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Films

It’s A Wonderful Life

Becky Lee Meadows considers questions of guilt, innocence, and despair in this classic Christmas movie.

Frank Capra’s 1946 masterpiece It’s A Wonderful Life is regularly included in lists of the best-ever Christmas films. Though its ending is heart-warming and life-affirming, it nonetheless deals with weighty issues of injustice, dishonesty and self-sacrifice.

Viewers of the film often regard Old Man Potter (played by Lionel Barrymore) with disgust as he listens to George Bailey (James Stewart) falsely confess to mishandling funds. After all, George is a good man who has spent his life aiding others, often to the detriment of his own dreams. And yet, even as we watch George’s friends line up at the end of the movie to help him out, we see the quintessentially evil Potter get away with the same $8,000, which had actually been mishandled by George’s Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell).

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