The Gospel of "It's a Wonderful Life": A Spiritual Journey Through the Movie

By James Dillon

“It’s a Wonderful Life” has become an important holiday tradition for families.

But why does the movie have such a profound effect on people and what are its major themes?

James Dillon answers those questions by highlighting the movie’s recurring motifs and themes. As someone who has walked a similar path to George Bailey, he’s the perfect person to tell this story and share life lessons such as:

• Sometimes, miracles simply involve looking at things differently.
• Viewing the movie through a lens of spiritual faith can be a productive way to move closer to the Lord.
• George’s life is a journey and a struggle to discover what was there from the beginning, what was always with him even in times of darkness, and what would be there at the end: God’s love.

The author also explores the background and context of the movie’s origins, the life of its director, Frank Capra, and its place in our culture. Suggestions to facilitate small group discussions are included.

Take a spiritual journey and reflect on your faith and purpose with The Gospel of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Jul 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781489736338

Book preview

THE GOSPEL

of

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE

A Spiritual Journey Through the Movie

JAMES DILLON

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Copyright © 2021 James Dillon.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or

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no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in

some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993, Division of Christian Education of the

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4897-3634-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-3633-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021911682

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 07/21/2021

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Why this movie; why this book

Chapter 1:   It’s a Wonderful Life: Frank Capra’s Life and the History of the Movie

Chapter 2:   How to Use This Book

Chapter 3:   The Spiritual Arc of the Narrative

Chapter 4:    Motifs and Themes

Section One: Scene one: (Prayers Are Heard for George Bailey) to Scene seven: (Board of Directors’ Meeting) (35 minutes)

Scene one: Prayers Are Heard for George Bailey

Scene two: George Saves His Brother’s Life

Scene three: George and Mr. Gower

Scene four: George Prepares for Travel and Dinner at the Bailey Home

Scene five: Graduation Dance at High School Gym

Scene six: Moonlight Walk

Scene seven: Board of Directors’ Meeting

Section Two: Scene eight: (Harry’s Return at the Railroad Station) to Scene thirteen: (Martini’s Home Celebration/Sam’s Reunion) (32 minutes)

Scene eight: Harry’s Return at the Railroad Station

Scene nine: After Harry’s Welcome Home Party

Scene ten: George Visits Mary’s House

Scene eleven: George and Mary Get Married/Trouble at the Building and Loan

Scene twelve: Wedding Night at the Granville House

Scene thirteen: Martini’s Home Celebration/Sam’s Reunion

Section Three: Scene fourteen: (Potter offers George a Job) to Scene twenty-one: (George at Martini’s Bar) (31 minutes)

Scene fourteen: Potter Offers George a Job

Scene fifteen: Mary Tells George She is Going to Have a Baby

Scene sixteen: Montage of WW II and After

Scene seventeen: George Spreads the News of Harry’s Return/ Uncle Billy at the Bank

Scene eighteen: George and Violet/ George and Uncle Billy Search for the Missing Money

Scene nineteen: Angry George Goes Home/ In Zuzu’s Bedroom/ George Throws a Tantrum and Leaves the House

Scene Twenty: George Asks Potter for Help

Scene twenty-one: George at Martini’s Bar

Section four: Scene twenty-two: (George on the Bridge) to Scene thirty: (George Returns Home) (32 minutes)

Scene twenty-two: George on the Bridge

Scene twenty-three: George and Clarence Recover in the Tollhouse

Scene twenty-four: George and Clarence Go to Nick’s

Scene twenty-five: Downtown Pottersville

Scene twenty-six: George Returns to 320 Sycamore and the Bailey Home

Scene twenty-seven: George Visits the Cemetery

Scene twenty-eight: George Finds Mary

Scene twenty-nine: George at the Bridge Again and George Regains His Life

Scene thirty: George Returns Home

Chapter Five:   Final Thoughts

Postscript

Acknowledgements

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

WHY THIS MOVIE; WHY THIS BOOK

Like George Bailey, I am deaf in one ear. It is a wound, a reminder of when I unknowingly almost killed myself. Although I never contemplated jumping off a bridge like George, I did drive myself to the point of exhaustion and near death from the stress of being a school principal. As a result: I weakened my immune system; contracted a virus that zapped the nerve in my right ear; suffered kidney failure and developed staph pneumonia. All of which put me in the hospital for three weeks.

