Zach Vasquez
What’s the first movie that comes to mind when you hear the term “holiday classic”? For many, if not most moviegoers (at least those over a certain age), the answer is, invariably, 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life.
Frank Capra’s fantastical story of George Bailey (James Stewart)—a model citizen driven to the brink of suicide by the cruel vicissitudes of life, only for his guardian angel to intervene and show him how bad off his loved ones would be if he’d never been born, thus sparking a renewed will to live that culminates in the most cathartic Christmas Eve celebration ever put to film—is an ode to selflessness, community, family, brotherhood, redemption, the indominability of the human spirit and goodwill to men.
Yet, the film is also a harsh look at the bastard force we call fate, one in which any man, no matter how respectable, no matter how straight-laced, no matter how good, is one stumble away from criminality and damnation.
Put another way: It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t just a holiday classic. It’s also a classic film noir.
It’s a Wonderful Life is so ingrained in the public consciousness that it tends to get passed over by movie buffs who feel like they’ve already seen it through pop culture osmosis. I know that was the case with me, and I’ve heard or read similar sentiments from any number of others. As a result, people often assume it’s an outdated piece of schmaltzy, cornpone Americana. More fool them. For as I came to learn when I finally did get around to it a few years ago , nothing could be further from the truth.
Even without getting into its noir bonafides, Life reveals itself to be a tough and dark piece of work about, of all things, the frustration of failure. It’s only because the picture it paints of George Bailey’s neutered promise and his years-long journey from bright-eyed optimist to—in the words of the villainous Mr. Potter, who might as well be describing the protagonists of any number of noirs—a “warped, frustrated young man” is so raw and potent that the final lines about how he is, in fact, “the richest man in town,” land with such devastating redemptive force.
The third act pivot into fantasy, in which George finds himself a wandering spirit in a seedy and grotesque alternate version of reality, plays as powerfully today as it must have back when. Capra’s command of cinematic language is on full display during these scenes—rarely has the black in a black and white film looked so deep, while the shots of George’s twisted grimace as he attempts to comprehend what’s happening are perhaps the most horripilative close-ups ever deployed.
Obviously, it’s this section of the movie in which my noir argument finds its greatest purchase. The transformation of Bedford Falls, never necessarily idyllic (most of the action takes place during the Depression, after all) but on the whole a decent place for decent people, into Pottersville is exactly the type of modern day Sodom and Gomorrah you’d expect to find all the hustlers, crooks, femme fatales and violent loners populate all the classic noirs of, say, Robert Siodmak or Edgar G. Ulmer (who billed himself as “the Frank Capra of Poverty Row”).
In fact, we do find some of them here. Loveable working stiffs Burt the Cop and Earnie the Cabbie are basically transformed into the titular antiheroes of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, while flirty but innocent town beauty Violet Bick, already on a downward slide in the “real” world, has become the full-on fallen woman that actress and noir queen Gloria Graham portrayed in the likes of The Big Heat and Odds Against Tomorrow. Loneliness, madness, bitterness, scorn and death: this is what awaits the rest of the once happy locals in this new urban hellscape. (Which, granted, does also look like a hell of a town to party in.)
The influence of the dark thrillers and melodramas of the ‘30s and ‘40s, which would later be categorized as film noir, are evident on the style and themes of Life, not least of all Capra’s other Christmas set drama about a suicidal everyman, Meet John Doe (1940). It has, in turn, gone on to influence scores of noirs that came out afterwards, including the very next year’s excellent and underseen Repeat Performance, which takes the fantastical do-over plot device and winter holidays setting and fashions it unto a murder mystery; pretty much the entirety of TV’s The Twilight Zone; the gritty police drama Cop Land (director James Mangold personally confirmed that Life was a “North Star” in the making of that movie); and the work of director David Lynch, particularly his surreal neo-noirs Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, which may as well be through glass darkly versions of the Capra’s vision. In the realm of literary noir, David Thomsen’s essential Suspects (1985) sets Life at the center of its ingenious conceit, creating a new lens through which to interpret the film.
But the noirness of Life extends beyond these examples. It’s at the heart of the story, of George’s story which, up until the act of divine intervention that reverses its course, is the very exposition of film noir’s great theme as summed up by L.A. Confidential author James Ellory: “You’re fucked.” As in Greek tragedy, film noir runs on fatalism. It’s not sin that will destroy you—note how Potter never gets his comeuppance (save for in SNL’s “lost ending”)—but desire. This could be desire for sex (and man, the phone seduction scene between Stewart and Donna Reed halfway through is as hot as those in Double Indemnity), for money, or for power. But mostly, it’s the desire to rise above one’s fate, to beat The House.
It’s a Wonderful Life is, ultimately, a redemptive story with a happy ending. However, it’s suffused not only with darkness, but with the understanding that there is no escaping one’s fate. George Bailey does not beat The House. The House merely decides to cut the poor schmuck a break.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” is streaming on Amazon Prime and Plex.
