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Michael Newton, "It's a Wonderful Life" (British Film Institute, 2023)
01:05:21
An interview with Michael Newton
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- [00:01]
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- [00:55]
Marshall Poe
Hello everybody, this is Marshall Poe. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network and if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:02]
Dan Moran
Hello everybody. Welcome to New Books and Film, a podcast channel of the New Books Network. I'm your host, Dan Moran. I am thrilled to be here today with Michael Newton. Michael is a lecturer of English at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He's the author of several Books, among them, show people a history of the film star. He's written two books for the BFI Film Classic series. One on Kind Hearts and Coronets, another on Rosemary's Baby, and he's just published a third one on a third great movie on Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. We're thrilled to have him here today. Welcome to the show, Michael.
- [02:34]
Michael Newton
Hi, Daniel. Pleased to be here.
- [02:35]
Dan Moran
So first, I have to congratulate you before we even start with the questions about writing a book about this film. Because this is not a movie that people see once or twice and say, let me read up on that and see what it's about. I mean, this is a movie like casablanca or, or 2001 or Die Hard or the Godfather that people see dozens of times. I mean, they have this movie memorized. I have a friend who puts a sign over her mantle every Christmas that says, you now in Bedford Falls. And you come along and presume to tell all these uber fans all these new stories and new interpretations of the film, and you actually do it. So well done. I just have to say that at the beginning.
- [03:12]
Michael Newton
That's really good to hear. Thanks.
- [03:14]
Dan Moran
So early on you say about Frank Capra. Let's talk about Frank Capra for a moment. The director. You say of all directors, Frank Capra is the most loved and least respected. Explain that.
- [03:26]
Michael Newton
Yeah, can you explain it by saying a little anecdote about Capra? Cappy did a movie called It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Codette Colbert, and it did a clean sweep at the Oscars. So it won. It won all five major Oscars. Best Picture, Best Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay. There's a great Freud essay called on those who are wrecked by Success. And immediately after kind of having this enormous success with this movie, Capra had a kind of mini breakdown where he felt sort of unable to make films. He wasn't sure what he was doing anymore. He felt like he lost his touch. And he recounts this story of a mysterious little man, specifically who this little man is, or it's a kind of figment of his imagination who came to Capra and said, you know, kind of, you're really talented. You've got to. You've got to use your gifts, your God given gifts to make great movies. Get out there and make those movies. And then in that kind of, in that moment, Capra changed direction hugely. So he'd been kind of making these kind of fast paced movies of Barbara Stanwyck and Gene Harlow, and it's kind of their race Sort of funny. Those are the movies that critics like. And. But then he started making what people really associate now with Frank Kapla, these kind of messages, these movies with a social message like Mr. Dees goes to town or Mr. Smith goes to Washington and so on. And it's those films that critics really hate. So this kind of division between the fact that Capra, as you've already been saying, we're talking about, you know, these kind of uber fans. Cap is a director who's made movies that viewers really love, but critics have really very often looked down on him. There's this kind of term used to describe his movies at Capricorn, but they are, you know, kind of schmaltzy. They're sweet, sickly sentimental. This is great book by David Thompson, Biographical History of Film. It's a great book. And so opinionated, and in his opinion about Capra, he really aggressively dismisses him in a way, kind of for political reasons. He sees him as a sort of apologist for an American dream that. That he deems to be fake. And I think there's that. That sense that Cap, for it kind of doesn't quite measure up, that people, you know, they understand that he's a big seller, that he, you know, kind of people love his movies, but critics are very kind of apt to dismiss him. And I think one thing I wanted to do in the book was be part of, I guess, a kind of, you know, another movement, a counter movement that points out just how great he is.
- [06:11]
Dan Moran
And that certainly comes through in the book. I love the story about the little man coming to visit him. It's almost like he met Clarence the angel or something.
- [06:18]
Michael Newton
It's very like Clarence the age.
- [06:21]
Dan Moran
So let's talk about the screenplays. I thought this was fascinating. The book you tell the story of the film's different screenplays. Now, all of us fans know that the film is based on a short story by Philip Van Doren Stern called the Greatest Gift. But what people may not know, what I certainly didn't know, is how many drafts and arguments the arguments went into the final product. So you point out that there were these different iterations of the screenplay and how the writers dealt with the challenge of dramatizing George Bailey's wish to see what life would like if he were never born to all of us. Now, it seems that showing Bedford Falls and, like, essentially reshowing the movie without George in it is the most natural way to go. But you point out, no, there were these other things where George kind of fights himself. So can you talk about the screenplay and how it evolved?
- [07:04]
Michael Newton
It's a complex. It's a complex picture, Daniel and I think so. Initially, the film was going to be a Cary Grant vehicle. That's the kind of unmade movie which I'd be interested to see. I'm glad it was Jimmy Stewart, otherwise, although I love Cary Grant. He just done a movie called Number the Brave, I think, and with Clifford Odettes. And he was interested in it, I think, really, in a way, for its kind of social message. And there was a series of versions of the films. First of all, a guy called Mark Connolly. I had a go at writing it. While he was writing it, they called in Dalton Trumbo is a kind of, you know, kind of very famous screenwriter from that time. That version sort of didn't go anywhere. They brought in Clifford Odets himself. He had a go. And interestingly, a lot of these writers were on the left, left wing or communist. A lot of them kind of ended up being kind of investigated by the house, you know, committing un American activities. Later on, Dorothy Parker would contribute a little bit to the film. Most of it got cut, but there's a few kind of bits of dialogue in the movie. A guy called Michael Wilson got involved, also on the left. He ended up being, you know, kind of before the committee with McCarthy. And when. When the idea was sold to Capra, it basically fallen through all these scripts didn't go anywhere. It was sold to him by this guy called Charles Kernow. You know, here's a great idea for a movie. Here are the scripts. And. And Kerner felt and capelled after him that none of the scripts had got the idea that there was a kind of central idea in the film and they'd all confused it. They. And they do these things where George meets George ii, they end up fighting each other and he ends up kind of committing adultery with his own wife. And various things that Cappers film decided would be too complex and too silly maybe to. To bring in. It's a much better film than it would have been. He brought in these. These two writers, Francis Goodrich and Albert Hackett, the kind of a couple screenwriting team. They'd done the Thin man films, William Powell and Myrna Loy. And they themselves, a little bit like the Thin man couple relationship, kind of wisecracking, you know, teasing each other. They did a version. Capra didn't even like that version overly. So he took it over himself. And there was a sense, I think, in all these kind of iterations of the script that there was some central idea there that Capra felt no one was getting. And in the end, I think he. He felt that he was. Had to be the person who got it. I think he's probably right. It's a shame in a way, that is the Odette's version, the Trumbo version, they'd be great movies, but they wouldn't be the classic that we know. We wouldn't be watching those. Those movies every Christmas. I don't think there's a kind of the search for the. The key thing, the essential thing, is what was going on, really.
