It’s a Wonderful(ly Capitalist) Life(!)

by tryanmax
It’s a Wonderful Life, the quintessential tale of selflessness, gratitude, and the blessings of friends and family—traditional values all—is for many as much a holiday tradition as trimming the tree and baking cookies. So it may seem odd that Frank Capra’s beloved tale should be considered by many to be strongly anti-capitalist. Indeed, back in the HCUA days the FBI fingered the film in a memo entitled “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry.” And just last year, Glenn Beck got into a back and forth with a progressive blogger over the issue.

One could simply brush off the interpretation of these Grinches, these Scrooges, these Mr. Potters, if you will, as “missing the point.” Yet that does little to reduce the embarrassment that a film so adored for epitomizing the best in human nature would cause to conservatism by disparaging the free-market. Gladly, this is not the case.

Quite the contrary, It’s a Wonderful Life praises a far more substantial vision of free-enterprise than its detractors seem to apprehend. Besides that, the film is also a tribute to family, a salute to Americanism, an homage to goodwill, and an ode to traditional values all wrapped up in a beautiful golden-age Hollywood Christmas card.

NOTE: If you haven’t seen It’s a Wonderful Life, what’s the matter with you!? Go out and find a copy and watch it right away! In the meantime, here it is re-enacted by bunnies in 30 seconds: LINK. Of course, there’s much more to the story, but for the sake of brevity (hah!), this article assumes familiarity with the film.

The Director

Before discussing the movie, I’d like to examine Frank Capra’s directorial style. Many of the ideas explored in It’s a Wonderful Life are not unique to that picture. Capra explored similar themes in almost all of his work. He intentionally centered his films around values he acquired growing up in the Italian neighborhoods of early 20th c. L.A.; hard work, self-reliance, and a love of freedom and the American Dream. (The real one, not that chicken-in-every-pot nonsense.)

This decision wasn’t made without controversy. His diatribe against political corruption, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, met with unilateral opposition from the US Senate. Meet John Doe attacked exploitation of the poor by politicians and the media. His last film bearing a strong political message, State of the Union, took on special interests and crooked electioneering with a message that would likely resonate with the Tea Party today. If It’s a Wonderful Life contained an anti-capitalist message, it would be coming from the most unlikely of sources.

A Tale of Two Capitalists

How then can anyone find such a message in the film? I suspect it comes partly from accepting one of liberalism’s favorite bogeymen: the heartless capitalist. The confusion makes some sense because actual specimens do exist. There are unscrupulous men in this world who can justify almost anything that garners profit. (George Soros comes to mind.) The bogeyman is crafted simply by painting all entrepreneurs and businessmen with this broad brush. This is the sort of “capitalist” vilified in the film, and I shudder to think that any “conservative” would defend it.

Henry F. Potter is presented as such a capitalist, a wealthy businessman, banker, and slumlord who looks down on everyone and is frequently credited with “owning the town.” In other words, Potter controls virtually all means of production and exchange in Bedford Falls. He may be the primary purveyor of jobs, but he also has considerable sway over the way the town is run, which he is apparently not shy about exercising. Potter is the picture of a small-town oligarch rather than the enterprising businessman.

Opposite him is George Bailey, the reluctant but principled proprietor of the Bailey Building and Loan. While Potter’s form of capitalism is underhanded, monopolistic, exploitive, Bailey's is straight forward, even-handed, and, most importantly, competitive. The B&L is just about the only venture in Bedford Falls that Potter hasn’t got his fingers in, and he can’t stand it. Throughout the film, Potter attempts every angle to take over the B&L from takeover to buyout to outright theft.

Through all of Potter’s attacks, however, Bailey presses on and invests himself into turning the marginal B&L into a cornerstone of the community. He wards off a run by delivering an econ-lesson in brief, explaining how the patrons' money isn't in the B&L, but in the homes and ventures of all their neighbors. He founds Bailey Park, providing a modest but better alternative to Potter’s slums—and considerable consternation to Potter himself. Bailey doesn’t mean to irk Potter, it’s just a side-effect of his selfless approach.

A Visit to Potterville

To underscore the superiority of George Bailey’s brand of capitalism, Capra gives us, in a flight of fancy, a glimpse of the town as it would be if Potter were left to run roughshod over it. No one can argue that the pursuit of a dollar is still the driving force in town. However, without Bailey to compete with Potter, the emphasis has changed from the honest buck to the easy one.

