This wretched flu continues to toy with me mercilessly, one day giving every indication that it's coming to an end, the next surging back with renewed vigour, draining me of all energy. It's been quite a ride. And somewhere along the way, in keeping with Christmas tradition (one not observed for several years), the decision was taken to watch It's a Wonderful Life. This was not wise: I had overlooked the state of emotional frailty the flu had plunged me into. The result was that the titles were barely over before liquefaction set in, and by the end I was a wrung-out emotional wreck of a man, beyond help. The film is notoriously one that can wring tears from the stoniest heart, so a man in my condition was asking for trouble...
What is it about It's a Wonderful Life? Like A Christmas Carol – with which it has clear parallels, not least in the Scrooge-like character of Mr Potter and in its time-shifting vision of what might have been – it has the power of fable, and it has a Dickensian simplicity. Essentially both A Christmas Carol and It's A Wonderful Life dramatise the same conflict, between a view of the world (Potter/Scrooge's) in which the 'bottom line' is everything and human beings merely interchangeable economic units, and one in which bonds of social and familial affection, custom and ceremony count for more than profit-and-loss and create something of infinitely greater value. George Bailey is a man at the point of breaking under the relentless pressure to surrender to the grinding logic of Potter's ruthless accounting and betray the community that he has done so much to build. Of course we know how it will end, but Frank Capra's storytelling and (in particular ) Jimmy Stewart's performance are so compelling that the film gains power as it goes along, building such a head of emotional steam that by the end... well, there won't be a dry eye or an unwrung heart. Okay, it's sentimental, it's hokey and all the rest, but It's a Wonderful Life is also a cinematic masterpiece of rare potency.
By the way, when George Bailey is granted a vision of how 'Potterville' (the former Bedford Falls) would have ended up but for him, the pleasure-crazed asocial dystopia – all cocktail bars and gambling dens and low dives – seemed, mutatis mutandis, sadly reminiscent of the centres of some of our depressed English towns today. This represents, I suppose, the triumph of 'limbic capitalism' – capitalism relentlessly titillating the pleasure centres to keep us coming back for more of what does us no good at all.
Monday, 6 January 2025
It's a Wonderful Film
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Stewart was suffering from severe post-combat nervous problems, what we’d now call PTSD, during the filming of that movie. He was plagued by relentless insomnia, and wakened by night terrors whenever he managed to fall asleep. The only foods he could keep down were peanut butter and ice cream. His on-set rages were fearsome.
ReplyDeleteI’ve never read about this, but heard about it from the man himself. He was the guest speaker at a late 1970’s reunion of the 100th Bomb Group, in which my father flew 28 missions from January through May of 1944. Initially, Stewart was met with stony silence when he asked his audience if any of them had suffered “mental problems” as a result of war service. So, he held up a trembling hand and said, “You can’t tell me I’m the only man in this room who can barely navigate a spoonful of soup, without calming himself with a couple of shots of bourbon!”
Thanks so much for that – it throws new light on his performance, and makes it all the more wonderful.
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