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Bookmark this pageIt's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Director: Frank Capra
Movie review
From Time Out London
The only Yuletide favourite to pivot around an attempted suicide, Capra’s post-war fable is a fascinating melange of social and personal impulses and the questionable charms of home. James Stewart is impeccable as George Bailey, the Bedford Falls boy-next-door whose dreams are continually deferred by the demands of family and national upset: rather than exploring and building new worlds, he runs a building society, marries and raises children. Mapping his frustrations and joys onto the contours of recent US history, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ puts individual and group interests in tension. Denied the opportunities for individualist enterprise that are the stock in trade of American cinematic heroism, George is pulled towards communal effort and self-effacement. Yet the film’s bravura fantasy sequence, imagining the hellishly licentious Bedford Falls that would exist without George, makes the grandest possible case for the importance and uniqueness of individual agency – ‘Battleship Potemkin’ this ain’t. Funny, compelling and moving.Author: Ben Walters
Time Out London Issue 1947: December 12-18 2007
User reviews of this film
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- chantho said...
- Posted on Dec 10 2009 11:19 "The only Yuletide favourite to pivot around an attempted suicide...." There's also The Apartment, a classic no less steeped in Yuletide yearning...
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- wilbury guy said...
- Posted on Dec 12 2008 20:01 this is not only the best festive movie ever, it is probably the best movie ever. i have watch it on dvd every year since my father introduced it to me when i was 10 (now 37) and finally this year i have found it on a big screen, cant wait.
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- Headwig said...
- Posted on Dec 21 2007 15:33 this in my humble opion is one of the finest films ever made if you only have a small DVD collection this film has got to be in it
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Cast & crew
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Cast: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Henry Travers, Beulah Bondi, Gloria Grahame, Thomas Mitchell, HB Warner, Ward Bond full cast
Rated: PG
Duration: 129 mins
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