It's A Wonderful Life Frank Capra

Critical response

According to a 2006 book, "A spate of movies appeared just after the ending of the Second World War, including It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Stairway to Heaven (1946), perhaps tapping into so many people's experience of loss of loved ones and offering a kind of consolation."[57] It's a Wonderful Life premiered at the Globe Theatre in New York City on December 20, 1946, to mixed reviews.[19] While Capra thought the contemporary critical reviews were either universally negative, or at best dismissive,[58] Time said, "It's a Wonderful Life is a pretty wonderful movie. It has only one formidable rival (Goldwyn's The Best Years of Our Lives) as Hollywood's best picture of the year. Director Capra's inventiveness, humor, and affection for human beings keep it glowing with life and excitement."[59]

Bosley Crowther, writing for The New York Times, complimented some of the actors, including Stewart and Reed, but concluded, "the weakness of this picture, from this reviewer's point of view, is the sentimentality of it—its illusory concept of life. Mr. Capra's nice people are charming, his small town is a quite beguiling place and his pattern for solving problems is most optimistic and facile. But somehow, they all resemble theatrical attitudes, rather than average realities."[60]

The film, which went into general release on January 7, 1947, placed 26th ($3.3 million) in box-office revenues for 1947[3] (out of more than 400 features released),[61] one place ahead of another Christmas film, Miracle on 34th Street. The film was supposed to be released in January 1947, but was moved up to December 1946 to make it eligible for the 19th Academy Awards held in March 1947. This move was seen as worse for the film, as 1947 did not have quite the stiff competition as 1946. If it had entered the 1947 awards, its strongest competitor would have been Miracle on 34th Street. The number-one grossing movie of 1947, The Best Years of Our Lives, made $11.5 million.[3]

The film recorded a loss of $525,000 at the box office for RKO.[62]

On May 26, 1947, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a memo stating, "With regard to the picture It's a Wonderful Life, [redacted] stated in substance that the film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a 'scrooge-type' so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists. [In] addition, [redacted] stated that, in his opinion, this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters."[63] Film historian Andrew Sarris observed as "curious" that "the censors never noticed that the villainous Mr. Potter gets away with robbery without being caught or punished in any way".[64]

In 1990, It's a Wonderful Life was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry.[65][66][67]

In 2002, Channel 4 in the United Kingdom ranked It's a Wonderful Life as the seventh-greatest film ever made in its poll "The 100 Greatest Films". The channel airs the film to British viewers annually on Christmas Eve.[68]

In June 2008, AFI revealed its 10 Top 10, the best 10 films in 10 "classic" American film genres, after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. It's a Wonderful Life was acknowledged as the third-best film in the fantasy genre.[69][70]

Somewhat more iconoclastic views of the film and its contents are occasionally expressed. In his review for The New Republic in 1947, film critic Manny Farber wrote, "To make his points, [Capra] always takes an easy, simple-minded path that doesn't give much credit to the intelligence of the audience", and adds that it has only a "few unsentimental moments here and there".[71][N 5] Wendell Jamieson, in a 2008 article for The New York Times which was generally positive in its analysis of the film, observed that far from being simply a sweetly sentimental tale, 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."[72]

... one of the most profoundly pessimistic tales of human existence ever to achieve a lasting popularity.

—Film historian Andrew Sarris in "You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet.": The American Talking Film History & Memory, 1927-1949.[64]

In a 2010 essay for Salon, Richard Cohen described It's a Wonderful Life as "the most terrifying Hollywood film ever made". In the "Pottersville" sequence, he wrote, George Bailey is not seeing the world that would exist had he never been born, but rather "the world as it does exist, in his time and also in our own".[73] Nine years earlier, another Salon writer, Gary Kamiya, had expressed the opposing view that "Pottersville rocks!", adding: "The gauzy, Currier-and-Ives veil Capra drapes over Bedford Falls has prevented viewers from grasping what a tiresome and, frankly, toxic environment it is ... We all live in Pottersville now."[74]

The film's elevation to the status of a beloved classic came three decades after its initial release, when it became a television staple during Christmas season in 1976.[75] This came as a welcome surprise to Frank Capra and others involved with its production. "It's the damnedest thing I've ever seen", Capra told The Wall Street Journal in 1984. "The film has a life of its own now, and I can look at it like I had nothing to do with it. I'm like a parent whose kid grows up to be President. I'm proud ... but it's the kid who did the work. I didn't even think of it as a Christmas story when I first ran across it. I just liked the idea."[76] In a 1946 interview, Capra described the film's theme as "the individual's belief in himself" and that he made it "to combat a modern trend toward atheism".[76] It ranked 283rd among critics, and 107th among directors, in the 2012 Sight & Sound polls of the greatest films ever made.[77]

The film's positive reception has continued. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 94% based on 93 reviews, with an average rating of 9.10/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The holiday classic to define all holiday classics, It's a Wonderful Life is one of a handful of films worth an annual viewing."[78] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a score 89 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[79]

Many filmmakers have praised the film, ranging from Steven Spielberg, Akira Kurosawa, Frank Darabont and David Lynch.[80] Spielberg once said of the film: "It’s a Wonderful Life shows that every human being on this Earth matters -- and that’s a very powerful message."[81] Orson Welles played Mr. Potter in the made-for-television remake It Happened One Christmas; when asked by Henry Jaglom what he thought of the movie, Welles said, "There's no way of hating that movie".[82]