Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of
Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the
aftermath of war that is one of the central movies of the 1940s, and a
key text in America's understanding of itself. This is a film that
remains relevant to our own anxieties and yearnings, to all the
contradictions of ordinary life, while also enacting for us the
quintessence of the classic Hollywood aesthetic. Nostalgia, humour, and
a tough resilience weave themselves through this movie, intertwining it
with the fraught cultural moment of the end of World War II that saw its
birth. It offers a still compelling merging of fantasy and realism that
was utterly unique when it was first released, and has rarely been
matched since.
Michael Newton's study of the film investigates the source of its
extraordinary power and its long-lasting impact. He begins by
introducing the key figures in the movie's production - notably director
Frank Capra and star James Stewart - and traces the making of the film,
and then provides a brief synopsis of the film, considering its
aesthetic processes and procedures, touching on all those things that
make it such an astonishing film. Newton's careful analysis explores all
those aspects of the film that are fundamental to our understanding of
it, particularly the way in which the film brings tragedy and comedy
together. Finally, Newton tells the story of the film's reception and
afterlife, accounting for its initial relative failure and its
subsequent immense popularity.
