Not So Wonderful (James Kunstler)

James Kunstler -- Clusterfuck Nation

Dec. 18, 2006 -- It's a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra's 1946 Christmas card to America, is full of strange and bitter lessons about who we were and who we have become. It also illustrates the perversity of history -- the fact that things sometimes end up the opposite of the way we expect.

The movie concerns the life and career of one George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) and his neighbors in the prototypical main street town of Bedford Falls. The story's arc runs roughly from about 1910 to the 1946 "present." By the 1920s, young George yearns to break free of the "crummy little town" (as he calls it), but circumstances keep him bound to it through the years, and to the family business, a little local "building and loan" bank of the kind that also used to be called "thrifts" and later "savings and loans," now extinct institutions.

Bailey Building and Loan gets whipsawed by the boom of the 1920s and then the Great Depression. World War Two comes and goes. Over the decades, George is bedeviled by the town villain, scheming rival banker Mr. (no first name) Potter (Lionel Barrymore), who is always trying to shut down or take over Bailey Building and Loan.

Eventually, Mr. Potter gets the better of George, who attempts suicide, but is saved by an avuncular guardian angel named Clarence, who shows George how much worse off his town (and, by extension, the world) would be if George had never been born. The rest is George coming to his senses on Christmas Eve, amid caroling and bell ringing, realizing how wonderful all the vicissitudes of small town life, and family, and banking really have been.

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The author misinterprets the scene where Baily helps the Italian family get his own home. The family had lived in one of Mr. Potter's tenement houses, which were fire traps and dumps. Baily saw his business as helping the working class get their own homes.

Today, I think, George Baily probably would help the working class remodel old homes to live in and lobby for tax breaks for the working class to reclaim old homes in the interest of curbing urban sprawl. That is what George Baily's wife did. She got George to buy an old Victorian house and she remodeled it.

Meanwhile, the Mr. Potters would call those tax breaks to the working class "pork" and lobby for more tax cuts for the super wealthy. I can see Mr. Potter lobbying for more outsourcing of labor to foreign countries too so that the working class can't afford to buy a house. In fact Barrymore's Potter echoes the same sentiments about the working class that the Republican Party of today says -- the working poor are lazy and that is why can't make ends meat.

Regarding Las Vegas, most people would rather visit the casinos than live next to them. People want a quiet and pleasant looking neighborhood to live in and raise a family. They want excitement and flashy lights when they are looking for entertainment on a vacation.

predictions of doom and gloom. Wonder what he would make of A Christmas Story, though?

Forgo It's a Wonderful Life this season and go with the real Capra gem, You Can't Take It with You. If you've never seen it, it should be a must see. Absolutely pure Capra, a zany comedy with a social lesson for everybody, especially those in this greed and gore world of ours.

A plot summary

The Vanderhof household lives a spirited, care-free life in spite of the fact that they have no visible means of financial support. Grandpa Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore) is the avuncular head of a loose collection of family, friends, and hangers-on who seem to do nothing but what they want to do. The story surrounds the fact that Granddaughter Alice (Jean Arthur) is in love with Tony Kirby (James Stewart) who just happens to be the son of stuffed-shirt, banking tycoon, Anthony P. Kirby (Edward Arnold). Of course, the elder Kirby has plans to buy up and tear down the Vanderhof neighborhood for his latest development project.

No spoilers here. The Vanderhof household is truly an exemplar of craziness, a kind of low-rent version of the Bullock clan from Gregory La Cava's similarly brilliant 1936 My Man Godfrey (another one of my favorites). That both movies feature the always comedic iconoclastic musings of Mischa Auer may be no accident. The extent that the Vanderhofs are totally unbuttoned is the extent that the Kirby's are buttoned-down stuffed shirts (except Kirby son, Tony--Stewart). Therein lies the charm. Of course, Capra's goal here is to show the Kirbys that the way of the world exhibited at the Vanderhof's might be the one true way using love as the seed.

YCTIWY is a unforgettably charming movie, a clear winner. Supporting cast, who turn in some of the best ensemble work of any movie since, are outstanding. It won the Best Picture Oscar, deservedly so.

I encourage DUers to see it this season.

Cast

Jean Arthur -- Alice Sycamore
Lionel Barrymore -- Granpa Martin Vanderhof
James Stewart -- Tony Kirby
Edward Arnold -- Anthony P. Kirby
Mischa Auer -- Boris Kalenkhov
Ann Miller -- Essie Carmichael
Spring Byington -- Penny Sycamore
Samuel S. Hinds -- Paul Sycamore
Donald Meek -- Poppins
H.B. Warner -- Ramsey