What a horrible thing to happen to anyone-right? But quite the opposite happened. I refer to that event as my miraculous illness. At the age of fifty, it turned my life around for the better.

Throughout that illness, in my state of almost total helplessness, God’s grace poured into me. Each act of care and kindness touched my heart on a deeper level than I had ever experienced. For example, as I would drift in and out of sleep, the faces of the nurses appeared to me as angels as they anticipated my needs and comforted me. I felt healed and uplifted by the love of those around me.

Although I had been blessed with great love given to me by family and friends throughout my life up to that point, I failed to fully acknowledge and appreciate it. I was blinded to it and blocked from feeling it. I felt that love had to be earned; I had to work hard to prove I was worthy of it. My illness, however, stopped me dead in my tracks-I could no longer continue to live that way. I had to let go and let God takeover. Stripped of my striving, I became filled with the deepest sense of gratitude and peace that I had ever experienced in my life.

This miraculous illness, however, was not a discovery of faith for me. I am a person of faith, the Catholic faith, and have been so my whole life. My faith has guided and sustained me through difficult and dark times. (This includes my ongoing battle with depression that thankfully remains in remission - most of the time.) My illness animated my faith. Prior to my illness, my faith was like printed musical notes or words in a script that were waiting to be performed. After my illness, my faith moved and breathed within me. To put it another way: before my illness, my faith was in black and white, after it my faith was in living color.

Several months after I recovered, I watched the movie, It’s A Wonderful Life again. It was like I was witnessing my story all over again; it was a spiritual experience, so much more than merely watching a movie. I had walked the same path as George. In his story and my story, the miracle wasn’t changing our circumstances; it was opening our eyes to see our lives differently.

My eyes are re-opened every time I view the movie.

It’s A Wonderful Life helps me renew my faith; it’s become a yearly ritual for me. The movie reveals layers of meaning that resonate in me. As it does for the millions of people, who watch it every year, as a part of their Christmas tradition.

Last year, my adult children, who have faith in God, but have fallen away from practicing the Catholic faith, accepted my invitation to watch the movie with me. They had viewed it as children, but not as young adults. We watched silently and intently. When it was over, my eyes filled with tears. I looked at them and saw that they were also moved. The simple act of watching it together brought us closer. Although that experience has not brought them back to the church, I believe it has deepened their faith and planted seeds that will grow when they are ready to return.

From that personal and family experience, I thought that others might benefit from viewing the movie through the lens of our Catholic faith. Viewing the movie and discussing it could be a more inviting and productive way of approaching the topic of faith for those who have strayed from the faith and for those who are looking to deepen it.

Matters of faith are ultimately about the heart and the mind, and movies offer a different approach for touching them. A movie is a powerful synthesis of multiple art forms. A great movie creates an immersive and participatory experience that pulls viewers in and takes them on a journey. The experience of viewing a movie could be analogous to what it was like for people hundreds of years ago when they stepped into a cathedral. They were surrounded by great paintings, stained glass and sculptures that told them stories from scriptures and of the saints. Their faith was nurtured by these immersive and participatory experiences that touched them on a deeper level below their conscious thought.

It’s A Wonderful Life has a great potential to draw people together in a safe and enjoyable way where they can talk about life and what it means. It is a movie that actively invites viewers to step into it and take a journey with the characters. If faith is ultimately about what matters most in life, then a discussion of it will flow organically, when participants respond to a story that reflects their lives.

One Advent, I decided to try out my idea for having a four-week discussion of It’s A Wonderful Life, as a faith formation activity in our parish. We divided the movie into four thirty-minute segments. We followed each viewing with an hour-long discussion that typically went overtime. Twelve people showed up and participated. (This was a good turnout given that it was a new event and required people to leave their warm homes on cold winter evenings.) All the participants were enthusiastic about the experience and stated that they saw things in the movie that they had never seen before. One participant said it was the best discussion of faith that he had in a church setting.

I was not surprised by what happened. Stories that resonate with truth tend to be passed on. It’s A Wonderful Life touched me; I brought it to my family and their response prompted me to bring it to my parish community. Because I believe in the movie’s potential to renew people’s faith and to spark dialogue, I decided to write this book as a tool for facilitators to lead similar viewing and discussion sessions. I also wanted to write a book to guide any reader on the movie’s spiritual journey.

