MR. ELLMAN didn’t tell us why he wanted us to stay after school that December
afternoon in 1981. When we got to the classroom — cinderblock walls, like all
the others, with a dreary view of the parking lot — we smelled popcorn.
He had set up a 16-millimeter projector and a movie screen, and rearranged
the chairs. Book bags, jackets and overcoats were tossed on seat backs,
teenagers sat, suspicious, slumping, and Mr. Ellman started the projector
whirring. “It’s
a Wonderful Life” filled the screen.
I was not a mushy kid. My ears were fed a steady stream of the Clash and the
Jam, and I was doing my best to conjure a dyed-haired, wry, angry-young-man
teenage persona. But I was enthralled that afternoon in Brooklyn. In the years
that followed, my affection for “It’s a Wonderful Life” has never waned, despite
the film’s overexposure and sugar-sweet marketing, and the rolling eyes of
friends and family.
Lots of people love this movie of course. But I’m convinced it’s for the
wrong reasons. Because to me “It’s a Wonderful Life” is anything but a cheery
holiday tale. Sitting in that dark public high school classroom, I shuddered as
the projector whirred and George Bailey’s life unspooled.
Was this what adulthood promised?
“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up
and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before
his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being
trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so
filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your
oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home
renovation.
I haven’t seen it on a movie screen since that first time, but on Friday it
begins its annual pre-Christmas run at the IFC Cinema in Greenwich Village. I
plan to take my 9-year-old son and my father, who has never seen it the whole
way through because he thinks it’s too corny.
How wrong he is.
I’m no movie critic, and I’ll leave to others any erudite evaluation of the
film as cinematic art, but to examine it closely is to experience “It’s a
Wonderful Life” on several different levels.
Many are pulling the movie out of the archives lately because of its
prescience on the perils of trusting bankers. I’ve found, after repeated
viewings, that the film turns upside down and inside out, and some glaring — and
often funny — flaws become apparent. These flaws have somehow deepened my
affection for it over the years.
Take the extended sequence in which George Bailey (James
Stewart), having repeatedly tried and failed to escape Bedford Falls, N.Y.,
sees what it would be like had he never been born. The bucolic small town is
replaced by a smoky, nightclub-filled, boogie-woogie-driven haven for showgirls
and gamblers, who spill raucously out into the crowded sidewalks on Christmas
Eve. It’s been renamed Pottersville, after the villainous Mr. Potter, Lionel
Barrymore’s scheming financier.
Here’s the thing about Pottersville that struck me when I was 15: It looks
like much more fun than stultifying Bedford Falls — the women are hot, the music
swings, and the fun times go on all night. If anything, Pottersville captures
just the type of excitement George had long been seeking.
And what about that banking issue? When he returns to the “real” Bedford
Falls, George is saved by his friends, who open their wallets to cover an $8,000
shortfall at his savings
and loan brought about when the evil Mr. Potter snatched a deposit mislaid
by George’s idiot uncle, Billy (Thomas
Mitchell).
But isn’t George still liable for the missing funds, even if he has made
restitution? I mean, if someone robs a bank, and then gives the money back, that
person still robbed the bank, right?
I checked my theory with Frank J. Clark, the district attorney for Erie
County upstate, where, as far as I can tell, the fictional Bedford Falls is set.
He thought it over, and then agreed: George would still face prosecution and
possible prison time.
“In terms of the theft, sure, you take the money and put it back, you still
committed the larceny,” he said. “By giving the money back, you have mitigated
in large measure what the sentence might be, but you are still technically
guilty of the offense.”
He took this a bit further: “If you steal over $3,000, it’s a D felony; 2 ½
to 7 years is the maximum term for that. The least you can get is probation. You
know Jimmy Stewart, though, he had that hangdog face. He’d be a tough guy to
send to jail.”
He paused, and then added: “You really have a cynical sense of humor.”
He should have met me when I was 15.
The movie starts sappily enough, with three angels in outer space discussing
George’s fate. Maybe that’s what turned my dad off, that or the saccharine
title. I’m amazed they didn’t spoil it for me in 1981, but I may not have been
paying attention yet.
Soon enough, though, the darkness sets in. George’s brother, Harry (Todd
Karns), almost drowns in a childhood accident; Mr. Gower, a pharmacist, nearly
poisons a sick child; and then George, a head taller than everyone else, becomes
the pathetic older sibling creepily hanging around Harry’s high school
graduation party. That night George humiliates his future wife, Mary (Donna
Reed), by forcing her to hide behind a bush naked, and the evening ends with
his father’s sudden death.
