I have been posting this essay in one form or another for three or four years around the holiday season. This year it is the finale of a trilogy of essays comparing three films with different approaches, and results, to the same problem. It Can Happen To You gives ephemeral pleasure. Remains of the Day provides a tragic solution to he conflict between gratification and conscience. It’s a Wonderful Life provides us with an enduring fantasy. This version of the essay is taken directly from the book, Double Feature.
I had never heard of It’s a Wonderful Life until one winter night in the early eighties. I was feeling out of sorts. I don’t remember the particular details but I know that I was feeling down, unfulfilled, frustrated, disappointed, perhaps lonely, unconfident, worried and otherwise unhappy. Those who have never felt that way need not read on. That night, I felt that there was only one thing I could do—turn on the television. I happened onto a quaint looking black and white film that begins with a discussion in heaven about the assignment of a guardian angel to a man who was in a similar mood to my own. As I watched and became increasingly involved, my perspective changed so that when the film was over, I had tears in my eyes and felt much better about myself.
I suspect that my mood helped me appreciate the film. It’s a Wonderful Life appeals to us through our frustrations and disappointments. Perhaps that is why it has had greater popularity in the last two decades than in the seemingly more hopeful post war era. As most readers know, the film’s final message is “No one is a failure who has friends.” What this really means in the film’s terms is that meaning in our lives comes from what we do for the people around us. As the title implies, it makes us feel that it is the little things we do each day, the plodding day-to-day meeting of simple obligations, and not the grandiose conquests of our unfulfilled daydreams, that are heroic and most fulfilling.
The film reinforces these values by providing hidden gratifications for hewing to the values of family life, community, and loyalty to friends. George Bailey is a dreamer, who approaches grandiosity at times: “I know what I’m going to do tomorrow and the next day and the next year and the year after that. I’m shaking the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m going to see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Coliseum. Then I’m coming back here and go to college and see what they know . . . and then I’m going to build things. I’m gonna build air fields. I’m gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high. I’m gonna build bridges a mile long.“
In an early scene, his dreams are contrasted with those of a young Mary, his future wife, who whispers in his deaf ear, “George Bailey, I’ll love you till the day I die.” George, who seemingly does not hear her, nevertheless responds with fantasies of escape from her vow, “I’m going out exploring some day, you watch. And I’m going to have a couple of harems, and maybe three or four wives. Wait and see.” Of course, it is Mary’s dream that comes to pass, and George’s are frustrated by a series of events that force him to stay in Bedford Falls running his father’s Building and Loan Association.
But George’s frustration actually forces him into the path of Oedipal victory. Ready to leave for travel and school, he must stay to run the family business after his father’s death. When his brother, Harry, returns from school to take George’s place, he arrives with a new wife and a job prospect. George must stay again. He marries Mary, but foregoes his honeymoon to save the Building and Loan at the outset of the depression. On the surface, he is forced to give up his dreams of conquest; but as each of his rivals leaves Bedford Falls, George has less need to leave. He stays at home, takes over his father’s business, marries the beautiful Mary, defeating his rival and good friend, millionaire Sam Wainwright, and raises a family of his own as the most important man in town, a role he had tried to place upon his father. Without having to express any wish to take his father’s place and overshadow him or to defeat his friend and rival, Sam, or send his brother into exile while he takes the family crown, George gratifies all these wishes. The frustrations of having to give up his grander plans to remain in Bedford Falls disguise his overwhelming victory over his rivals and his wish to achieve it. We, the viewers, can share this victory with him. The beauty for us is that we can achieve this vicarious gratification with him not through extraordinary feats of derring do, but through meeting the mundane obligations of family and business. This is a formula that allows us to feel heroic without leaving the reality of our own lives. It is no wonder this film is a tonic for so many around New Years, when we tend to review the value of our lives.
That alone would probably have made this a film that pleases. There are many films that give us an ephemeral sense of well being, but It’s a Wonderful Life goes deeper, gently opening our wounds to heal them by creating a subtle tension between its upbeat, reassuring surface and the dangers that threaten to disrupt our lives.
The opening scene alludes to those dangers while offering us a reassuring voice. We hear desperate prayers to heaven on behalf of George Bailey, who, we learn, is thinking of taking his life. The scene focuses on a discussion between a kind voice of authority (whom I had assumed to be God, but learned from the script is a heavenly Ben Franklin) and a more bureaucratic “Joseph.” Although George is the immediate object of their concern, the tension of the scene centers around another frustrated soul, the angel, Clarence Odbody.
