George Bailey had it all figured out.
After college, he planned to take the world by storm. Why, he even had a suitcase ready to go, one big enough to plaster stickers onto in his myriad exotic journeys to come.
Yes sir, George’s sleepy little hometown of Bedford Falls would soon be a distant memory. He was ready to go, ready to leave his parents and brother, Harry, in the rear-view mirror.
“I want to do something big. Something important,” he says. “I just feel like if I don’t get out, I’ll bust.”
But then life happened, one fateful turning point at a time. Lots of other people made it out of Bedford Falls. But not George.
What George does do is make a lot of sacrifices for other people. He never goes to college, for instance, but George makes it possible for his little brother to do so. In fact, Harry goes from being a football star to a war hero.
And even though George has bigger dreams than running his dad’s modest bank, he nonetheless accepts that responsibility instead of surrendering the business to Bedford Falls’ resident greedy business tycoon, Henry F. Potter. After all, who else is going to give mortgages to working-class folks? Certainly not Mr. Potter.
Along the way, George marries pretty Mary Hatch. Four children arrive in due time, Pete, Janie, Zuzu and Tommy.
But as the years stretch out, it becomes clear that the only thing in the rearview mirror is George’s dreams.
So when the dastardly, conniving Mr. Potter frames George for stealing bank deposits, George finds himself contemplating ending it all—wondering if his life really matters, or if it would have been better had he never been born. It’s right about then that an old angel named Clarence shows up to help George see how his life, character and sacrifice have deeply impacted the lives of so many people in Bedford Falls.
George Bailey, played by the imminently likable Jimmy Stewart, is a kind of everyman archetype here. He has big dreams, but they’re thwarted by circumstances at nearly every turn. Despite wanting to escape his humdrum, small-town existence, George never leaves. He and Mary meet, fall in love, get married and have four kids. George takes over the family business that he so desperately wanted to escape.
But even though it’s clear George is frustrated in some ways by the trajectory of his life, he’s a model of decency and goodness in most ways. He gives loans to people whom predatory Potter would otherwise have preyed upon. Amid a bank run immediately after his wedding, George and Mary give all the cash for their honeymoon to depositors desperately needing their money.
George’s decency and upright character are matched—or possibly even exceeded—by Mary’s. She, too, is willing to do the right thing, even if it means sacrifice on her part.
Even as one of George’s friends achieves wealth beyond his wildest dreams, the movie suggests that the beauty and goodness of family and of faithfully doing your job to serve others matters more in the long run. George’s father modeled that for him, in fact. And even though he initially chafes at becoming like his dad, in time he sees the dignity of a life of character.
When Potter impugns the elder Bailey’s character, George delivers a passionate defense of his dad’s moral goodness: “His whole life, he never once thought of himself.” And he remembers how his father “helped people get out of the slums.” Eventually, George creates an affordable housing neighborhood to help others in the same way his dad had done.
Driving home the point, a sign in the Bailey bank says, “All you can take with you is that which you’ve given away.” And Clarence leaves George a letter that says, “Dear George, remember that no man is a failure who has friends.”
The film’s opening scene is an aerial shot of Bedford Falls, and we hear the voices of many people praying for George’s safety (including at least one of his kids). Those prayers rise into the heavens, where two senior angels (represented by pulsating stars) hear and discuss them. It’s decided that a second-class angel named Clarence will be dispatched to help George. Clarence has not yet gotten his wings, but he hopes that successfully helping George will earn him a promotion to first class and the accompanying receipt of his wings. (We also hear that Clarence is 293 years old, and that he became an angel following his human life on Earth.)
Clarence describes himself as George’s “guardian angel” once they meet. And to keep George from committing suicide by jumping off a bridge, Clarence himself jumps into the waters below. George plunges in, too, now compelled save the angel rather than to take his own life.
George suggests in despair that it would have been better for everyone if he’d never been born. Clarence gives George a chance to see exactly how things would have gone without him.
George prays a couple of times, once saying, “Dear Father in heaven, I’m not a praying man. But if you’re up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I’m at the end of my rope. Show me the way, oh God.” And at the end of his vision of what life would have been like without him, George prays, “Please, God, let me live again.”
We hear a passing reference to prayers for the end of World War II.
We see George and Mary kiss with quite a bit of passion on a couple occasions, especially right after their wedding.
Before the couple gets married, a woman named Violet aggressively flirts with him. She wears relatively formfitting outfits, and a group of men ogle her and comment on her appearance.
Late in the film, she comes to George for help in a moment of desperation. He’s kind to her, and she gives him a kiss on the cheek that’s more appreciative than it is seductive. But her lipstick stains on his cheek provoke some unfounded comments about the nature of their relationship. (George is never interested in her anywhere in the film.)
George and Mary have a heated conversation early in their courtship. Mary’s mother, who’s upstairs, asks what all the commotion is about. She responds, “He’s making violent love to me, mother.” That sounds quite racy to modern ears, but at the time, the phrase “making love” described the process of wooing someone rather than having sex. Still, in a movie that has very few other moments that would raise one’s eyebrows, that startling phrase just might.