- [10:17]
Dan Moran
Right. And it seems like. It's like, you know, it seems so intuitive to do that last part without George. But you point out in the book there was one scenario had George seeing what his life would have been like if he became very selfish and think you would have seen, like, the evil George and all these different versions of him.
- [10:31]
Michael Newton
Yes. I think, in a way, one thing that's quite interesting to me is that this idea of a kind of evil George, a George who's got corrupted and compromised, and the good George who gets a second chance, and the evil George gets replaced by Mr. Potter.
- [10:46]
Dan Moran
Right.
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Michael Newton
In a way, in the early versions, the villain is the other George. And by creating Mr. Potter, you kind of get a different dynamic going in the movie.
- [10:56]
Dan Moran
Let's talk about Mr. Potter and Mary and George. So you point out you have a great line in the book. You say a star is a mythic version of the self. So let's go through that and apply that to the three leads. So we have Jimmy Stewart, obviously, we have Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore. So can you talk a little bit about each of these and how they were cast and what brought to the film?
- [11:15]
Michael Newton
I think that idea that the star is a kind of like a person turned into an archetype is maybe another way to put it, in a way that works best for James Stewart. There. There was a great survey, I think, done in the 1990s, towards the end of Jimmy Stewart's life. And so. And it was to find out, you know, who's the most trusted man in America. And the winner by a clear margin, was Jimmy Stewart. And. And that shows the extent to which I think James Stewart kind of entered the consciousness of the nation, in a sense, and stood, you know, in people's minds. And Stuart himself reflects on this. You know, he said interviews, I'm not John Wayne. I'm not super macho. I'm not Cary Grant. I'm not super elegant or super, you know, I'm I'm anybody. And that he brought to the part of George Brady this capacity to be a kind of everyman figure. Somebody, you know, kind of of any class. They feel they can identify with George. There was always a bit of a little vein of irritability in James Stewart. Even in his early movies, Philadelphia Story. There's a kind of capacity in him to get angry. This comes out and It's a Wonderful Life. And you can see how, you know, in the 50s, with those great Hitchcock films, you know, Rear Window and Vertigo, the anti man Westerns, that this kind of darkness that later films would discover in James Stewart and that he was interestingly willing to go with. You know, he kind of. He wasn't restricting himself. He allowed himself to express the darkness in a way that shows what a great actor he is. I think that that also comes into his wonderful life. It's like a little kind of watershed moment in his career where you start to see the dark version of Jimmy Stewart, but at the same time you're reassured, you're consoled. You're identifying with this sort of Tom Hanksy, everyman kind of guy guy. And I think the film plays on that. Donna Reed is clearly much more an unknown quantity. I mean, she'd been in a couple of films, most notably in a great war film, John Ford war film. They Were Expendable. But what she's bringing, I think, to the movie is the lack of a mythic, an archetypal basis. She's young. It's a bit like casting Dustin Hoffman in the Graduate, 1967. When Dustin Hoffman's in the Graduate, no one knows who he is. And because you don't know who he is, he can play youth and you completely. He becomes, you know, Benjamin Braddock. That's who he is. And Donna Reed is Mary Hatch. That's who she is. I mean, it's not quite. She had done some other films, but I think it's more or less true. The great contrast Donna Reed is with Gloria Graham as Violet. Big. The Gloria Graham, you know, goes on to be this kind of great film noir femme fatale figure in A Lonely Place and the Big Heat, those kind of movies. And Donna Reed goes on to do the Donna Reed show and to be this sort of this wonderful exemplar of, you know, the nuclear family, the bourgeois family, as I would say she does. Heroescu is for From Here to Eternity, where she does, in a sense, play Violet Vic. She plays a kind of more, you know, a fallen woman, as they might have thought in the 1940s. But I think what she's bringing to It's a Wonderful Life is a kind of freshness, a kind of youthfulness, and. And she's fantastic in it. I would say Lyla Barrymore is interesting. He's a great figure. Obviously, he's great theatrical family and then film family of the Barrymores. But there was always something a bit lovable about Lionel Barrymore. Interestingly, he'd been in a previous Capra film, you Can't Take it with you, where he's playing this kind of eccentric millionaire figure. Somebody doesn't care about money at all. The complete antithesis of Mr. Potter. And I would say that some. Some level of exuberance, of obedience, of likability goes into Mr. Potter. He's a villain that you kind of, you know, you ready to boo him and so on. You're on George Bailey's side, but no one watching the film hates him. I don't think he's too likable for that. So I think the casting in all these cases is bringing kind of levels of complexity and interest in the film that are really great to see.
- [15:48]
Dan Moran
Yeah, he's supposed to be a warped, frustrated old man, but you also can't stop thinking like he'd be. He'd be an interesting guy to hang out with. Lionel Barrymore.
- [15:55]
Michael Newton
Yeah, absolutely. And of course, he's a kind of double for George. I mean, I'm a walk frustrated old man. You're a walk frustrated young man.
- [16:04]
Dan Moran
Right.
- [16:05]
Michael Newton
Two of them are more involved with each other than they would like to admit.
- [16:08]
Dan Moran
Yeah, they're a great. They're a great, you know, couple in the movie of the Great. They're a great hero, villain couple. They each match the other one, so. Well.
- [16:15]
Michael Newton
That's completely true. I agree. Yeah.
- [16:17]
Dan Moran
So let's get into the film. So that's the backstory. Let's get into the film that we all know by heart. So everybody knows in the beginning of the film, everybody in Bedford Falls is praying for George Bailey. And you characterize that with a phrase I thought was so interesting. I want to get your. Get you. To expand upon. You say that in the beginning of the movie. This is your quote here. Quote, the film risks the embarrassment of prayer. What did you mean by that?
