"It's a Wonderful Life" and Frank Capra's Catholicism

https://www.ncregister.com/features/frank-capra-earned-his-wings-with-it-s-a-wonderful-life 

National Catholic Register provides us with Jay Copp's wonderful article on "It's a Wonderful Life"

******************************

Frank Capra ‘Earned His Wings’ With ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’

Director’s name might not ring a bell with younger viewers, but his timeless movies are full of themes and plots close to his Catholic heart.

Top row: L to R: Donna Reed, Jimmy Stewart and Karolyn Grimes star in the beloved classic. Bottom row: Henry Travers portrays Clarence Odbody alongside Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey. (photo: RKO Pictures)

Jay CoppMoviesDecember 11, 2022

This December, millions of Americans once again will gather in front of their TVs to watch It’s a Wonderful Life. The poignant dramatization of an earnest, kindhearted small-town banker saved by a grandfatherly angel is a beloved staple of the Christmas season. On the surface, the 1946 film has all the trappings of a religious movie. It opens with a flurry of disembodied prayers heard in the heavens by celestial beings. “I owe everything to George Bailey. Help him, dear Father.” 

“Joseph, Jesus and Mary, help my friend, Mr. Bailey.” 

“George is a good guy, God. Give him a break.”

Played wonderfully by Jimmy Stewart, George is falsely accused of misappropriating the funds of the “broken-down Building and Loan.” Drowning his sorrows in a bar, he prays desperately to God. That moment of pleading gets him, as he ruefully recounts, “a bust in the jaw.” He could not be more mistaken. To his rescue comes the white-haired Clarence Odbody, Angel Second Class, eager after hundreds of years to at last “get his wings.” The movie is celebrated for its wholesome virtues and old-fashioned American values. Bedford Falls is a stereotypical small town where people know one another and don’t lock their doors. Hard work enables you to buy a home, raise a family and build a community. 

Virtue is ultimately rewarded, and when you are down and out, friends and family rally around you. Even on Christmas Eve. It’s not a film seen as steeped in religion or even as a morality tale. Instead, it’s the story of a decent man who loves his family and Bedford Falls as he faces off against a ruthless business tycoon, Mr. Henry Potter, “a warped, frustrated old man,” as George calls him. Clarence is not set forth as proof of God, but as a fanciful plot device in the drama of an honorable man driven to a suicide attempt before recognizing the value of his life. But the movie actually is steeped in spirituality. 

It’s a Wonderful Life is not only a Christian film — it essentially unfolds a Catholic vision of life.

To appreciate the movie’s Catholicism, it helps to know the story of its director, Frank Capra, and his career in Hollywood. 

Capra’s faith was hard-won. Born in 1897, he was a self-described “Christmas Catholic” as a younger man. His brother was a priest, but Capra felt he needed God only when he perceived he needed him. Early in his career, failing to establish himself, he knelt alone in a back pew of a cathedral. He was there “to remind the Almighty here was another sacred sparrow needing help,” as recalled in Catholic Digest’s “I Remember Frank Capra,” from January 1992, based on his autobiography. His career breakthrough came when he directed the highly successful It Happened One Night, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, in 1934. Strangely, certainly to him, his triumph left him anxious as a director and hollowed out as a man. Success brought despair. He was lost and bereft. His conversion, as both an artist and as a person, came after he was told by an anonymous man, “The talents you have, Mr. Capra, are not your own, not self-acquired,” as he recounted years later in his autobiography (and as noted in the same article in Catholic Digest). “God gave you those talents. They are his gifts to you, to use for his purpose. When you don’t use the gifts God blesses you with, you are an offense to God and to humanity.”

If that sounds like a George Bailey-type revelation, well, Capra’s movies unspooled themes and plots close to his Catholic heart. In Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, in 1936, Gary Cooper plays a small-town tuba player who outwits his enemies. It’s one of his many films that shows the power of goodness to change hearts and prompt conversion, according to film critic Maria Elena de las Carreras Kuntz.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in 1939, similarly depicts an idealistic young senator who overcomes villainous political operatives. In the climactic scene, Stewart, playing the fresh-faced senator, stages a one-man filibuster. Sweating and talking for 24 hours, pleading for justice and the American way, he reads from the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the famous “love passage” from 1 Corinthians.

You Can’t Take It With You, in 1938, is an offbeat comedy about a free-spirited family threatened by a rapacious banker. The film closes with a reconciliation. The movie was a “golden opportunity to dramatize ‘Love Thy Neighbor,’” Capra said, as chronicled in Catholic Digest. “Christ’s spiritual law can be the most powerful sustaining force in anyone’s life.”