This study guide provides a resource, not a strict blueprint to follow. Facilitators should feel free to use as much or as little of the information as they see appropriate for the group they are leading. Facilitators should take my interpretation and analysis as simply one person’s perspective and not consider it the final or definitive statement on the movie. Each individual’s response to the movie is valid with no right or wrong answers.

The book will also explore the background and context of the movie’s origins, the life of its director, Frank Capra, and it’s place in our culture.

There is a chapter offering guidelines and suggestions for facilitating small group discussions. Included in this chapter will be recommendations for how to use the motifs and themes of the movie as preparation for viewing and responding to it.

My Catholic faith has provided the lens through which I viewed, interpreted and analyzed the movie. This is important to note because there are other study guides that are useful but are more scripture based. Since Frank Capra was a Catholic, I make a strong case that the movie contains clear references to the sacraments of the Catholic Church.

This book will hopefully be a faithful and respectful companion to a movie that has touched people’s lives for generations. It is a book, I feel called to write; it is my contribution to spreading its message. And I offer it in gratitude for how It’s A Wonderful Life has helped me see how God’s love has made my life - wonderful.

*Following this introduction, all mentions of It’s A Wonderful Life will be shortened to IAWL.

CHAPTER ONE

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IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE: FRANK CAPRA’S

LIFE AND THE HISTORY OF THE MOVIE

I thought it was the greatest film I had ever made. Better yet I thought that it was the greatest film anybody ever made.

– Frank Capra in his autobiography, The Name Above the Title.

Frank Capra had a wonderful and remarkable life as this brief chronological sketch reveals.

He was an immigrant from Sicily who arrived in the United States at the age of six. His family settled in Los Angeles.

He was the first member of his family to attend high school and college. He graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a degree in chemical engineering. He also served in the Army during World War I.

Following the war and his recovery from the Spanish flu, he got a job in the fledgling film industry. Starting as a gag man he quickly graduated to directing slapstick comedies. By the late 1920’s he started making feature films for Columbia Pictures. He quickly became one of Hollywood’s preeminent directors. Given his impoverished background, he longed for both fame and fortune and he quickly achieved both. Despite this success, he yearned for greater validation by winning an Academy Award.

Finally in 1934, he gained the recognition he desired by winning an Academy Award for It Happened One Night. Not only did he receive the award for best direction, but the film also won for best actor, best actress, best screenplay and best picture. It was the first movie to win all five of the major categories. He directed several more classic films including Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can’t Take It With You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Meet John Doe.

At the start of World War II he joined the Army where he oversaw the production of many films designed to inform and motivate the troops. This series was called Why We Fight. Capra won a Distinguished Service Medal in 1945 for his work.

Following his military service, he returned to Hollywood. Capra with two other directors (William Wyler and George Stevens) started their own production company, Liberty Pictures. The first (and subsequently) only movie made for that company was IAWL.

Although it received mostly positive reviews and was nominated for several Academy Awards including one for best picture and best direction, IAWL did not do well at the box office. As a result, Capra decided to sell the company to Paramount Pictures.

Through the late forties and fifties, Capra directed several movies with none of them achieving any of the success and notoriety of his previous films.

In 1971 he wrote his autobiography, The Name Above the Title which became a best seller and spurred renewed interest in his films. In 1982 he received the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award and in 1986 the National Medal of the Arts. He died in 1991 at the age of 94.

In his personal life, Capra was briefly married to Helen Howell. In 1932 he married Lucille Warren and they remained happily married for 52 years until her death at age 84. They had four children. One child died in childbirth and another child, John at the age of 10. His other children were Frank, Jr. and Lulu.

In his early adulthood, Capra characterized himself as someone who went to church on Christmas and Easter. Later in his life his wife, Lucille, converted to Catholicism and was influential in prompting Capra’s return to practicing his faith.

That biographical sketch of his life, however, does not accurately portray Capra’s lifelong conflict with reconciling his dreams of fame and fortune with his need of living a deeper and purposeful life. Perhaps this conflict is most evident in the contrast between the two titles of his life story: his autobiography, The Name Above the Title and Joseph McBride’s The Catastrophe of Success.

This lifelong conflict of Capra’s can be seen in many of his films, however, IAWL is clearly the most autobiographical. Capra attested to this fact. When asked if the movie contained autobiographical elements, he replied, That’s not such a profound statement…that it looks like the guy that made it.