- [16:42]
Michael Newton
Well, you've got to remember, Daniel, I'm British, therefore, easily embarrassed. And I'm writing in the Netherlands, which is one of the most secular countries in. In the world. And I think there is a kind of. I noticed. I mean, I teach film and literature, and people get sort of awkward, you know, embarrassed, shy. When religion comes up, it's something which they don't want to go there. One thing which is interesting about the film is its readiness to go there. The film is definitely engaging with the supernatural. It's engaging with the spiritual. Capra was Roman Catholic. He became increasingly Catholic. He ended up being ordained as a kind of layer preacher in the Catholic Church. I think those energies are there. And of course, it's also there in the time, more broadly. In Hiscox film the Wrong man, it's a bit, you know, it's like 12 years later, Henry Fonda prays with the rosary that he'll get off the crime he's been accused of. And it works. The press. He prays and the prayer works. In Graham Greene's novel, shortly after It's Wonderful Life, the End of the Affair, a young woman makes praise that her lover, who's just been killed by a bomb, will come back to life. And he does come back to life. And I think film, then novels, then the culture generally, obviously, with the experience of the war and the horrors of the war that people, you know, were going through or just recently gone through, very much in the mix. They were readier to. To engage with the spiritual, Ready. Ready to engage with the religious and supernatural in ways than audiences are now. And the film definitely takes those things seriously.
- [18:44]
Dan Moran
Yeah, they all. Everyone in Bedford Falls, first of all, you get the prayer in the very beginning, so you even know what the crisis is yet. But everybody's also praying without irony.
- [18:54]
Michael Newton
Yes. Yeah. And I think if you did a prayer now, it'd be like in Home Alone, where you go to the church. You'd have to be in quotes or, you know, you'd have to make it a joke. I mean, in a way, the really great prayer is when George is praying in the bar later on and where the acting is so. I mean, it's so powerful, it's not even acting anymore. People. People have seen. Seen him in that moment, is kind of tapping into the trauma that he'd been through as a bomber pilot in the U.S. air Force in World War II. There are no quotation marks around that act. There's no irony. There's nothing postmodern about this, about this movie. It is completely heartfelt and it is completely heartbreaking. I think when you're watching it, as it's a wonderful moment and you'll agree with you. Definitely.
- [19:45]
Dan Moran
Yeah. So let's go back now before George's moment of crisis. He's in Bedford Falls. What kind of place Is it. How would you characterize Bedford Falls?
- [19:55]
Michael Newton
There's a great line by John Cassavetes. I think it's John Cassavetes, you know, kind of, you know, maybe there never was in America. There was only Frank Capra. And, you know, clearly the movie is tapping into something really deep in America's sense of itself. This image of the small town. And you see it in a play, in a mov movie, which I think kind of influences its wonderful life, which is Thornton Wild as our town, which is just an amazing, amazing place for me, I would say you see it in Hitchcock, shadow of a doubt, other texts of the time, that this is kind of this creation of this idyllic place which seems to be outside of history, outside of, you know, trouble and, you know, all these things. Of course, one thing Capra wants to do is to show how much history is present in the town. The town is going through what used to be called, you know, the Spanish influenza pandemic. It goes through the Great Depression, runs on the bank, the effects of the war. It goes through the building of a plastics factory. You know, there is a serious economic basis to What's. To how people make their living in Bedford Falls. It's not this idyllic place. It's a place which is definitely kind of within the flow of history, yet it's bringing up something just really resonant and mythic, I think, for people, this idea of a good place. So it's partly that the critics who've written about the play. One thing about the play, the film, which is that one. One thing, they really. They hate Bedford Falls. And I lost in. You know, every year there'll be a journalist who'll do a smart article about the film in which they'll say, you know, how much hipper, how much happier Pottersville is the bed. You know, Bedford Falls, Pottersville looks. You know, looks groovy. It's exciting, you know, all night. All night. Bars, better. Nightlife better, much better. Day, night life. It's. It's almost a cliche now, kind of contrarian journalism, that to define Bedford Fools as being suspect, dull, boring, everybody's into each other's business. It's much more fractious than people want to say. I think that's in the film. The film does show kind of the sense that you can't get away from other people's, you know, judgments and eyes. You know, when he's making that great speech to Violet Bick about going up on the mountain to have this date. And then, you know, the Camera pan's back and there's 20 people watching him. You know, the whole. The whole town is gathered to. To be part of this moment. You know, when he's trying to. When he's after the dance, when he says, Mary, you know, somebody at the porch, you know, kiss her for God's.
- [22:51]
Dan Moran
Why don't you kiss her instead of talking her to death?
- [22:53]
Michael Newton
Yeah, exactly. There's nothing you could do where people aren't watching. And critics have really kind of. They tapped into another American myth, which is the myth of the open road, the myth of going out to the frontier, of the lone cowboy, of traveling. George lassoes the moon and all this kind of thing. And their sympathies are really with that. They're really with this other American archetype. And they see George as trapped in a kind. Like the film is a kind of Kafka. You know, Franz Kafka's is a wonderful. Where you're, you know, you're stuck in the same town. No matter what you try to do, you can't get out of it. You kind of have a honeymoon. There is something kind of potentially confining or constricting there. The film touches on that. It's in the movie, but it's not the whole story. Pottersville is filled with prohibitions. You know, don't go here. If you just look around that town, the way that all these signs telling you what you can't do. Women are really. They have a hard time in Bedford Falls. You know, they kind of. They're stuck in the feminine mystique and all that kind of stuff. But in Pottersville, they're on sale. It's women who are the commodity. It's women who are the commodity in those bars. It's not, you know, kind of a simple thing where you can simply endorse one or the other. I think the film shows the complexities of being in Bedford Force, but ultimately it shows what's. What's good about that good place.
- [24:26]
Dan Moran
Yeah. Even if it is a myth. Right. Like. Like if someone, you know, guffawed or pooh, pooh the film and said to you, well, Michael, you know, you know, the Bedford False is a big myth. But wouldn't you say that, like those scenes, for example, when he goes back to when Mary recreates the house and has the turntable going and. And Bert and Ernie are singing outside the window that we know watching it now, how mythical that is. But you can't deny them its.
- [24:50]
Michael Newton
Absolutely. I think that's a really good thought, and I Think, you know, there's a reason why we have myths. It's the reason why we have these archetypes. And I think it's something which, you know, the psyche needs. We need. We need some kind of vision of what it would be to be a good place.
- [25:07]
Dan Moran
Yeah. Because.
- [25:09]
Michael Newton
Sorry, no, go on.
