an old-fashioned precursor to crowd-funding! I guess a modern remake might end with a GoFundMe drive!

True, and I suspect generally Frank Capra would be a huge fan of crowd-funding if he were alive to see it!

I love that moment outside his mother's boarding house, I think, after she fails to recognize George when realization begins to dawn on him that reality has really been altered. The expressions on Stewart's face--a mixture of horror and fear and untold other emotions--is just absolute money! It's a solid, silent, maybe quarter minute that just gives me goosebumps. That very real darkness in the movie that really is exemplified by this one moment is a major reason I love the movie so much.

This movie is so much more than all the countless saccharine holiday movies we've had to put up with in our lives. Many of these have obligatory "sad" moments to try to inject some heart into them. But in comparison to the very much earned release we get at the end of It's a Wonderful Life, these are usually very manipulative and artificial in their execution.

In other news, it seems the original Die Hard has gotten some push recently as a Christmas movie. Really?!?!

I think some of the support is tongue-in-cheek, but I'm convinced a good portion really think of it as such.

I'll take IaWL any Christmas, thank you!

I'd say Die Hard is as legitimate a Christmas movie as Home Alone.

In re-reading this thread, I was thinking about "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". I like the little touches that also affect the characters. In this Movie Jean Arthur plays Jimmy Stewart;s secretary. She is world-worn from all the politics. But when she call's Jimmy Stewart's mother, she calls her by her first name and Jean Arthur is touched by that and realizes just how real Jimmy Stewart is.

I got to watch every minute of my beloved saga of George Bailey last night. DVR'd it and watched it straight through while the wife and kids were fast asleep.

I found myself lingering on Violet again, this time. In the Pottersville timeline, I was wondering why she was in trouble. I couldn't hear the dialogue super-well, but it sounded like she may have lifted someone's wallet? And I'm certainly intrigued by her and George's relationship. I know there was nothing untoward going on between them, but I wonder how often he gave her money. She is an intriguing character who I still want to know more about!

It's interesting always to see how circumstances continually pull George away from his getting out of Bedford Falls, even denying him a honeymoon. I noted this time that even though George tries to resist his attraction to Mary and the symbolism of her further tying him to the town that it is she who begs him to stay in the cab when the Building & Loan is having the run on it. She's trying in her own way to keep his dream alive. But he can't resist, and she offers up their honeymoon money to keep the business alive.

I also love the quick cuts in the wartime scenes showing Mary continually fixing up their house and slowly making what was the old wreck at Sycamore into a lovely home.

And apparently, rampant Jitterbugging is the single activity that shows what a slum Pottersville was in the alt-Bedford Falls!

I've always interpreted Violet's "in trouble" as euphemism for pregnant. Even as a kid in the 1970s, lots of my elders from that generation used the same phrasing.

Others earlier in the thread have suggested the same thing. I've never heard of that phrasing used in that situation before. If true, then this would have been very obvious to viewers for a long time until the euphemism became less common.

In retrospect, my feminist self finds the extreme melodrama around alt-universe Mary the "old maid" to be unwittingly hilarious. Sure, she might've kept her high standards & stayed single for life in that reality. But I'm much happier imagining her smacking alt-universe George in the head with an umbrella while yelling for the cops than the wilting flower we saw.

I've known my share of librarians who worked in... ah, difficult environments for years. They're made of stronger stuff than that.

That's the main reason I can't stomach it. Waste of a great performer, and when you think of the Second World War & so many women either performing acts of daring or just rolling up their sleeves & entering "man's world" to do what was needed...? It just compounds my annoyance. I can't watch it.

This would explain why there was a real threat behind Potter's noting George's association with Violet. A married man who paid for a female friend's abortion or for her to "go away" and have the baby (who would then be discreetly put up for adoption)? No one would ever have believed he was just acting out of brotherly feeling. At least in Potter's eyes: career predator that he was.

I still have issues with the conceit of last act because it's a bit of a cheat. George's life demonstrably had an impact on other people, if only because he saved his brother's life and ran one of the central institutions in town. I know part of the point is he's lost perspective on all of that, but I think it would have been much more powerful if he really WAS a hapless loser and then saw how much positive impact he had without being aware of it. For me it makes the difference between "everyone's life has meaning" and "George is a whiny drip".

Well, I get really whiny when I'm depressed, too. And I think everyone hates me, even though they don't. So I'll cut him some slack for that.