Franklin: George Bailey. Yes, tonight’s his crucial night. You’re right, we’ll have to send someone down immediately. Whose turn is it?
Joseph: That’s why I came to see you, sir. It’s that clock-maker’s turn again.
Franklin: Oh—Clarence. Hasn’t got his wings yet, has he? We’ve passed him up right along.
Joseph: Because, you know, sir, he’s got the I.Q. of a rabbit.
Franklin: Yes, but he’s got the faith of a child—simple. Joseph, send for Clarence.
Despite the underlying hint of anxiety, we are reassured that there is a fatherly voice in heaven that looks kindly on the underdog. This is a film that gives heart to those who fear they cannot earn their wings.
The next scene, in which we are introduced to George at the age of twelve, has a positive tone and a happy outcome, but reminds us with a delicate brush stroke of the fine line between joy and tragedy. George is one of several boys sliding down a hill onto a frozen river. He goads his younger brother, Harry, calling him a “scare-baby” as Harry prepares to slide; but, when Harry falls into a hole in the ice, George dives in to help save him, an act we are told, that leaves him deaf in one ear.
The tragedy that is averted in this scene is realized in the next, but this time it is just off stage. George is working in Gower’s drug store, selling candy and ice cream sodas and delivering medicine for Mr. Gower. We hear Mr. Gower before we see him as he irritably admonishes George, who is whistling, that he is “not paid to be a canary.” George discovers the cause of Mr. Gower’s upset, a telegram by the cash register saying that his son, Robert, has died suddenly of influenza while at college. George tries to speak to Gower, but doesn’t know what to say, and Gower impatiently sends him to make a delivery of medicine to Mrs. Blaine’s where “they have diphtheria.” In the previous scene, a child is saved with an ease that barely allows us to recognize the danger, but now we are reminded that children can die and fathers grieve.
George sees that Gower has taken the pills from a bottle marked “poison”. He doesn’t know what to do, but seeing an ad for “Sweet Caporals” which says “ASK DAD HE KNOWS,” he runs to find his father at the Building and Loan Association. He is hopeful, but in a more subtle separation of father and son, he will never get his father’s attention or advice.
Peter Bailey is behind closed doors in an argument with the powerfully wealthy Mr. Potter, asking for more time to repay a five thousand dollar loan. As George comes in, Potter is demanding that Bailey foreclose on loans to get the money. The argument shifts to the welfare of children. Bailey says, “I can’t do that. These families have children.” Potter answers, over George’s attempt to get his father’s attention, “They’re not my children.” Bailey responds, “But they’re somebody’s children, Mr. Potter.” When Potter calls Peter Bailey and his brother “miserable failures,” George breaks into the argument, yelling at Potter, “He’s not a failure! You can’t say that about my father!” As his father pushes him out the door, George yells out, “You’re not! You’re the biggest man in town! . . . Bigger’n him! . .. Bigger’n everybody!” Potter interjects, “Gives you an idea about the Baileys.” George, almost out the door, pleads, “Don’t let him say that about you, Pop.”
Instead of receiving help with his problem, George ends up defending his father from the powerful Mr. Potter. The “Sweet Caporals” ad teases us with the image of a fatherly figure like the one we heard defending Clarence in heaven, but that hope is disappointed. George’s father is kind and well meaning, but unable to help.
George runs back to the drug store where Gower drunkenly assaults him for not getting the medicine to the Blaines, yelling, “Don’t you know that boy’s very sick?” It is only here that we realize that still another boy is in danger. The grieving Gower, helplessly separated from his son at the time of his death, tries to send medicine to save the life of this other boy, but instead sends something that would kill him as well. Finally, George blurts out to Gower what has happened. Realizing his mistake, Gower tearfully embraces George, who promises he will never tell anyone.
Mr. Gower is acutely grieving the sudden death of his son, a death for which he was not even present. He tries to send medicine to save the life of another boy with diphtheria, but instead sends something that would kill him as well. We can easily imagine that his fantasy is that if he is quick enough, his own son’s life can still be spared. But his unconscious ambivalence, perhaps over his anger that his own son could not be saved, perhaps out of guilt that he could not save his son, leads him to send poison instead.