Meet John Doe, in 1941, is about a man (Cooper) down on his luck who is turned into a hero by an ambitious newspaperwoman and used as a pawn by big business. It’s a dark movie. Yet the power of faith is asserted. “The ‘meek can inherit the earth’ when John Does start loving their neighbor,” Doe says on a radio show during the film.

It’s a Wonderful Life is Capra’s deepest and most artistically satisfying expression of the Catholic faith. The movie opens with prayer, and an angel is a central character. More religion comes when Bedford Falls residents “wept and prayed” on V-E Day and “wept and prayed” on V-J Day. People in Bedford Falls do a lot of praying in Catholic-like churches with grand exteriors and sweeping interiors, too. Still, Capra doesn’t wear his faith on his sleeve in his films. Art conveys truths and values through story. Meanings are embedded in characters and their choices, circumstances and crises. 

Spiritual messages undergird It’s a Wonderful Life. Potter may not believe it, but the people of Bedford Falls, even and especially the lowly and humble, possess inherent dignity. Goodness transforms people and communities. Love, a gift freely given, graces our lives through the lives of others. God is present and active in our ordinary lives. He works through us. 

An instrument of God, George Bailey’s desperate prayer is his “Gethsemane moment.” He finds his way to salvation only when he fully realizes his utter powerlessness. Capra knew what he was up to. He often said that the Sermon on the Mount drove his movies. “Movies should be a positive expression that there is hope, love, mercy, justice and charity,” he said in a 1960 interview.

It’s a Wonderful Life was a commercial and critical failure when it was released after World War II. Americans were in no mood for an uplifting parable. His masterpiece at last began to get its due in the late 1970s, when it entered the public domain, belonging to no one and, as it turned out, to everyone, as matters of faith do. The director’s film legacy continues to speak of God’s love, including in the very last scene of his great Christmas classic, highlighting the love of family and community — and angelic aid. 

Jay Copp is the author of 150 People, Places and Things You Never Knew Were Catholic, published by OSV. This article was adapted from his book.

• Keywords:
• it's a wonderful life
• christmas movies
• dignity of human life
• movies

    

      The Man Behind the Chair and George Bailey's Advent: 

An Advent Reflection on It’s a Wonderful Life

Richard G. Malloy, S.J. 

Author of Being on Fire Top Ten Essentials of Catholic Faith (Orbis 2014,  pp 137-139)

GEORGE:  “I’ve misplaced $8,000.  I can’t find it anywhere.”

POTTER: “You’ve misplaced it?”

God is working in our lives, even when we cannot see it.  It’s a Wonderful Life is a great story evidencing that faith fact.  A staple of the Christmas season, I’ve found this film to be fodder for faith reflection throughout the year, especially Advent.  George’s life is Christ like, even though he is unaware of the salvation God works through and for him. 

Saving his little brother Harry, George loses his hearing in one ear.  He saves Mr. Gower from a prison sentence.  George’s dreams of traveling the world, building bridges and skyscrapers, disappear in the long years of nine to five days when he takes over the Bailey Building and Loan rather than let the board vote with Potter to dissolve the small lending institution, so needed by Bedford Falls’ working classes (N.B. Especially for the immigrant, Catholic Italians, like the Martini family.  Providing for newcomers was not a popular political opinon in the 1940s).

George sacrifices his life so others may live in a small home with four walls and a bath, thus saving many from Potter’s slums.  He even helps out Iris Bick, risking his own reputation as small town tongues wag.  And through it all, he fails to realize what is really going on. 

The habits of a lifetime kick in, and, rather than blame befuddled Uncle Billy, George is ready to assume responsibility for the missing money.  In the moment of crisis, he is told by the malicious Potter, “You’re worth more dead than alive,” and George contemplates suicide.  It is then, as George approaches death, that the divine intervention occurs in the person of Clarence Oddbody, angel second class.  George’s outlook on life is revolutionized as he sees what the world would be like had he never lived.  Without George, the lovely, peaceful hamlet of Bedford Falls would have devolved into Potterville, a tawdry, bar-filled, hard town, filled with unhappy and sullen people.

The movie starts with prayers storming heaven, and one filmed ending had the entire cast kneeling and reciting the Lord’s Prayer together.  Director Frank Capra tells a tale of good versus evil, with a curious twist for 1940s Hollywood: The bad guy gets away with the money.  Potter is never brought to justice, and wheels away with the stolen $8,000. 

