I really love "It's a Wonderful Life." It seems to get a lot of flak from young whippersnappers like me, though. Anybody know why?
It's completely off the schmaltz meter.
Despite the fact that it's become such a beloved classic, It's a Wonderful Life wasn't that much of a success when it first came out.
Frank Capra was trying to make an homage to the American way of life and a return to better times after the Depression and World War II. What he didn't realize, though, was that those events had fundamentally changed how people viewed the nation and the world.
It also received a LOT of criticism from many directions, including the FBI, for some of its political messages. The big one was the anti-urbanization, another one was portrayal of Mr. Potter, the forward-looking industrialist, as a grasping, greedy, sickly old man.
Like the Wizard of Oz, though, It's a Wonderful Life slowly came to grow legs. The criticisms fell away, and all that remained was a look at life in a small town, the kind of life that many people came to actively miss through the expansion and dislocation of the 1950s, the social turmoil of the 1960s, and the hard economic times of the 1970s.
I think where It's a Wonderful Life got its biggest boost in popularity was from Ronald Reagan. His presidency was an unabashed look back to the past to find the simpler times that made America what it is.
Maybe a bunch of bunk, but you know, it's fun bunk.
Oh, and every time a bell rings?
Mtnbkr's daughter rips the arms off a Gingerbread Man...
