Summary
It's snowing in a small town called Bedford Falls. We see the exteriors of different houses and can hear the people inside, praying to God to help someone named George. We then see the solar system in outer space, and the camera settles on a small cluster of stars. Someone named Franklin says to someone named Joseph that they are going to "have to send someone down" to help the George in question.
They discuss George Bailey, and the fact that they need to send a clockmaker named Clarence—an angel who hasn't gotten his wings yet—down to help him. "You know, sir, he's got the IQ of a rabbit," one of them says of Clarence, to which the other cluster of stars responds, "Yes, but he's got the faith of a child." They call Clarence over and tell him that he has to go down and help George Bailey at 10:45, before he contemplates committing suicide.
Clarence asks whether he will earn his wings if he is successful in his mission—he has been waiting for his wings for over 200 years—and Franklin tells him he will. He then tells Clarence to put down his book, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and listen to the story of George Bailey's life.
We see George Bailey as a 12-year-old boy, riding a shovel as a sled down a snowy hill. The year is 1919. His younger brother, Harry, sleds down the hill after him, but then ends up falling into a hole in the ice. George helps him out, but we learn that the incident led him to get an ear infection and lose his hearing in that ear.
After this, we see George and a group of boys as he goes to work at Old Man Gower's drugstore. On the street, the boys spot a carriage passing by, which carries Henry F. Potter, "the richest and meanest man in the county." George goes into the drugstore and wishes for a million dollars, as a girl, Mary, smiles and sits at the counter. Meanwhile, Gower drinks in the back room.
As George gets to work, another little girl, Violet, enters and sits at the counter, ordering shoelaces. When Violet leaves, Mary orders some chocolate ice cream from George. She tells him she doesn't like coconuts and George pulls out a National Geographic magazine, pointing out that coconuts come from Tahiti in the Coral Sea. He then tells her he's been nominated to become a member of the National Geographic Society.
As George bends over, Mary whispers into his deaf ear, "George Bailey, I'll love you until the day I die." He tells her he's going to have three or four wives, when Gower yells at him to be quiet. George looks down and sees a letter that Gower just received. It states that his son died of influenza earlier that morning.
After giving Mary her ice cream, George goes into the back room and tries to help Gower in whatever way he can. Gower tells him to bring some pills to a woman in town who is suffering from diphtheria, when George realizes that Gower has accidentally added poison to the prescription. He runs out of the drugstore, going directly to his father's office, at Bailey Brothers' Building and Loan. He goes upstairs to talk to his father, Peter Bailey. His uncle Billy tells George that his father is busy, but George sneaks in anyway.
In his father's office, Potter is grilling Peter Bailey about a loan of $5,000 that is overdue. "Have you put any real pressure on these people of yours to pay their mortgages?" Potter snarls, as Peter Bailey insists that times are hard and that many of the people who have taken out loans are out of work.
Peter Bailey asks Potter why he is so hard-hearted, since he has so much money, and no family on whom to spend it. "I suppose I should give it to miserable failures like you and that idiot brother of yours to spend for me," says Potter. George runs to his father's defense at this, and Peter ushers him out of the office.
Back at the drugstore, a drunken Mr. Gower receives a call from the woman to whom George was supposed to deliver the drugs. Pulling him into the back room, Gower hits George, as George insists that he saw him put poison in the capsule. Gower opens one of the capsules and realizes George is right, collapsing onto the floor and hugging him, gratefully.
The film moves forward in time to when George is an adult. He's buying a suitcase to take with him on an upcoming trip. He has big plans of becoming an adventurer, and wants lots of room on his suitcase for all of the stickers he will have to put on it. The salesman pulls a large, used one out from under the counter and offers it to George for free. He then shows George that his name is already on the suitcase and tells him that Old Man Gower came down earlier to buy it for him.
George visits Gower and thanks him for the suitcase. As he leaves on his trip, his uncle calls to him from the window of Bailey Brothers. He goes to get in a cab, as Violet, now grown up, says hello to him. George stares after her as she struts away.
One night, at the Bailey residence, George and Harry carry their mother downstairs as Harry gets ready for his graduation party. Harry is putting on a tuxedo and goes to hug the family's black maid, Annie, who runs from him, threatening to hit him with her broom if he touches her.
