A VISIT TO BEDFORD FALLS

Did you go over to Bedford Falls this Christmas? I do try to get over there at least once a year although, to be honest, I had to skip it last year because of simply not having the time under the circumstances. I mean, it’s only a trip of two hours and nine minutes or so, but it tends to bolster my flagging festive spirits for far longer than that, and so the journey is most worthwhile.

Some people might try to tell you that “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a load of sugar coated, saccharine nonsense, but I suspect that these are people who have never sat down and watched the whole film but have merely seen the “nice” clips on a “100 Best Whatevers” compilation, or walked into the room just as the movie is ending and everyone is reaching for the tissues to get that certain undefined “something” from out of the corner of their eyes, because, whilst it is ultimately a very uplifting movie, it has to travel to some very dark places to get there, sometimes scratching beneath the surface of small town America in a way that does in some ways remind me of some of the things that David Lynch would also do a couple of generations of film-makers later...

Yes indeed, to begin with, I will accept that the “talking stars” intro is a little bit twee, although very much of its time, but after that we are taken right away into witnessing a near fatal accident on a frozen pond, and we will spend a great deal of the subsequent couple of hours visiting some very dark corners of the human soul on our way to discovering how an ordinary life can come to be something quite wonderful.

Right from when Mr Gower the pharmacist is clipping young George about his bad ear for not delivering a prescription, on the very morning he hears about the death of his own son and his mind is naturally on other things, and we discover that he has accidentally made up some potentially lethal capsules, we are travelling across some very dark waters indeed, waters which will reveal to us in all their awfulness the notions of the life not lived, alongside the horrors of war, poverty, alcoholism, suicide and unfettered greed.

When you first see the “grown-up” George as played by James Stewart, his hopes and ambitions to travel and leave Bedford Falls far behind him as he prepares to realise his dream to see the world are constantly thwarted by circumstances, and the anger he sometimes displays, despite generally being a “good” man, is only too human. But it is by his words and deeds that we come to know him so that, despite the fact that he might very well be the only good-hearted moneylender in the history of the wider banking industry, we come to know that his motivations are not personal wealth or greed, but the general well-being and happiness of his fellow human beings, which is coldly contrasted by the wealthiest man in town (but clearly, as we come to discover, not the richest…) Mr Henry F Potter.

The scene with perhaps the most charm, which takes place after the dunking in the swimming pool, is when George and Mary have a mishap that leaves her hiding naked in a Rhododendron bush, and even this lovely moment has to be cut short by devastating news from George’s home and which means that more of life’s disappointments are coming crashing in. Even the joyous homecoming of George’s newlywed brother can only serve to trap George inside a life he never wanted and it is only his overwhelming nobility in the face of that personally crushing moment that prevents his own bitterness from ruining the occasion.

I sometimes feel that I could learn a lot from old George.

Then there is Potter, pretty much the most mean-spirited character ever committed to celluloid, and one who is never given the opportunity to redeem himself and why would he want to? He does, after all, live precisely the wealthy lifestyle he chooses to despite his handicaps, and it seems that it is only the Bailey family and their ridiculous notions that people should have the freedom to live in their own homes that seems to be standing in the way of his dream to have dominion over the lives of everyone in town. His life seems to have been plagued by two generations of the Bailey family who have remained a constant thorn in the side of his attempts to recreate Bedford Falls in his own image and it transpires that this is a dream which he would have fulfilled, as we are to discover, if only George had never been born.

Even when he knows that he already has the money Uncle Billy mislaid in his grubby, bitter little hands, and he realises that George is prepared to take the fall for Billy’s mistake, he does nothing to reduce his suffering and instead calls out the Detective who will present George with that warrant for his arrest when he gets home on that fateful Christmas Eve, and which leads directly to the moment of crisis that George is to face.

Before George has that final calamity, where ruin is staring him in the face and he genuinely thinks that his only way out is to consider suicide, he gets involved in a bar fight with Mr Welch, who’s wife he tore a strip off earlier for allowing his daughter catch a  chill, and has been so lost in his own worries that he has alienated his entire family, gone cap in hand to the one man in town he despises, who then reminded him that all his good works have left him without anything of “real” value to guarantee the loan he needs, and has left his  obviously slow-witted Uncle Billy in floods of tears at the prospect of prison. Finally he drives drunk and smashes up his car into the much-treasured “oldest tree” in Bedford Falls.

Not, if you’re being objective, the all-singing, happy-go-lucky picture of small town America you might have expected to see, but that’s nothing compared to the famous sequence set in what we might now term an “Alternate Universe” which we briefly visit in only the final half hour of the movie as, with a little help from Clarence, George’s Guardian Angel (Second Class), we get to see what life in Bedford Falls, now renamed “Potterville”, would have been like if he had actually never been born. It is a dark, cynical place of speakeasies, strip joints and gambling dens, where Mary, who just seems so “alive” in “our” universe, has lost most of her sparkle and lives as a lonely spinster Librarian, and all of the goodness that George has put into the life of the town has been cruelly snatched away simply by the lack of him.

Of course, all of this darkness is counterpointed by moments that define the very spirit of home and community. Mr Gower’s salvation because of the basic goodness of one small boy, the blossoming romance with Mary Hatch as “George Lassos the Moon”, Bert and Ernie’s serenade at the alternative honeymoon suite as the run on the Bailey Building and Loan is only rescued by George sacrificing another chance to see the world, and, of course, that finale when we get to see who truly is “the richest man in town” and which puts the icing on the cake of one of the most satisfying movies you are ever likely to see.

Oh yes, and it’s one of those films that remains far better in black and white, too, despite the fact that people might try to persuade you otherwise. Now I’m sure that colour tinting technology has come on in leaps and bounds since those gaudy monstrosities which were the early colourisations of the “Laurel and Hardy” films were released, but, to me, some things really do need to be seen in that crisp black and white as they originally were made.

So, if you get a couple of hours, do yourself a favour and visit Bedford Falls whilst you’re still in a vaguely festive frame of mind.

I’m pretty sure you won’t regret it.