- [25:10]
Dan Moran
I was gonna say, in so many small towns now in America, like, you know, people don't know each other and you don't know who the cab driver is or who the local cop is or who runs the building alone, that now people are more and more isolated and more, you know, in their little silos. But Bedford Falls is an imaginary place. Where would it be cool if you walk down the street, you could wave to everybody and hand out newspapers about your brother?
- [25:29]
Michael Newton
Yes. I mean, that's. I. I used to live in American small town near you. And I got repetitive strain injury from waving so much where I walked. I had to wave to all these acquaintances. And so I think. I mean, it can exist in certain instances, you know, kind of university, you know, a campus is a kind of. That kind of. Can be that kind of community. Not always Ambit. But I think it is. It's enticing. Yeah. And it's this idea of knowing your neighbors. It may be mythic, although I think it was a little bit less mythic then. Now I think it really, you know, everything. You know, the world of strip malls and kind of there's no downtown to go to. Right, right. But one thing I think I really want to say about the film, I've been thinking about it again, partly because I knew I was going to be talking to you, Daniel, which is. It's not nostalgic. The kind of. The image it's setting, it's giving you is America in 1946. And of course, the people in Europe now. You could be selling an image of America in 1946 as it is not. But it's not saying, well, things were really great in the 1910s. You know, things are really in the 1890s. Then the neighbors knew each other. The film is bringing up the possibility that in the moment it comes out, you could still know each other. In the moment when the film is first screened in the cinemas, there is this possibility for community and connection and kinship and family and friendship and love and all those things. It may be kind of selling you something mythic, but it's not placing that mythic version of America somewhere in the past. It's now. It's here. It's now. And I think that is a Striking element in the film. It's not only looking backwards, it's looking. It's looking into what might be possible then in that moment of its being made.
- [27:28]
Dan Moran
And George is right in the middle of that. Right. Because George does want the security of Bedford Falls. He wants to do the right thing. But he also wants to remember the most exciting sound is a train whistle, a boat whistle. He wants to go out of the open road as well. Right. He's like, right in the middle.
- [27:41]
Michael Newton
Yes, I think it is. I mean, it's that kind of that sense of George's frustration. He's a frustrated, warped young man. He's somebody who wants to get. You know, you mentioned the honeymoon scene. What they're trying to do is he's not going to go to the South Seas. He's not going to get on a boat and, you know, sail out to Tahiti. So you bring Tahiti to bed. And there's something kind of sweet about that, but there is something potentially entrapping about it. And I think that's throughout his life, the film doesn't shy away from the fact that there are losses in it and that there's a wonderful moment when his brother comes back from college.
- [28:26]
Dan Moran
Absolutely.
- [28:27]
Michael Newton
And you find out his brother's got engaged. And, you know, and George, one more time, he's not going to get away. And there's this close up on George's face, and you see the loss. You see the unlived life that you now know he's not gonna have. And the film is completely frank and candid in showing that it's one of the reasons why the film is so powerful, is it gives a weight to that truth.
- [28:56]
Dan Moran
Yeah. And Harry knows it. What he said, I was gonna talk to you about that later. But even his brother knows darn well what a disappointment that is to George in that moment.
- [29:03]
Michael Newton
Yeah, they do. And I think. Yeah. And it's heartbreaking. Yeah. Yeah. The film is it. I think it's fun. That makes you cry. And it can make you cry from, you know, the 15th.
- [29:15]
Dan Moran
Yeah.
- [29:17]
Michael Newton
But only at the end because you're like, Clarence, Right.
- [29:19]
Dan Moran
Like, you've grown up with this guy. So you've watched him say, like, you know, say, brainless. Don't you know where coconuts come from? And you want him so much to go see the coconuts. And then you're just like, oh, like, he's not going to get to go. So. So let's talk about that. You said community. And this film was also notable for something it does really well. There are so many minor characters that seem fleshed out. Like we mentioned before, like Ernie the taxi driver. You have Bert the cop, but there's like uncle bill, you know, Mr. Gower, you know, Martini, Nick the bartender. You got Eustace with the adding machine. You mentioned Violet. Even the tollbooth guy who falls down in his chair. The bank examiner who wants to see his family in Elmira. Like, what do you think this long roster of all these figures does for the film as a whole and for these themes you've been talking about?
- [30:04]
Michael Newton
Frank Capra's son, Frank Capra Jr. Has talked about, you know, how Cappy used to work on set and the way he worked on set with extras is that every, every extra. And that word has its kind of resonance. Its resonances was given their own story in that. In the bank run scene, which is kind of this great scene in the movie where, you know, they run on the run on the bank and all the people in that room, Capra had engaged with them as individuals. I think one thing which sometimes the film is critiqued by people who say, you know, kind of something a little bit specious or fake in this idea that, you know, George has a wonderful life kind of, you know, good for George, you know, what about, you know, what about Violet? What about wonderful life? But that really is against the spirit of how Capra is making his films. He really believes in the individual. He doesn't believe in the idea of the mass. He doesn't think there is a mass. There are no masses. There's just lots and lots of individual people, each of whom has their own biography, their own dreams, their own desires, their own tragedies, their own comedies. And the film is doing its best. Although the focus is on George, it's his life we're seeing to remind us by little insights. I think one I really find moving is Uncle Billy, who's kind of a joke figure. He's a joke drunk figure, kind of this absent minded guy. And you suddenly discover near the end of the film that he's widowed and that in his house he has a little. He's kept his wife's room, Laura. He kept. He's kept Laura's room intact. And suddenly you see why he's drinking, you see why, you know, why he is as he is, why he might be distracted, that he's somebody who is bereft. And the film is just so good, opening up these possibilities for individuality. In Ernie, in Mr. Gower, in. In Uncle Billy, in Violet and all these other characters, the focus isn't only on George. It's about the value of the individual. But the film is very much aware that all the individuals have value, not just George. So good, so good, so good.
- [32:30]
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Michael Newton
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- [33:25]
Dan Moran
Yeah, that's a great point. If you asked maybe Thomas Mitchell, hypothetically, what the movie was about, he'd say, it's about this guy who's very sad about the passing of his wife, who's trying to keep it together. He makes a. A terrible mistake and gives $5,000 to the wrong person. Like, you know, every. Every person in the movie can kind of say the movie's about them.
- [33:40]
Michael Newton
Yes, and that is a strength, I think, and unusual in movies. I mean, sort of. I mean, some films do it, but really to give you a sense that people aren't there for bit. They're not bit parts. There is no bit part.