Over and over, we have been exposed to tragic separations between father and son. We are protected from the full impact of the trauma. The action occurs quickly, death is off stage, and our pain is eased with partial resolution as George saves the boy with diphtheria and gets the hug from Mr. Gower that he did not get from his father. In the next scene, a few years later, he receives a gift of a suitcase for his anticipated travels from “old man Gower,” whose fatherly grief is partly appeased as he transfers his affection to George.
But we know that fathers and sons are not only separated by random tragedies. There are tensions, particularly Oedipal tensions, that come between them. We have seen George Bailey trying to reach out to his father for advice; and, we have seen him trying to maintain his admiration for his father in the face of Potter’s assault. George finally gets his father to son talk. In it we can see him veering between idealization and denigration.
George is anticipating a summer of travel followed by college. Peter Bailey asks him what he will do after college.
George: . . . you know what I’ve always talked about—build things, design new buildings—plan modern cities—all that stuff I was talking about.
Father: Still after that first million before you’re thirty. [Peter Bailey reduces his son’s ambition to money.]
George: No, I’ll settle for half that in cash.
Father: Of course it’s just a hope, but you wouldn’t consider coming back to the Building and Loan, would you? (after an interruption, the dialogue continues)
George: Oh, now, Pop, I couldn’t. I couldn’t face being cooped up for the rest of my life in a shabby little office. Oh, I’m sorry, Pop, I didn’t mean that remark, [George realizes that he is now insulting his father and apologizes] but this business of nickels and dimes and spending all your life trying to figure out how to save three cents on a length of pipe [he nevertheless continues in the same vein]—I’d go crazy. I want to do something big and important.
Father: You know, George, I feel that in a small way we are doing something important. Satisfying a fundamental urge. It’s deep in the race for a man to want his own roof and walls and fireplace, and we’re helping him get those things in our shabby little office. [Peter Bailey defends himself and sets a different standard for success.]
George: I know, Dad. I wish I felt . . . But I’ve been hoarding pennies like a miser in order to . . . Most of my friends have already finished college. I just feel like if I don’t get away, I’d bust. [George has taken a more pleading tone.]
Father: Yes, yes, you’re right, son.
George: You see what I mean, don’t you, Pop? [He is eager for agreement.]
Father: This town is no place for any man unless he’s willing to crawl to Potter. You’ve got talent, son. I’ve seen it. You get yourself an education. Then get out of here.
George: Pop, you want a shock? I think you’re a great guy.
There is a poignancy to this dialogue between a father who is having trouble letting go of his favorite son and a son who does not want to be constricted by his father’s dreams and ideals. George is sensitive to the possibility of hurting his father with an unkind remark. We can see him being aggressive and biting, apologizing, then becoming aggressive again. In the end he backs off to get his father’s needed blessing. We have also seen this conflict in George when he calls his younger brother a “scare-baby” on the ice, goading him into daredevil action that almost kills him, then risking his own life to save his brother. We see it again later when George is clearly reluctant to woo Mary despite her obvious interest because of his loyalty to his friend and rival, Sam Wainwright. George is conflicted between his ambitions and his affection for his male rivals.
With his dreams of escape from Bedford Falls, George reminds us of many a young man who wishes to make his name away from home rather than deal with his Oedipal fantasies. The film resolves his problem, gratifying his ambitions without forcing him to openly break the bond of affection. Mary clearly chooses George despite his reluctance and Sam makes it clear that he is not really interested in Mary. We see him with other women in New York. Harry voluntarily relinquishes any claim to leadership of the family or its business, choosing to take a better offer in Rochester. George’s father clearly wants George to be his successor, and is eliminated as a rival by events beyond his son’s control. On the evening of their heart to heart talk, Peter Bailey suffers a stroke that proves fatal. As if to emphasize the Oedipal dynamics, George is flirting with Mary when he gets word of his father’s stroke. We might even connect that with his later reluctance to pursue her.