Gone are the quaint storefronts, replaced with seedy bars and dance halls. Not only has the respectable nature of the town vanished, but so has the optimism. The vibrant Bailey Park is replaced by a cemetery (no subtle symbolism there). The human toll is apparent in the creased faces and impatient demeanors. Whereas Bailey’s enterprising ways lifted people up, Potter’s exploitation has brought them down.

What’s Missing

If that isn’t enough to convince you, It’s a Wonderful Life continues to praise the free-market in what it leaves out from the story. For one, not once does anyone insinuate that Potter is a criminal, or that he even ought to be. Until the climactic moment when Potter discovers Uncle Billy’s misplaced deposit, every thing he does is perfectly legal. Furthermore, even his sole act of theft goes undetected that we know.

Also, it is revealed that Bailey’s business acumen is such that he is able to build houses for half the cost of their finished value. With skills like his, Bailey could have easily padded his own salary and hiked his rates. Instead, he continues in his—and his father’s—original mission, to help his clients realize their own American dreams.

Final Thoughts

Like many good stories, It’s a Wonderful Life clues the audience in to what the story is about from the outset. It starts on Christmas Eve. The town of Bedford Falls lies still under falling snow. The only sound to be heard are the rising prayers of the townsfolk, all pleading for the same thing—the well being of George Bailey. Above, the prayers are received and an angel named Clarence is recruited to answer them.

“Is he sick?” Clarence asks of Bailey. “No, worse,” replies another angel, “He’s discouraged.”

Right away this exchange reveals this to be a story about discouragement and its counterpoint, hope. Capra’s message isn’t simply about what is right or wrong, and it certainly isn’t about what is fair. It is about the hope that upholds principles in the face of adversity. Hope isn’t just a bunch of fanciful wishful thinking as some might suppose. It is derived of opportunity and possibility. These things are also the underpinnings of a free society in all respects, be it in the market, speech, worship, or whatever.

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Film Friday: Rope (1948)

Alfred Hitchcock's most twisted film, Rope, is the story of two men who kill their friend and then host a dinner party over the chest in which they’ve hidden the body. And that’s just the beginning. If you haven’t heard of Rope, there is a reason. Calling Rope “an experiment that didn’t work out,” Hitchcock bought back the rights, along with four other “lost Hitchcocks” (The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rear Window, The Trouble With Harry and Vertigo), and he kept them from being shown in public for 30 years, until his daughter released them after his death.

** spoiler alert **

Rope: Hitchcock's Big Experiment

Based on the 1929 play Rope’s End by Patrick Hamilton, Rope was Hitchcock’s most experimental film. Indeed, not only was this Hitchcock’s first color film (ditto for Jimmy Stewart), but the film was shot in ten segments, ranging in length from four minutes to ten minutes, with each segment being filmed as a continuous take. Thus, as the camera and sound gear moved around the set (the film takes place in an apartment), the film crew rolled away walls and returned them, the prop men moved furniture out of the way and returned it, and the actors followed an elaborate choreography to keep out of the way of the film crew. Amazingly, you never notice.

The Story

Inspired by the real-life murder of fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924 by two University of Chicago students, Rope opens with Brandon (John Dall) and Phillip (Farley Granger) murdering their friend David by strangling him with a rope in their apartment. The scene opens as David gasps his last breath and goes limp. Brandon and Phillip then stuff David’s body into a large chest in the middle of the apartment. They killed him because they wanted to prove they could commit the perfect crime. They chose David as the victim because they viewed him as "inferior."

To satisfy his twisted ego, Brandon complicates matters by inviting David’s father, aunt, and fiancee to a small dinner party that will be held in the apartment. Unbeknownst to Phillip, Brandon upped the ante by also inviting David’s former best friend, who used to date David’s fiancee, and their former teacher, Rupert Cadell (Jimmy Stewart). At the last moment, Brandon further ups the stakes, by moving the dinner party from the dining room to the living room and choosing to serve food off the chest in which David's body is hidden. As the guests begin arriving, Brandon tells us, “Now the fun begins.” And so it does.

As the story unfolds, Hitchcock gives the audience a steady dose of black humor, allowing us in on the joke as the characters deliver dozens of lines like “these hands will bring you great fame,” and as Brandon makes repeated subtle references to David’s being dead and steers the conversation to the topic of murder. But with each passing joke, Brandon pushes further, becoming more and more careless and maniacal, while Phillip begins to crack.