- [33:55]
Dan Moran
Right.
- [33:55]
Michael Newton
Everybody, everybody is their own center, and they're all, in some sense, the center of the film.
- [33:59]
Dan Moran
I want to go back to what you said before about David Thompson and his opinions, which are always fun to read, and about how people kind of dump on Capra. Capra had already made Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. That comes out in 1939. And you say this about the politics of the movie, and I want to get your reaction to this quotation. You say, quote, the politics of the film are perhaps really in the eye of the beholder, and that the movies become a means by which the viewer claims their political place, and the film lurches leftward or rightwards just as the critic decides. Talk about that.
- [34:29]
Michael Newton
Yeah, I think, again, I think one thing which is maybe this is a. I'm a critic. God help me. That's what I am. And critics love complexity. They love it. When something is complex and, you know, kind of, maybe there's something a bit vague about, about that, but actually, I mean, what's really great to me, one thing that's really great to me about this Wonderful Life is how complex it is. And it's also true Mrs. River coast of Washington as well, which is another wonderful movie. And, and one thing that makes it complex is it's really, really hard to determine what its politics are. And as I mentioned, a lot of kind of left wing thinking went into the development of It's a Wonderful Life. A lot of people who were in the Communist Party are involved in writing early scripts and a lot of those. I didn't say this when I was answering your question earlier, Daniel, but kind of a lot of the elements of the early scripts get into the final film. It's not that they kind of tear them up and start again. They keep bringing in a scene here, a moment there, a thought from that script, a thought from this other script. So the kind of the, the impress of those ideas do get into the, into the movie, we know. And yet one reason why critics hate the film is critics tend to be on the left. Not always, but they tend to be on the left. And they really see it as a conservative in its endorsement of the small town, in its endorsement of this kind of mythic version of America, even its endorsement of prayer. Perhaps for some people, its values are reactionary values, the values of the past, kind of its fate. The. David Mamet, the playwright and scriptwriter, he writes an interesting essay about the film, basically savaging it on political grounds, you know, saying, you know, the film is saying, you know, the world would be okay if there was a kindly banker. All we need, all we need is a nice. And if only bankers were nice, everything would be okay. And, and Mamet, you know, says, you know, what other crap? There are no kind of bankers. Bankers are out to make money. They're making money from you. And to. So there is that critique. But I think there are people on the left who savage it for being right wing. But I've also encountered right wing writers. In particular, a conservative politician in the uk, where I'm from, who savage it as being left with another kind of contrarian cliche is that the true hero of the film is Mr. Potter. And, you know, kind of, he's, he's the guy who's got get up and go. He's the one who's trying to make money and, you know, pursuing things. If the world were done, if it's, you Know, kind of organized as Mr. Potter would organize it, how great it would be. Now, clearly the film doesn't, doesn't think that. And I think it's, it's like a sort of, it's like a kaleidoscope. You see, you shake it and you see it as. Okay, it's, oh, it's, it's, it's a socialist film. It's saying community is good. Then you shake it again and you say, ah, it's a conservative film. It's saying that community is good. So it's. So it has been, you know, it's both kind of shots by both sides, you know, kind of. Both sides who want to take a political kind of view of it are ready to kind of put it down for one reason or the other. But it also, in this kind of shimmering, complex way, it allows what's good about both sides to get expressed. And I think so. It's hard to determine the politics of the film. That's what I would say. There's so much going on in the movie. You can really read it very strongly as a conservative film or you can read it very strongly as a socialist film and you both be right. It's not a kind of either or thing. It's a both and thing. Capra himself was not left wing. He, he was a Republican voter. He didn't like Roosevelt, didn't like the New Deal. Captain Hepburn said his politics are really, you know, kind of just American. He just, you know, he comes from Italy and just said his politics were. I'm pleased to be here. That's basically, that's basically it. And maybe that in the end is right. There's sort of. The film is endorsing a vision of America and that means it takes on kind of slant wise political tinges. But those tinges are kind of up to you as well as. Because the film is leaving everything possible. Right.
- [39:11]
Dan Moran
And do you think, you think the longer the time goes on from the date of the release, it becomes harder and harder to be, to see the kaleidoscope? Or do you think, I wonder if people today are so divided sometimes that they could only see one angle of the movie. And I love the idea of the kaleidoscope.
- [39:29]
Michael Newton
It could be, I mean, we're living in polarized times. And there's a great quote, the French critic Andre Bazan, he's writing about De Zika's film, the Bicycle Thieves. And what he says is, you know, kind of says the vision of love in that film is so powerful that everyone wanted to lay claim to it. So the communists said it's communist communist love and the Roman Catholic said it's Roman Catholic love. And. But the point is that it's love. That's what I would say. I mean, De Sika was, in a way, both communist and Catholic. So again, both possibilities are open in that movie.
- [40:10]
Dan Moran
Yeah, I'm sorry, I was gonna say, all the same is true here. Right. And all those things are supposed to transcend our day to day politics. Like love, like a desire for home, like family, like community. Those are supposed to transcend the political headlines of the day, Right?
- [40:23]
Michael Newton
Yeah, And I think they do.
- [40:25]
Dan Moran
Yeah.
- [40:25]
Michael Newton
I mean, I think you can take a political lens to the movie, but what I would say is kind of, in a sense, the love in It's a Wonderful Life is of such a quality that everyone wants to lay claim to it.
- [40:36]
Dan Moran
Right.
- [40:37]
Michael Newton
And I think everyone can. It's a polarized world. But the film isn't polarizing you. It's bringing you in. If you allow it to. At least it wants to bring you in.
- [40:53]
Dan Moran
So you talk about misreadings in the book as well. And you talked earlier in this interview about how some people say, well, Pottersville is really the place you'd want to be and things like that. And I want to talk about a misreading. You bring up about George's meltdown. We'll call it his meltdown, for lack of a better term. Right. So you say that moment he comes home, everything's annoying him. I must keep playing that. And how do you spell frankincense? Which is a great, great scene. And he's upset about the $5,000. He smashes his architecture model. And you say that people have said that's an example of George's hatred of Bedford Falls, his hatred of his home and his family. And you point out like, no, no, that's a total misreading. Okay, why do you think that's a misreading?