Joseph McBride who studied Capra’s life summed up the biographical characteristics that Capra shared with George Bailey:

…their equation of lack of money with desperation and shame, their conflict between yearning for financial comfort and a desire to serve the community, their thwarted technological ambitions, the fateful roles of their fathers’ death in deciding their careers, the calming and conservative influences of their wives, their frustration with having to stay in their hometowns during World War II, their terror of anonymity, and underlying everything, their doubting of their own worth and their temptation to suicide.

By far the most striking and perplexing difference between his own and McBride’s retelling of Capra’s life is the story of the little man.

Capra tells how after achieving his goal and fulfilling his desire for recognition by winning all the awards for It Happened One Night he became overcome with fear and anxiety. He described his situation as I had scaled the Mount Everest of Filmlandia… but what could I do for an encore? … All roads from Everest led downward.

Capra was paralyzed by the fear of failure of never being able to match the success of It Happened One Night. When faced with the terror of fulfilling his contract with Columbia Pictures, he decided to pretend that he was sick.

Capra goes on to recount how his feigned illness started to become real with symptoms that concerned his doctor. Capra described it this way: My malingering had maligned on me. I had talked myself into a disease that had baffled the experts. Being an extraordinary person it was fitting that I die from an extraordinary ailment… Capra recounts in his autobiography how he developed fevers and sweats which the doctors could not accurately diagnose nor treat. Capra became bed ridden and isolated; he was convinced that he was going to die.

He allowed one friend, Max Winslow, to visit him. One day as Capra was fading away, Winslow told him that there was a man in the next room waiting to meet him. Capra was reluctant to comply with this request but relented and told Winslow to send him in. Winslow told Capra that the man didn’t want to see Capra in bed. Capra agreed to get up and out of bed. He struggled but with the physical support of Winslow made his way to meet this man.

Capra described this man as being as faceless as a man can be. This man demanded that Capra sit down and then he sat across from him. Capra recounts what the man said to him: God gave you those talents. They are His gifts to you, to use for His purpose. And when you don’t use the gifts God gifted you with-you are an offense to God-and to humanity. Good day, sir.

(IAWL was based on a short story by Philip Van Doren Stern entitled, The Greatest Gift)

After the little man left, Capra got himself together. He put on his clothes and drove with his wife to their vacation home in Palm Springs. While there he began to regain his health by having long walks in the desert. On one of his walks he found a chapel and a priest who would hear his confession.

Soon after that he visited a close friend, Miles Connelly, a writer who also happened to be a devout Catholic. Connelly had for years urged Capra to make more meaningful movies that had something to say rather than just entertain. He told Capra that if he opened up his heart he would create entertaining and meaningful movies.

Following this sequence of events, Capra began to make the type of movies that did just that: entertain and inspire people.

Capra in his autobiography said, Who was this faceless little man who told me I was a coward and an offense to God? I didn’t know, never would know and never wanted to know.

This pivotal, life changing moment of Capra’s life, however, was described in his biography by Joseph McBride as: Most, if not all, of this fantastic story is an invention.

McBride used primary sources to tell a different story. Capra did become very sick and almost died from complications of a chronic appendicitis. McBride speculates about why Capra in his autobiography chose to ignore the fact that he had a real illness and not an imaginary one. He states: The reasons for fictionalizing these events are complex and in themselves revealing of what Capra saw as the underlying causes of spiritual and physical crisis.

Did the little man actually exist? Was he a representation of the messages Capra received from family and friends? Did the little man represent his own conscience speaking to him? Did he come to Capra in a dream? Was he part of a feverish delirium? Was he an angel? Divine inspiration? The Holy Spirit? Good questions. But does it really matter if we cannot answer those questions?

I think that it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Capra dramatically changed how he viewed his work and life’s mission. What matters is that his creative work was transformed from being just entertainment into works of art that touched people’s hearts and minds. At that pivotal point in his career, Capra was able to reconcile his fame and fortune with a deeper purpose and mission. Making movies became an opportunity for Capra to put his faith into action. He was driven by his desire to help and inspire people.

What really matters is that a profound change did occur at a point of life and death for him. This type of change in any life is ultimately unexplainable despite attempts to attribute it to something. Whether this transformation grows slowly over time or happens suddenly and dramatically, like St. Paul’s, its ultimate source remains, like life itself, a mystery to us. The message however is clear: there is something beyond us and deep within us that is always with us giving us direction and guidance about what’s right and true. We can either choose to accept this something or refuse it. I believe that this