The only other person in the story who knows the truth is the man behind the chair.  He remains silent as Potter, his boss, rakes George over the coals.  With a word, this unknown, unnamed man could have saved George a great deal of anguish, pain and suffering.  But, like Pilate, he washes his hands of the matter, and George heads for the bridge.

First, George stops at Martini’s restaurant, and voices a prayer (Annie Lamott says the best two prayers are, “Help!” and “Thank You”).  George, not a praying man, asks God to show him the way.  George mistakenly thinks the answer to his prayer is the immediate response, a punch in the jaw.  He heads out into the blinding snow, crazed and a bit drunk, planning to end his life in the dark, cold swirling waters.

Again the habits of a lifetime of helping others inspire George to dive in to save Clarence.  And in helping one another, all is saved.  George goes through a period of uncomfortable growth in self awareness.  He struggles to comprehend the gift he’s been given, the chance to see the world as if he had not been born.  The truth explodes in his consciousness, and from Clarence’s mouth, “You really had a wonderful life.”

Mary Hatch-Bailey is the real hero of the story.  As a child she swore she would love George forever, and that love sustains and saves her husband.  Instead of descending into self pity and anger as her husband breaks down, she scatters all over town, telling people George is in trouble, and all those George has helped over the years come to his aid. 

Our spiritual journeys often parallel the outline of George and Mary Bailey’s story.  Advent is a good time to ask ourselves some questions the movie raises, questions that we may ask while waiting for the days of Christmas when we bask in the late winter glow of tree lights reflected in frosted window panes, our inner selves comforted by warm whiskeys and potent egg nogs.   It is more during the blustery and cold Advent days of late December, as the days shorten, that can we examine our souls and our attitudes toward our lives.

Are we grateful for our existence, even those parts of it that range from the mundane to difficult?  Do we realize our work in some way is being utilized by God for the furthering of the Kingdom Jesus inaugurated and for which he died?  Do we trust our lives, the lives God has given us, or are we too often dreaming and yearning for the unreality of some impossible existence, e.g., 100 lbs lighter or $1 million richer?  

Do we appreciate and cherish the loved ones close to us?  Are we willing to ask for help for our loved ones who are in trouble?  Where would George have been without Mary?  Where would Uncle Billy have been without George?  Where would we all be if some organizations and institutions like the Bailey Savings and Loan did not look out for, and care for, our well being and the common good?

Do we live our lives seeking power and prestige as Potter did?  Do we cooperate with the powers and principalities that crush people, keeping them mired in poverty and despair?  Are we silent like the man behind Potter’s chair as we see injustice perpetrated against the defenseless? 

As we pray these Advent Days, let’s realize that there is no resurrection without the cross, which means there is no cross in our lives that does not contain within it the seeds of resurrection.  George’s cross came in the form of a misplaced bundle of money.  Our crosses also will come.  Let us bear them with grace, dignity, courage and grace, knowing there is always a community on which we can rely.  In and through the loved ones in our lives, God again will win us the resurrection.

Have a Blessed and Merry Christmas

Have a Blessed and Merry Christmas!

This Christmas, be present to the reality and meanings of God’s gifts to us. Eat hearty. Party wisely and well. Don't work too hard. Read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and Oscar Hijuelos' Mr. Ives' Christmas. Watch Its' a Wonderful Life, Charlie Brown's Christmas, and While You Were Sleeping. Listen to Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon and watch Joyeux Noel.

Take a child to see Santa. Give generously to the poor. Sing Christmas Carols and drink hot chocolate with Marshmallows. Sled. Get lots of sleep. Students, play with your little brothers and sisters. Be nice to them. They look up to you. Help your parents. Do the dishes and clean the bathroom. Come back refreshed and ready for the second semester.

Walk outside at 2:00 AM on a freezing cold, starlit, 15^o degree night, and experience the awesomeness of the universe. Go to Midnight Mass. Read the first chapters of Matthew and Luke.

Most of all, know that Christmas is the time of year when we remember and ponder the birth of our God who loves us so much that he becomes one of us. Vulnerable and wrapped in swaddling clothes, appears the one who saves us. Worship him these days. Know that Jesus is real and wants to be reborn again in your heart. The Lord has a mission for you. These days, listen to that inner voice of your imagination wherein God communicates.

Know that St. Ignatius was right: All is Gift! All of us here in University Ministries at the University of Scranton wish you a Blessed Christmas. Peace and Joy to you and all the world!

Peace and Prayers,

Fr. Rick, S.J