- [41:30]
Michael Newton
Yeah, I think for those people who really see the film as being kind of unwittingly subversive is that, you know, kind of basically George really hates this place and the film is expression of the hate. And, you know, the film is interesting to those people because it's doing the thing which it says it's not doing. It says it's sticking up small town values. Actually, it's kind of. It is doing the dirt on small town values. But I think. I do think they're misreading the film. And that moment is a great example of it because he's not only furious, he is a person in that scene at the end of his tether. And he's not only angry in that scene. He's crying, they're comforting him. He, in particular, he's doing it with Zuzu when he goes upstairs, but also downstairs, he's trying to be gentle. He's trying to be tender. When he gets furious on the phone to Zuzu's teacher, you know, he's angry. He's kind of. The anger's coming up, but the anger is coming out of his protectiveness towards Zuzu. And I think so. I think there's kind of one thing which is wrong with sort of doctrinaire political readings of the movie is they flatten out those moments. They don't pick up that it's complex. He's not just furious and smashing the architectural model, which is his model, by the way. It's not his kids. He's his own. That's his hobby. He's making these architectural models. He's also loving in that scene. He's crying, He's. And it's the moment there, and I think elsewhere, where people kind of try to pin it down as one thing or another. Jimmy Stewart is such a good actor and the movie is such a good movie that it actually is much more truthful to the moment because it brings in the other possibilities of coexisting in the fury. So. Yeah, that would be my reading of what's going on there. Yeah.
- [43:31]
Dan Moran
Yeah. He's not Jack Nicholson in the Shining who really does hate his family and whose anger really is at them for being them. Like, Jimmy Stewart's anger is a combination of things and about what's he going to do now? And I'm going to go to jail. But he's certainly not Jack Nicholson at the Overlook Hotel. Right.
- [43:47]
Michael Newton
No. And I think. I mean, there's a horrible scary moment in the Shining where he's kind of comforting Danny on the bed. Yeah. And even. Even his. Even Jack Nicholson's. Even, you know, so it's Jack Thomas's kind of tenderness is threatening.
- [44:02]
Dan Moran
Yes. I would never hurt you. Yeah. I'm never gonna hurt you. Your stomach hurts a little more. Yes, exactly. So that it's funny. That's like Jack Nicholson's Zuzu petal scene. But of course, it goes totally wrong in the Shining as it's meant.
- [44:17]
Michael Newton
Right. Yeah.
- [44:18]
Dan Moran
Let's talk about the Zuzu's pedal scene. That was my favorite passage in your book. You say that Zuzu's petals that he has in his pocket. Right. And when he tries to heal the flower, you say that those petals are like the film itself. How so?
- [44:29]
Michael Newton
Yeah, this is. What's he doing with those petals. I mean, one thing he's been doing is he's been lying to Zuzu. He's been deceiving her. It's an act of deception. But it's an act of deception, which everybody knows is loving, that he's doing it out of his kindness. He's not doing. He's not. So that's the first thing I would say. It's a kind of. It's a kind of gentle deception that you pretend to, you know, the feverish Suzu, you know, the flower is not damaged. The what's broken can be mended. So the fact that those petals are in his pocket, they're only there because of an act of kind, first place. But he's also kind of. I think he's. They become a kind of magic for him, too. And the film does a kind of a conjuring trick which only film could do, which is, you know, they're there, they're gone. Zuzu, I put them away. You know, he conceals them like, you know, a conjurer to the hotel table going. But then they're gone for him as well, and they're gone for us. And when they. When they come back, their return is part of his return to his family, to Mary, to Zuzu, to the rest of the kids, to all his friends. The beds were full. And a return to the disappointing. He's happy that his lip is bleeding. He's happy. He's happy that he's snowing, that it's snowing. He's happy that he's bankrupt and heading for jail, because all those things are life. So Zeus's petals, they acquire this kind of resonance of this magical trick that the film is doing. My favorite Shakespeare play is a play he did called the Winter's Tale. And in that play, a character dies, killed by the jealousy of her husband. At the end of the play, the murderous husband's kind of female friend says, I'm going to bring her back as a statue. He goes to see the statue, and the statue comes back to life. And his wife returns to him. She's not dead, she's resurrected. And there's a great line that the woman who's kind of staging the scene says. She says to the murderer's husband, it is time. You must awake your faith. And I think the film is asking you to awake your faith. In a sense, there's a faith in art, among other things, the art can do these things. It can bring people back. It can take away Zeus's petals. You can bring them back. You can take away George for Bedford Fools, you can put it back in Bedford Fools. But also, I think, a kind of faith in the possibility of goodness, a faith in the possibility of connection and so on. So that's what I mean by it. Zeus is for petals. It's a trick that George is playing, and it kind of moves into a trick that the film is playing, and then it moves into. Beyond that, a kind of trick that the angel is there and Good. All three. All three are sort of happening at once. And that's. That's. That's really kind of. That's the beauty of the film is in that moment.
- [47:46]
Dan Moran
Yeah, that's. That's. That's terrific. I love how they all come together. I was going to say, well, let's talk about that angel, right? Let's talk about Clarence. You've been talking about magic. You know, Clarence is this angel of innocence. And you say, you know, he's like a child, as. As Joseph says in the beginning, right? And you argue that Clarence is some. Is someone who chooses to be naive. And you say that, you know, we should be like Clarence and choose to be naive sometimes. So talk about that word, choose.
- [48:10]
Michael Newton
Yeah, I mean, I'm being naughty. It's my book. I get to get to be naughty. Because, of course, the one thing you can't do is choose to be naive. If you pretend to be simple, then you're doing something really complicated. Complicated. You end up, you know, like Mary Antoinette pretending she's a shepherdess in the. In the parks of Versailles. And, you know, you're fooling no one. So in that sense, you really can't choose to be naive. What I kind of would say about it is, you know, for critics who hate the film, you know, if there. If the prayer is embarrassing, it is nowhere near as embarrassing as that angel. You know, the moment Clarence turns up. Clarence, old body. You know, it's sort of like, oh, my God, what's happened here? You know, we're in the realms of fantasy, and they don't like fantasy. What they like about the film is when it's realist. They don't like it when it's. When it's really reaching out for a kind of magic and it's reaching out for the supernatural, for the spiritual, for the strange. And it's a funny. It's a funny supernatural. Clarence is. Is. He makes me laugh. I mean, I've seen. I haven't seen the film as much as my friend who sees it every year in Cinema in Edinburgh, but I've seen it a good 15, 16 times, 20 times, I would say. And he's always funny. It's a quirky supernatural, but it is a supernatural. And what I would say is the film is tapping into that part of yourself. You know, we're all grown up. We've all kind of made compromises. We've all done stuff we wish we hadn't. None of us are great people. There are things we regret, but there's still something childlike in us. There's still a possibility in us for embracing the childlike, and not the childish, but the childlike. And what I would say is that the film allows you that possibility, that you could do that there, that you can accept, Clarence. You can accept that it's in the film. You can enjoy it, you can be moved by it, you can laugh at it, you can laugh with it. And that's, in a sense, what I mean. It kind of. And the film does a really hard thing, you know, being Clarence. It could go very wrong. For some critics, it does go very wrong. But first, critics. It would go wrong. No matter what happens, the moment there's.