George notes that it's his last night at home, as he's going traveling and off to college soon. George's father tells him he had a run-in with Potter, who is now on the board of directors. Harry comes out of the kitchen with a pie balanced on his head, and one on each shoulder, and invites George to his graduation party. When his father expresses his wish that he could send Harry to college, George tells him that Harry will take his job at the Building and Loan, work there for four years, and then go to college.
Mr. Bailey asks George what he wants to do for an occupation and George tells him he wants to "build things, design new buildings, plan modern cities." "Still after that first million before you're 30?" Bailey asks, and wonders if George will ever return to Building and Loan. "I want to do something big and something important," George says, and insists that he wants to get away. "I think you're a great guy," he tells his father, and they smile at one another.
George goes to Harry's graduation party for the class of 1928. An old classmate of George's, Sam Wainwright, approaches Harry and tells him that the football coach at his college wants him to come play there. Mr. Partridge, the school principal, comes over and tells George they installed a pool under the floor of the gym. Mary's brother comes over to George and asks him to dance with Mary.
George and Mary smile at each other across the room and begin to dance. Suddenly, a Charleston competition begins, and people start dancing. Mary and George try their hand at the Charleston, goofing around on the dance floor. Meanwhile, two boys under the bleachers discuss the fact that there is a pool underneath the dance floor, and a simple button will reveal it. The boys open up the floor to the swimming pool and people scream as it opens up. George and Mary don't see the pool opening up, and mistake people's screams and attention for admiration of their dancing. They Charleston into the pool, laughing. The other party guests jump in after them.
George and Mary walk home from the dance singing "Buffalo Gals (Won't you come out tonight?)" George is wearing a football uniform he took from the school and Mary is wearing a robe. He asks her how old she is and she tells him she's 18. After he steps on the tie of her robe, they almost kiss, but she wanders away from him. He picks up a rock and throws it at an abandoned old mansion nearby, saying that the legend has it that one should throw a rock at the window and make a wish.
Analysis
It's a Wonderful Life immediately drops the viewer into a playful but dramatic spiritual allegory. We see some clusters of stars in the sky, meant to represent angels in heaven, as they discuss the fate of George Bailey, the film's protagonist. They anticipate that he is intending to commit suicide that evening, because he is discouraged, and so they send a junior angel, Clarence, down to help George. Director Frank Capra stages this scene playfully and simply, with different clusters of stars in a filmic galaxy brightening as each of the angels speaks. The image is striking in its sincerity, simplicity, and wholesomeness.
This initial scene serves as a framing device for the film. Before they can send Clarence down to help George Bailey, they must tell him about Bailey's life and what has led him to this sorry fate. Thus, the viewer is in the same position as Clarence, learning about George's life and backstory from the other angels and seeing it in flashback. The film starts with the final and central conflict—George's deep sense of discouragement—and then rewinds to the beginning of his life to establish narrative context.
While the tone of the film is wholesome, the narrative often concerns the protagonist, George, finding himself in close proximity to near-brushes with death. First, he saves his younger brother from nearly drowning in the ice. Then, when he is a little older, he prevents the poisoning of a local woman after realizing that his grief-stricken boss, Mr. Gower, has accidentally added poison to a prescription. George Bailey is exposed to many tragic events in his childhood, and faces them with bravery and directness.
In spite of the various tragedies and near-tragedies that George witnesses, he is an exceedingly plucky, determined, and optimistic man. As a child, he shows his crush, Mary, his National Geographic magazine, and describes all the faraway lands he dreams of visiting. Then we see him as an adult buying a suitcase for his travels, insisting to the salesman that he will need a lot of room for all the stickers he will accrue. George is someone who is determined to live his life to the fullest, enjoy all it has to offer, and be happy along the way.
As we learn more and more about George Bailey, the framing device, that of the guardian angels watching over him, falls away little by little. George's character comes more into focus as we watch him on the brink of setting off on his international travels before going away to college. He is a young man with a drive to do something bigger than his little town can offer him, who dreams of doing great things and answering to no one. He is exceedingly charming and promising in his attitude towards life, spiritedly going after what he wants.