It is the film’s ability to convert frustration and failure into Oedipal success that makes it so comforting to us. But there has been an emotional price. George has achieved his Oedipal victory through the death of his father. Unlike Oedipus, George Bailey is not responsible for his father’s death, and he never exposes the wish to overtake his father. Nevertheless, the rivalry he was escaping by leaving Bedford Falls has been decided in death. The actual death wishes between generations have been well disguised, peeking through with Gower’s inadvertent attempt to poison the boy with diphtheria. George’s aggression is not directed at his father, but at Potter, who, like Hamlet’s uncle, is accused of causing the father’s death.
We have seen a father and son (the Gowers) separated by the death of the son, another father and son (the Baileys) separated by the death of the father. Both deaths occur off stage, allowing us to hold on to the film’s upbeat tone; but despite the film’s artful gratifications for the viewer, we cannot help being touched, if only preconsciously, by an underlying sense of grief, sadness, and frustration. The film has danced along the fine line between rivalry and the secure loving bond between father and son. How can the rages and ambitions be tamed to keep them from damaging the bond, and how can the bond be maintained without subverting the strength and striving of father and son?
In the second half of the film, George is himself a mature father of four, and he begins to fall into the errors of the generation before him. George’s absent-minded Uncle Billy has lost $8,000 of the company’s money on his way to make a deposit at the bank. This happens just as the bank examiner is there to inspect the books on Christmas eve. Increasingly desperate over the prospects of bankruptcy and scandal, George begins to act like the grieving Mr. Gower in the earlier scene, drinking too much and angrily bullying Uncle Billy and his own family. When he yells at his older daughter to stop playing the piano, he in effect echoes Gower’s “You’re not paid to be a canary.”
He maintains one fatherly link, remaining affectionate and patient with his youngest daughter, Zuzu, ill with a cold. Instead he takes his anger out on her teacher, blaming her for sending his daughter home with inadequate clothing. Interestingly, although we sense that the charge is groundless, it does reverberate with Peter Bailey’s argument with Potter around concern for the welfare of children. Bailey had argued to Potter, “They’re somebody’s children,” pointing out that children depend upon belonging to someone, having someone who cares.
Like his father, George goes to Potter to beg for a loan, and is turned away with threats of arrest. His father had warned him that Bedford Falls was “not a place for any man unless he’s willing to crawl to Potter.” George had seemingly overcome that prediction moments before when he turned down Potter’s offer of a job. Driven to desperation (with no television), clutching a life insurance policy, George finds himself on a bridge contemplating suicide. Like his father, he would abandon his family with an untimely death. The tragedy that has been partly warded off with displacements and partial gratifications has re-emerged.
As most readers know, the film turns to divine intervention at this point. The resolution will be accomplished through two devices: a fantasy sequence that allows us to experience the tragedy of loss while knowing that it will be reversed and the insertion of the angel, Clarence, into George’s life.
Clarence has qualities of both a father and a son. In the opening scene, he is described as having the faith of a child. He is an innocent. He is also an adolescent, striving for maturity by trying to earn his wings and carrying a copy of the quintessential boys’ book, Tom Sawyer. But when we see him, Clarence is a cheerful, somewhat dotty old man, over two hundred years old, who has been sent as George’s guardian angel. Like a father, he has the perspective of time and the knowledge of a world beyond. He is sent to help George through his crisis, but George is continually protective of him. In this respect, he bears a resemblance to George’s idealistic, but not quite effectual enough father. In effect, George and Clarence play father and son to each other and each will help the other to maturity. George will find his way through his crisis and Clarence will earn his wings. The beauty of the structure of the film is that we can identify with both George and Clarence and identify with each both as a father and a son. Through this leveling of the playing field, the Oedipal competition is less intense and less necessary. We can, in effect, unite father and son in ourselves.
Clarence’s first successful effort in George’s behalf reveals the symbiotic nature of their relationship. Clarence suddenly appears in the river below George, screaming for help. He saves George from suicide by getting George to save him. He uses his vulnerability as a strength, and obscures the difference in roles.
Clarence’s main gift to George is the ability to see what Bedford Falls would have been like without him. When George wishes that he were never born, the supposedly doltish Clarence very cleverly grants him the wish. The fantasy sequence that follows combines the most intense fears and wishes expressed in the film. On the one hand, it presents with nightmarish intensity the experience of extreme loneliness and grief. George is a non-entity to the people of this virtual reality Bedford Falls. He is turned away by his best friends, his mother, and his wife. What is more, his brother is dead, his Uncle Billy is in a psychiatric hospital, his wife is a spinster, and his children have never been born. The town, without George and the Building and Loan, is owned by Potter as a hotbed of corruption and vice.