- [50:45]
Dan Moran
An angel, there's not pleasing some people.
- [50:49]
Michael Newton
It'S just. It's just wrong. You know, that's an angel. That's wrong. It's sort of. But I think in terms of the mood, and people wrote to. Some people wrote to Capra in the years after saying, you know, this ain't got angels all wrong. They should. Angels should look like this and not like that. And he pointed out, you know, well, no, you know, who knows what they look like? You know, this is the angel in the film. It's. But for me, it goes pretty right, because it's touching. The possibility of comedy and the tragedy. It turned, you know, the movie, to use an English phrase, it turns on a sixpence. You take yourself to the darkest place, and then you turn it around into the possibility of restitution, reconciliation, of finding things, not losing them, of life, not death. A triumph over suicide, a comedy over tragedy. It does all those things. It does it, you know, kind of scarily. You know, it's sort of. It is really taking a risk in that sudden transition that it goes through. And to me, Clarence pulls it off, you know, every time, 100%.
- [52:04]
Dan Moran
It makes you wish. Don't you wish sometimes you could watch? I would say, to say, like, wish I could watch movies. I love for the first time again. Because imagine going in to see It's a Wonderful Life and having no idea what it's about and you get to this moment where somebody's going to commit suicide and you get caught up in the whole story and then you get to watch like, what a great device that is to bring Clarence in and essentially have. Have you watch the whole movie again without Jimmy Stewart in it.
- [52:28]
Michael Newton
Yeah, absolutely. I was talking to. There's a. There's a book club down in Texas who are going to read a BFI Film Classics book club. They're going to read It's a Wonderful Life in December. And the guy who's organizing said, you know, I'm looking forward to it because I've never seen the film. Exactly. I mean.
- [52:47]
Dan Moran
Yeah.
- [52:49]
Michael Newton
Yeah.
- [52:50]
Dan Moran
It's like. But that's. Don't you. Aren't you jealous of that person?
- [52:53]
Marshall Poe
In a way?
- [52:53]
Michael Newton
I am jealous. Yeah. I think it's a. I hope he likes it, but it kind of. Yeah, I think it is. You know, it's such a part of people's childhoods. It's almost. There's no moment when you remember first seeing it. It's just. It was always there.
- [53:07]
Dan Moran
Yeah, you can't. That's the great point. You can't. You can't think of a time when you didn't know Ilsa was getting on the plane at the end of Casablanca. Like, it just. That's what she does.
- [53:14]
Michael Newton
Yeah, exactly.
- [53:17]
Dan Moran
Going back to what you also said about, about, you know, choosing to be naive and how you, you know, of course you can't choose. You know, a friend of mine says that the appeal of Spielberg in a lot of his movies is that innocence is like something he invites you to be for a couple hours. You can enter like a door through the movie and like remind yourself what it's like to feel innocent. And that's what a lot of Spielberg has his power from. And it seems like there's something going on similar like that with Clarence.
- [53:40]
Michael Newton
Yeah, I think I love Spielberg. I think he's my master. Scorsese still around, so I've got to be careful. Kind of one of the two greatest living American movie directors and that he is. And, and the most camper esque. Right. There's not, there's not much that's camper esque in Martin Scorsese. So that's. Yeah, I think for the reasons that you say, that's why he's so Capra esque. He does, he allows. He's kept alive that element of the Child in himself whilst making, I would say, like Capra, really quite intense, passionate, questioning movies. And I'm not only thinking of things like Schindler's List, even, you know, kind of movies that appear to be more part of that naivety. They also have these, you know, they. They bring in vistas and moments that allow you to. To think quite deeply and feel quite profoundly. Yeah. Why. Holding on to that, to that sense of wonder. Yeah. And it's great to see in Spielberg, I guess, Et cetera is the one that really leaps to mind with it. But. But the Fabelman's also, it brings in both. Both movies are bringing in the fact that families can break up. You know, there are divorces, people, you know, kind of things can go wrong, yet they are in their heart, like It's a Wonderful Life celebratory. And. And the celebratory quality in them, I think it is something which is part of that sense of wonderful, which I'm calling childlike is not only childlike, it's. It's a great resource in Spielberg and camp.
- [55:24]
Dan Moran
Yeah.
- [55:25]
Michael Newton
Yeah.
- [55:25]
Dan Moran
It's a great. Well, they tap into. So the film is released and it has a certain kind of reception that may be surprising to some people considering its status today. Talk about, you know, how it was reviewed, how it was received when it first came on, came out.
- [55:39]
Michael Newton
Yeah, there's a bit of a myth about the reception and, and how well it did. The myth is that it really bombed and. And the great contrast is if William Wilder's film, William Wyler, joined this kind of filmmaking company, Liberty Films, with Cap, but he did one last movie for his previous company, the Best Years of Our Lives. And they're both films kind of about that end of the war moment. And the Best Years of Our Lives, you know, won all the Oscars. It was, you know, everybody thought, this is amazing. And It's a Wonderful Life became, you know, the other movie of the season, you know, number two, some way down. The myth is the critics hate it. I think one reason for that is that I think this is true for everybody who writes that the only reviews you really, really remember are the harsh ones. They're the ones that are engraved on your heart. And. And Capra, in recalling the movie, he only remembered the harsh critiques. And they were harsh critiques in America, New York Times, and particularly in Britain, all the British, you know, when it came out in the uk, everybody said, you know, God, this is so American. You know, you'll like this if you like hot dogs. One wonderful review which was seen as an exotic food in Britain in 1947. And. But actually, the work criticism stood up for it. And the movie didn't do as well as Best Years of Our Lives, which was an enormous hit, but it did pretty respectably. It did okay. And it only looks like it was a kind of financial failure because so much. Basically the whole. The whole kind of existence of Liberty Films was hanging on the movie. It had quite a big budget for the time they needed it to make a lot of money, and it didn't make a lot of money. It made a bit of money, and that wasn't enough. So Liberty Films basically kind of collapsed. So it looks like it failed, didn't quite fail, but it didn't do as well as they were hoping. And of course, that in retrospect, can look like failure. But people were much more skeptical about the movie when it came out to critics. Although, as I'm pointing out, critics have been skeptical about the movie ever since as well. If you just studied it in university, you'll be aware of that ongoing skepticism. But it did well enough, and it wasn't the total disaster people have said, but it was a relative flop.