Yet, Hitchcock tricks us into cheering for Brandon and Phillip. He does this by using their bickering to force the audience to empathize with them. Like Quentin Tarantino does in Pulp Fiction, Hitchcock uses their interaction to pull the audience into their relationship. You become invested in them. Combined with the sense of belonging one gets with being “in” on a joke, as we are with Brandon's repeated jokes at the expense of his guests, the audience slowly begins to pull for these two villains to get away with their crime. Indeed you find yourself increasingly tense as it gets more and more likely they will be caught. We even find ourselves becoming annoyed with David’s father, who is preoccupied with his missing son, and who repeatedly ruins the party for us with his sour concerns. We no longer see him as a caring father. Instead, we see him as the guest we wish hadn't been invited.

We also begin to distrust and then even dislike Jimmy Stewart, who becomes suspicious and begins to investigate. The more he pushes, the more unhappy we become. In a brilliant bit of manipulation, we watch Stewart use a metronome to force Phillip to play the piano faster and faster, as Stewart crossexamines him about the holes in their story until Phillip nearly breaks. But rather than celebrate Stewart's victory, this only increases our feelings of unease and disgust with the weakening Phillip, who is falling apart before our eyes. We begin to wonder, will we make it to the end of the party before he breaks.

And then, to prove to us that we now emotionally support the murderers, Hitchcock presents us with a tremendous scene where we watch the maid clearing the plates and candles from the chest. As the other actors continue their dialog off camera, we watch her slowly, but surely clear the chest and finally reach to open it. By that point, we are on the edge of our seats, wanting to scream to Brandon: "look what she's doing! Stop her!" We are rooting for the bad guys.

The Message

But just as we succumb to Hitchcock’s manipulation, Jimmy Stewart snaps us back to morality. In a moment reminiscent of the speech given by Jose Ferrer in The Caine Mutiny (1954), which changes the entire emotional complexion of that film, Stewart makes us realize that Brandon and Phillip are indeed monsters and we should be ashamed of having hoped for them to pull off their crime. For Stewart realizes that he is the reason Brandon and Phillip killed David, and it makes him sick. He recalls how he discussed with them the intellectual concepts of Nietzsche’s Ubermensch while they were students and how he advocated to them (as he does earlier in the film during a conversation which upsets David’s father) the idea that superior men not only have a right, but a duty, to murder inferior men. And even though he never meant his comments to be taken literally, he now realizes how dangerous his words were when spoken to impressionable young men. . . men like Brandon, who may honestly believe Stewart would approve of their “work of art.” Therein lies the message: words have power and we must take care in choosing what we say or we will rue the consequences.

And when Stewart understands how he shares the guilt for the murder he believes has taken place, Stewart shows the audience a level of horror in his face and in his shaking hands that Stewart has never shown in any other film. And when we see this, we too feel sick for how we laughed and condoned and enjoyed being on the inside earlier.

If there is a flaw in the film, it is that while Hitchcock can force us to root for the two murderers by engaging us in their relationship, he never does manage to make us believe their views about superior humans. Thus, while we do eventually feel shame for hoping they get away with the murder, it is not as deep as if we had come to accept their philosophy before Stewart exposes it. It is the difference between being ashamed of having laughed at an inappropriate joke, versus being ashamed at having told it. Indeed, I believe this is why The Caine Mutiny speech ultimately has greater effect -- because we never consider that we could be wrong until Ferrer speaks, whereas here we always knew Brandon and Phillip were wrong, we just didn’t mind.

As an aside, there is another message hidden in here, which is Hitchcock's statement against anti-Semitism. It is implied that David's family is Jewish and that this may have been part of their motivation in choosing him, something that is reinforced with the discussion of Nietzsche's theories, which became a core of Nazism.

Implied Homosexuality

Finally, it's worth noting Rope was notorious because of the implied homosexuality of the main characters. Indeed, the film was banned in several cities because of it. Yet, while it is clear the characters are meant to be gay (as indeed were the real University of Chicago students upon whom they are based and as were actors John Dall and Farley Granger and the writer), the implication is not obvious to the casual observer, who could easily see their relationship as being explained merely in Brandon bullying the weaker Phillip.

In any event, I highly recommend this film.

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