Remarkably, this nightmare could also be the embodiment of George’s aggressive Oedipal fantasy. There is hidden grandiosity in the fantasy that all that is good in Bedford Falls emanates from George. (It is like the child’s threat, “If I wasn’t here, then you’d be sorry.”) The victory over his father is complete. His father has died without offspring, the one son, Harry, having died in a drowning accident from which young George had saved him in the “real” Bedford Falls. (Conveniently, no one points out that George wasn’t there to dare him by calling him a “scare-baby.”) Peter Bailey’s wife, George’s mother, is an unhappy old widow running a boarding house. (In an earlier scene, George had jokingly referred to their home as the Bailey Boarding House.) This is a child’s greatest narcissistic fantasy, and a powerful antidote to Oedipal defeat—the fantasy that both parents’ happiness and esteem is totally dependent upon you, alone. The coup de grace is that Mary proves her eternal faithfulness, remaining a spinster rather than marrying anyone other than George Bailey.
For the viewer identifying with George Bailey, this fantasy is both terrifying and narcissistically gratifying. Some may even quietly imagine the suffering of the world without them. (I picture my street buried in garbage bags that I didn’t throw out every night.) With its tragedy and triumph, the fantasy brings together two conflicting elements of the Oedipus complex, narcissistic ambition and the need for parental love.
George Bailey, like the rest of us, wants to gratify both. Filled with the knowledge of his own importance, he prays that he can be returned to his world and his loved ones. As he recognizes that he is back, he becomes ecstatic, gleefully returning home to see his wife and children and even cheerfully welcoming imprisonment for the loss of the money.
The final scenes are filled with mutual affection and reconciliation. Everyone’s prayers are answered as George’s neighbors come pouring through his door putting money into a large basket to help him in his hour of need. Having seen how much these people owe to him, George can accept the gifts gracefully. Mr. Gower has wired George’s old friend and rival, Sam Wainwright, who sends a telegram advancing up to $25,000 dollars.
George stands with his family in front of the Christmas tree holding Zuzu. His brother, Harry, who has again proven he is not a “scare-baby” by becoming a war hero, toasts George as “the richest man in town”. George looks down at the basket and sees there Clarence’s copy of Tom Sawyer with the inscription: “Dear George, remember no man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings, Love Clarence.” Mary asks about the book and George replies, “That’s a Christmas present from a very dear friend of mine.” A bell on the Christmas tree swings and tinkles, prompting Zuzu to point and say, “Look Daddy, Teacher says every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.” George answers, “That’s right, that’s right.” Winking upwards he adds, “Attaboy, Clarence.” And most of us find that our eyes are filled with tears.
This moment encapsulates the sense of reciprocity: father and daughter learn from one another and from Zuzu’s teacher, while George and Clarence are good fathers to one another, George helping Clarence get his wings and Clarence giving George a valuable lesson about life. All hostility and rivalry is absent from the scene. With the exception of Mr. Potter, who is conspicuously never mentioned, everyone is reconciled. The marshall who was going to arrest George and the bank examiner make contributions to George’s basket. The erstwhile rivals Sam Wainwright and brother Harry are supportive and admiring. Even Zuzu’s teacher, whom George had berated over the phone during his brief depression, is vindicated with her knowledge of bells and angel’s wings. Clarence leaves George with the message that friendship is strength. They have helped each other.
Personal ambition and real life circumstance can always create a distance between us and the ones we love, just as love can sometimes dampen our ambition. The film offers us one of those particularly happy moments when the two are reconciled, when success is “having friends,” when George can share his success with his guardian angel, Clarence, and, implicitly, with his own deceased father, undoubtedly destined to earn his wings now that his values have been vindicated.
But the tears of joy are a marker. They remind us that the film has been opening wounds of grief that have not always been healed so easily in our own lives. Tears do not only signal pain; they are an important part of the memory of being comforted by someone we love. The happy ending comforts us in our grief and gently reminds us of the feeling of closeness with someone we have loved, bringing tears of comfort for our loss, even if the loss is simply that we are no longer a small child in the lap of a comforting, loving parent.
1. The idea that tears of joy point to underlying grief was first suggested to me by Dr. Michael Porder.