- [58:20]
Dan Moran
And what happened over time, then how does it come to be this movie that we all have memorized tv.
- [58:28]
Michael Newton
Basically, it was saved. I mean, it's kind of an interesting story. A lot of the students I teach are really down on the idea of copyright. You know, how can you own a song? How can you own. I was having this discussion recently.
- [58:44]
Dan Moran
They've never written a song. They've never written a song or made a movie. Obviously, then if they don't believe in.
- [58:48]
Michael Newton
Copyright or hope to feed their families, as I pointed out to them, I think. And they just lost. They were kind of slip ups with how the copyright was done with this Wonderful Life, which meant it came into kind of a copyright right free zone very early. And it started to be screened, you know, kind of every Christmas, particularly in the 70s, where it became suddenly like a kind of festive fixture. You know, Christmas, it means, you know, kind of cuddly jumpers, Bing Crosby, It's a Wonderful Life. And so it's. It became a seasonal film. I think Capra wasn't only thinking of it as a Christmas movie. And there's Something really happened to it later, but. But it entered the national consciousness really kind of in. In late 60s, 70s into the 80s, where, you know, it's. What they're watching in Gremlins is that everybody knows the film because it's just part of it's part of how you celebrate the season. And. And that's. That's really what turned it around. And Capra also. The other thing that turned around was Capra had. Had become a bit of a kind of a curmudgeon. He was somebody who's, you know, kind of known. He felt sort of all at sea in the 60s. That's not his era. He doesn't understand what's going on in Bonnie and Clyde. And this is terrible. But then he wrote his autobiography, the name, the name above the title. And that really kind of turned things around for him in that he became a kind of elder statesman figure in the 70s and 80s, a survivor of that kind of those. Among those great Hollywood directors. So there was a reevaluation of Capra. Capra, you know, and also his kind of. His public Persona changed a bit, became more welcoming and more. More avuncular and so on. And the movie is just, you know, that's why it's so strange that this guy in Texas hasn't seen the film that you feel like you'd have to go out of your way to avoid. To avoid this one. It became, for so long, so ubiquitous as part of the, you know, of the season.
- [61:10]
Dan Moran
Was it marketed and released as a Christmas film?
- [61:13]
Michael Newton
It wasn't. It was meant to come out after Christmas. And some of the great Christmas movies, you know, came out in the summer from that period. Christmas wasn't just for Christmas. It was for the whole sea, the whole year. The film was going to come out in January, but I think they had. There were financial troubles or production troubles of another movie, so the release date was pushed forward. So it came out as a Christmas film. But in a sense, that was kind of an accident.
- [61:43]
Dan Moran
Right.
- [61:45]
Michael Newton
And now, you know, it is inextricably bound up with Christmas, what we think of it as.
- [61:50]
Dan Moran
Which is so funny because you can't imagine, like, people like, in a room trying to figure out when to release it, and someone says, put it out in July. And someone has to say, wait a minute, wait a minute, we're gonna put this out. It's like now we have that joke conversation or that debate about whether Die Hard is a Christmas. Like Die Hard has become a Christmas movie because of the Christmas party, but obviously marketed that way when it was first released.
- [62:09]
Michael Newton
No, but it's a good way to make money because every.
- [62:11]
Dan Moran
Absolutely.
- [62:12]
Michael Newton
Every year you get another lot of. If you can write a question, you know, that's why Mariah Carey is so happy, isn't it?
- [62:18]
Dan Moran
Right. Every. Yeah, right. Every year, somebody. All those $3 rentals from Amazon to watch Die Hard again every December add up. So my last question for you, and I want to give you the last word about this and it this, because I think this is a quotation of yours that ties together a lot of what we've discussed on this episode. You say the film has come to stand for something lost from American life. What is that?
- [62:40]
Michael Newton
Yeah, I think what you've really mentioned, how polarized things are now. And it becomes almost boring to talk about how polarized they're so polarized. It becomes something which, you know, sort of is just. It's part of the weather. So what I'm going to say, I don't know what's lost for American life. One thing I would say that's lost is the possibility that you can make something that everyone will like. You can make something that people on the left think, oh, this is left wing film. You know, great. I like, people on the right will say, oh, great, this is a film for people on the right. I love it. But without intending to do that, it goes back to this kind of. This feeling that the film is. Is embracing. A feeling about family, a feeling about community, about friendship, about neighborliness, and I would say a feeling about the individual. That. And again, maybe to something which has been lost in American life to some extent, a kind of. When you start seeing yourself in tribal terms. So the left is often criticized for, you know, kind of identity politics, and it has become very tribal. But then the critique of that tribalism itself becomes tribal. And suddenly you're in a. You're in a paradigm, a kind of death loop that you can't get out of. And. But I think the film is not interested in tribes. It's interested in persons, in people. That's the great beauty of the film. That's the great power of the movie. That's why we watch it every year. Watch it not because it's set at Christmas, but because in this moment in the darkest time of the year, you know, in the Northern hemisphere, as I am now, you know, it's kind of. It's dark at night. It's a huge storm here yesterday, floods. And, you know, you feel like you're going into this dark period in that dark time. The film, you know, turns on the light and it's. That's why we watch it. We watch it for the way that it says that an individual human life has value, an individual human life has beauty and significance, whether it's Violet Bick's life or Ernie's life or Uncle Billy's life or George's life. And I don't think that's lost in American life because that can never be lost. But it's good that we get a yearly reminder of it. It's something that's a really valuable thing, and long may it remain.
- [65:02]
Dan Moran
Michael Newton, it's been great talking with you today. The BFI film classic study of It's a Wonderful Life is published by Bloomsbury. It's available wherever books are sold. It makes a great gift for fans of the film or like that guy in Texas who's about to see it for the first time. Michael, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
- [65:19]
Michael Newton
Thanks very much, Daniel. It's great to be here.