‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ Debate, Take 2
Someone using my name wrote a column criticizing “It’s a Wonderful Life” in Friday’s Calendar. Many readers were deeply offended by what he expressed, about 80% of the e-mailers responding angrily to his pedestrian analysis. Naturally, I share their outrage and will disclose the true identity of this fiendish impostor when I learn it. Meanwhile . . .
I am the Ghost of Christmas Past, here to help you change your cynical ways. Oh, never mind, you’d probably miss the point anyway.
JOSEPH ANTCZAK
Los Angeles
*
Your writing betrays you as a cantankerous idiot. Maybe “It’s a Wonderful Life” is not a masterpiece. Or maybe it is. But your puerile scribblings contribute nothing to the argument in either direction. There’s nothing worse than a grumpy, ignorant iconoclast. Especially around the holidays.
DAVID WATKINS
Rancho Park
*
Get a life, man. You mean to tell me you don’t have better things to do than review a 56-year-old movie classic that is as much a part of the holidays as “Santa Clause Is Coming to Town” and others? What’s next from you, an April article on the skinning of the Easter Bunny, a death campaign on the tooth fairy?
DAVID SANTANA
Long Beach
*
The message of this “never fails to move me” story is one that reverberates still to millions of viewers--that life is rewarding even if the so-called big dreams are never achieved. For most of us, the visions of our youth and the idealistic goals of our careers never pan out as we would like. But the message of Philip Van Doren Stern and Frank Capra, as brought to life so funnily by Jimmy Stewart and the perfect cast, is that eventually we learn that it is how our life touches others directly, in the simple basic daily caring and support, that it is within our power to freely offer. To me, the message is one of redemption--that for each of us, no matter our station or status, our bank balance or address, we can choose to matter, to care, and to change our world for the better.
NORM LYNDE
Corona
*
I experienced an epiphany like George’s that changed my view of myself and the world around me at a time when my own life and the lives of those I loved most were in crisis. I did not realize it until that moment that I, like George, had a distorted view of myself based on similar vague dreams of what I thought I should have done or who I should have been. I did not realize how much others looked to me, depended on me and loved me. I discovered that the simple realities of my life were more powerful than I could ever possibly have created in all my imaginings.
FRANK DANTONA
Simi Valley
*
George only wants to jump because he thinks he hasn’t accomplished anything with his life. The whole point of the movie is to show him that he has done something big and wonderful. It just doesn’t look the way he thought. Realizing this makes him happy and in fact completes his wonderful life.
ERIC COOPER
Malibu
*
The guy finally got some peace, and he could take or leave Bedford Falls if he wanted to. Oh, well, why not blast another hole in the Jewish-Christian superstructure? You advocate wasting his life and finishing off the destruction of his family by letting him jump. Great job! I sure feel great knowing that there are guys like you in influential media positions.
KEVIN FIELDS
Los Angeles
*
It’s OK with me if you let George jump, as long as you’re holding his hand all the way down.
DAN McCANN
Toluca Lake
*
That was the worst critique of a film I have read in a long time. Maybe you should stick to reviewing “Moesha” and “Providence,” TV guy.
GREG MELTON
Oakland
*
“It’s a Wonderful Life” stinks as a movie, and especially as an inspirational holiday movie. If you want a holiday film that maintains its currency as a wry yet magical spin on the human condition, “Miracle on 34th Street,” made only a year or so later, beats it on all fronts.
It occurs to me, however, that elemental fairness requires some comment on the film’s context. 1946 was the end of almost a full generation of depression and war, when having a hatful of dreams often disintegrated in the face of harsher realities: “Don’t get your hopes up, be happy for what you have, you are lucky to be alive, there’s no place like home” were the mantras of the day, and presumably a comforting message to those whose dreams were dashed by a devastated world.
ALAN CHARLES
Beverly Hills
*
Most people lead lives of “quiet desperation,” don’t they? Most people are stuck in a place--physically, geographically, emotionally, financially--that they cannot easily leave. Obligations and responsibilities cannot be shuffled off and set aside like an old overcoat in favor of a personal lust for glory and riches. George Bailey has a sense of duty, which is what makes him so admirable.
“So what’s to celebrate?” He finishes the film with a realization that his life has a purpose and is filled with friends who love and respect him. Isn’t that enough?
GERARD COLLINS
Glendale
*
I have always enjoyed the movie because it’s such a pleasure to watch Jimmy Stewart in anything, and of course this was one of his best roles. But you’re absolutely right about the ludicrousness of Mary’s alternate future being that of an “old maid” . . . and a librarian faw gawd’s sake. Was that really the worst thing they could think of to happen to a woman in those days--to be single and work for a living? Heaven forbid.
CHRISTINE LEHMAN
Los Angeles
*
The film is one of the great Populist (perhaps even Marxist) films of all time! It shows how someone who is in a power position--yes, George Bailey ran the town’s cooperative Building & Loan after his dad died--through selflessness and high morals protected the people in the entire town from the greedy capitalist, Potter. If George Bailey had been a taxi driver, say like Ernie, or Bert the cop, he would have had a tragic life perhaps in not seeing the rest of the world--which is your shallow point.
What hurts most is that you could have written about “Wonderful Life” in a way that would give people an incentive to see it in a restored light--the way many people may have been able to see it before Cold War perceptions overwhelmed New Deal perceptions. But no, you wrote about the film in a cheap and sophomoric manner. Shame, Howard, shame.
MITCHELL J. FREEDMAN
Newbury Park
*
Thanks for setting the record straight. I saw it for the first time at age 19. My first response was “Gee, what a great movie.” My second response was, “Christ, that was depressing.” I’m standing by both assessments.
ALAN RIEGER
Indianapolis
*
Don’t be such a Grinch. I know that the film is probably overly sentimental, but there are good and caring and loyal people in this world, and to me, basically, that’s what is important and what the film portrays.
ETHEL FISHER
Studio City
*
Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted by e-mail at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.