Disappointments pile up. George can’t go to college because of his obligation
to run the Bailey Building and Loan, and instead sends Harry. But Harry returns
a slick, self-obsessed jerk, cannily getting out of his responsibility to help
with the family business, by marrying a woman whose dad gives him a job. George
again treats Mary cruelly, this time by chewing her out and bringing her to
tears before kissing her. It is hard to understand precisely what she sees in
him.
George is further emasculated when his bad hearing keeps him out of World War
II, and then it’s Christmas Eve 1945. These scenes — rather than the subsequent
Bizarro-world alternate reality — have always been the film’s defining moments
for me. All the decades of anger boil to the surface.
After Potter takes the deposit, George flies into a rage and finally lets
Uncle Billy know what he thinks of him, calling him a “silly, stupid old fool.”
Then he explodes at his family.
If you watch the film this year, keep a close eye on Stewart during this
sequence. First he smashes a model bridge he has built. Then, like any parent
who loses his temper with his children, he seems genuinely embarrassed. He’s
ashamed. He apologizes. And then ... slowly ... he starts getting angry all over
again.
To me Stewart’s rage, building throughout the film, is perfectly calibrated —
and believable — here.
Now as for that famous alternate-reality sequence: This is supposedly what
the town would turn out to be if not for George. I interpret it instead as
showing the true characters of these individuals, their venal internal selves
stripped bare. The flirty Violet (played by a supersexy Gloria Grahame, who
would soon become a timeless film noir femme fatale) is a dime dancer and maybe
a prostitute; Ernie the cabbie’s blank face speaks true misery as George enters
his taxi; Bert the cop is a trigger-happy madman, violating every rule in the
patrol guide when he opens fire on the fleeing, yet unarmed, George, forcing
revelers to cower on the pavement.
Gary Kamiya, in a funny story on Salon.com in 2001, rightly pointed out how
much fun Pottersville appears to be, and how awful and dull Bedford Falls is. He
even noticed that the only entertainment in the real town, glimpsed on the
marquee of the movie theater after George emerges from the alternate universe,
is “The
Bells of St. Mary’s.”
Now that’s scary.
I’ll do Mr. Kamiya one better, though. Not only is Pottersville cooler and
more fun than Bedford Falls, it also would have had a much, much stronger
future. Think about it: In one scene George helps bring manufacturing to Bedford
Falls. But since the era of “It’s a Wonderful Life” manufacturing in upstate New
York has suffered terribly.
On the other hand, Pottersville, with its nightclubs and gambling halls,
would almost certainly be in much better financial shape today. It might well be
thriving.
I checked my theory with the oft-quoted Mitchell L. Moss, a professor of
urban policy at New
York University, and he agreed, pointing out that, of all the upstate
counties, the only one that has seen growth in recent years has been
Saratoga.
“The reason is that it is a resort, and it has built an economy around that,”
he said. “Meanwhile the great industrial cities have declined terrifically. Look
at Connecticut: where is the growth? It’s in casinos; they are constantly
expanding.”
In New York, Mr. Moss added, Gov. David
A. Paterson “is under enormous pressure to allow gambling upstate because of
the economic problems.”
“We ease up on our lot of cultural behaviors in a depression,” he said.
What a grim thought: Had George Bailey never been born, the people in his
town might very well be better off today.
Not too long ago I friended Mr. Ellman on Facebook.
(To call him by his given name, Robert, is somehow still unnatural to me.)
I asked him about inviting us to stay after school to eat popcorn and watch
“It’s a Wonderful Life.” He said it was always one of his favorite films, if a
little corny and sentimental, and that he always saw staying late with us as
part of his job. If anything, he said, there was just as much to learn after
school as there was during it.
He reminded me that it was an actual film print we saw; this was before video
took hold. And he also proved to be a close viewer. It was Mr. Ellman who
pointed out to me how cruel George is to Mary the night they first kiss, and who
told me to keep an eye out for Ernie’s vacant stare when George gets into the
cab. He said he cried the first time he saw it.
I asked him if he’d continued those December viewings.
“In later years,” he wrote, “it became too difficult to get students to stay.
We started doing a festival of student-written/student-directed one-act plays
right after the end of the fall show. Everyone was too busy to stay and watch a
movie.”
It’s a shame.
So I’ll tell Mr. Ellman a secret. It’s something I felt while watching the
film all those years ago, but was too embarrassed to reveal.
That last scene, when Harry comes back from the war and says, “To my big
brother, George, the richest man in town”? Well, as I sat in that classroom,
despite the dreary view of the parking lot; despite the moronic Uncle Billy;
despite the too-perfect wife, Mary; and all of George’s lost opportunities, I
felt a tingling chill around my neck and behind my ears. Fifteen years old and
imagining myself an angry young man, I got all choked up.
And I still do.