NYT: "Wonderful? Sorry, George, It’s a Pitiful, Dreadful Life"

[Pirate Smile]

Wonderful? Sorry, George, It’s a Pitiful, Dreadful Life


The classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” stars James Stewart as a man who can see the world as it would be if he had never been born. It also stars Thomas Mitchell, left, and Lionel Barrymore, center.

By WENDELL JAMIESON
Published: December 18, 2008

MR. ELLMAN didn’t tell us why he wanted us to stay after school that December afternoon in 1981. When we got to the classroom — cinderblock walls, like all the others, with a dreary view of the parking lot — we smelled popcorn.

-snip-


In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a stressed-out James Stewart, foreground, unravels in front of his family, including, from left, Larry Simms, Jimmy Hawkins, Donna Reed and Carol Coombs.

I was not a mushy kid. My ears were fed a steady stream of the Clash and the Jam, and I was doing my best to conjure a dyed-haired, wry, angry-young-man teenage persona. But I was enthralled that afternoon in Brooklyn. In the years that followed, my affection for “It’s a Wonderful Life” has never waned, despite the film’s overexposure and sugar-sweet marketing, and the rolling eyes of friends and family.
Lots of people love this movie of course. But I’m convinced it’s for the wrong reasons. Because to me “It’s a Wonderful Life” is anything but a cheery holiday tale. Sitting in that dark public high school classroom, I shuddered as the projector whirred and George Bailey’s life unspooled.

Was this what adulthood promised?

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation.

I haven’t seen it on a movie screen since that first time, but on Friday it begins its annual pre-Christmas run at the IFC Cinema in Greenwich Village. I plan to take my 9-year-old son and my father, who has never seen it the whole way through because he thinks it’s too corny.

How wrong he is.

I’m no movie critic, and I’ll leave to others any erudite evaluation of the film as cinematic art, but to examine it closely is to experience “It’s a Wonderful Life” on several different levels.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/movies/19wond.html?8dpc

[FirstLight]

1. That was a really touching article - Thanks for sharing!

Kick & rec!

for the dark side of corny... bwahahaha!

[opihimoimoi]

2. Thanks

[Pirate Smile]

3. I thought it was interesting too.The movie is superficially known as corny but most of the show is

actually very dark.

[DCKit]

4. One of the best morality tales EVER.

Anyone who would write it off as simply "corny" is probably a Republican or a mass murderer. But that's redundant.