In a scene played for humor, George steps on the edge of a bathrobe Mary is wearing (because they’ve unexpectedly fallen into a swimming pool while fully clothed). We see the robe on the ground, and it’s implied that she’s now unclothed. Mary hides in a bush and begs him to give her the robe back, and George toys with her instead of just responding to her modest request.
When Clarence shows George a vision of a world in which he didn’t exist, Bedford Falls has become a place called Potterville, a town full of vice, it seems. As George walks down the town’s main street, he strolls past signs for burlesque shows. A sign outside one such business advertises “Georgia’s Sensational Strip Tease.” Another reads, “20 Gorgeous Girls. Girls Girls Girls.”
Very early in the film as George is contemplating his travels, he says he wants “a couple of harems” and “three or four wives.”
As mentioned above, George not only contemplates taking his life, but is on the verge of following through on that idea when Clarence interrupts him.
There’s a minor car crash (more on that below), and George gets into a fistfight with man whose wife George has angrily berated.
After Billy Bailey, George’s uncle, loses track of $8,000 that was supposed to be deposited in Potter’s larger bank, George realizes that he’s responsible for the missing money. He has no way to cover the loss, and he comes home very angry, yelling at his children and throwing and destroying things in his home.
A flashback shows George’s brother, Harry, falling through ice on a pond; George rescues him, but we learn that the cold water resulted in a sickness that claimed George’s hearing in his left ear.
We later see footage of Harry in the war shooting down a plane and rescuing men on a boat who would have been destroyed by that plane.
In George’s vision of life without himself, however, we learn that Harry drowned in that icy pond and that the men on the boat were killed because George wasn’t there to save them.
George also keeps a grieving, drunken pharmacist from mistakenly giving someone poison pills. It’s perhaps suggested that the pharmacist was also contemplating suicide.
An older man slaps a very young George in the face four times. Someone slaps a housekeeper’s backside. In context within the story, the intent seems to be a misguided expression of affection rather than intentional sexual harassment.
In an attempt to help George escape from police officers, Clarence actually bites one of them on the hand. A bit later, George hits a cop and steals his police car, even as the officer shoots at him (but obviously misses).
We learn that someone has a stroke and eventually dies.
Someone uses the exclamation “Sam Hill.” Another person says, “Joseph, Jesus and Mary.” Name-calling includes put downs such as, “idiot,” “yokel” and “failure.” George’s Uncle Billy describes Mr. Potter as a “money-grubbing buzzard.” Someone says, “Doggone it!”
Characters drink socially and smoke (cigarettes, cigars, pipes) throughout the film. The film’s depiction of smoking, particularly, reflect an era in which that habit was more common and culturally acceptable than it is today.
Billy Bailey is repeatedly shown drunk. And in his descent into suicidal despair, George also seems impaired after having several drinks. He drives while drunk, crashing into a tree. Another character, upon learning that his son has died, also is obviously drunk amid his grief.
During Clarence’s vision of a world in which George never existed, the town is full of bars and people obviously drinking to excess.
Mr. Potter, as noted above, is a two-dimensional, stereotypical greedy villain here.
George himself has a fairly epic meltdown in front of his family, saying all sorts of angry things to his crying children as he tears up the living room.
When I was growing up, my best friend’s dad had a saying, one I think about to this day: “Perspective is the key.” And it’s true. How we see our life—the good, the bad, the opportunities, the disappointments, and the people around us—can make all the difference.
In Frank Capra’s classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey loses perspective. In fact, his ability to see his life clearly gets so warped by his difficult circumstances that he can’t see a way forward.
The gift that Clarence the angel bestows upon his human charge is that of clarity, of perspective. When George Bailey finally sees the value of his life clearly—especially the impact his character has had on those around him—it transforms him. And the fruit of that transformation is renewed hope.
One could perhaps argue that the story’s neatly wrapped-up “happily ever after” ending feels a bit too pat. But I think that’s being too churlish. The ending here is certainly the old-school Hollywood variety. But it also demonstrates that we reap what we sow: Just as George has been generous in his time of need, we see that others are willing to help him, too.
It’s a Wonderful Life winsomely challenges us, as viewers, to consider our own lives, to ponder what distorts our perspectives. And Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed (who plays Mary) are simply a delight to watch onscreen—especially if you’ve never experienced their charming chemistry before (as, I confess, I hadn’t.)
Content-wise, It’s a Wonderful Life hails from a different time and reflects that moment in culture in its portrayal of smoking and drinking. There’s perhaps a bit more content here than one might expect or remember, but none of it feels hugely problematic viewed from a 21st-century perspective.
That said, the subject of suicide is front and center here. We know, of course, that this story ultimately doesn’t go that way. But before Clarence arrives to redirect his path, George does some perilously close to making that choice—something to keep in mind if that topic is a sensitive one for anyone in your family.
All in all, this classic holds up. Younger viewers might not immediately engage with a black-and-white movie that moves more slowly than we’re accustomed. But if you give it some time and hang in there, your family might just embrace this story’s delightful old-fashioned charm as well as its powerful reminder that, indeed, “Perspective is the key.”
After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.
