Critics reviews

The true magic of the film is that Capra's undeniably vital creative genius, with the help of his perfect cast, pulls its conflicts and mood swings together, through comedy, sentimentality and despair, into a supremely entertaining homily on simple goodness.

[It's a Wonderful Life] has come to be considered one of the greatest films Capra ever made. Better yet, one of the greatest films anybody ever made.

The fantasy or whimsy of Clarence’s existence does not greatly affect the realist tenor of the story as a whole, which is so important for inducing the audience to make an emotional investment in George and his family... Always a joy to see this film.

It’s a Wonderful Life is the closest thing to a postwar American Dickens. Though Capra never quite returned to the golden days of the 1930s, this is considered by many to be one of the finest films ever made.

The weakness of this picture... is the sentimentality of it — its illusory concept of life. Mr. Capra’s nice people are charming... But somehow they all resemble theatrical attitudes rather than average realities. And Mr. Capra’s “turkey dinners” philosophy, while emotionally gratifying, doesn’t fill the hungry paunch.

Every time I see Uncle Billy smile and fold that newspaper with the money inside and just _hand_ it over to Mr. Potter I nearly scream. I scream thinking of myself, too. That moment of recognition in yourself – the nightmarish thought of committing some kind of easy blunder that results in consequences so dire, that you wish you'd never left the house that morning.

This couldn’t be other than a Capra picture, the humanness of its story the dominant factor at every turn of situation. His direction of the individual characterizations delivered is also distinctively his, and the performances, from the starring roles of James Stewart and Donna Reed down to the smallest bit, are magnificent. When Capra is at his best, no one can top him.

Barely more than ten minutes into It's a Wonderful Life I'm already a puddle. The film is still an hour and a half away from settling into its final act, yet it's reached an emotional crescendo that most films would be hard-pressed to pull off at all. Capra's masterpiece of America and its discontents is so brilliant at making every moment count that one doesn't notice that most of the running time is devoted to simply setting the narrative groundwork for its high-concept wallop of a climax.

Way darker than its holiday-classic rep has become a truism since I was a kid, but this viewing (first in 14 years) made me long for the relative cheer and optimism ofThe Turin Horse. Just days later, the beaming smiles and wing-heralding bells of the finale have already faded, whereas I can't stop thinking of George stalking his house like a caged panther, viciously snapping at innocuous questions from his kids and generally behaving like patriarchy gone rancid.

For all its Hallmark Card familiarity, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE is in fact the most despairing movie of Capra's career--a two-hour tour of an honest man's failure and bottled-up resentment, softened only intermittently by loving images of Americana. Loving, perhaps, but always tinged with the doubts characteristic of Capra's most personal films.

The film's bravura fantasy sequence, imagining the hellishly licentious Bedford Falls that would exist without George, makes the grandest possible case for the importance and uniqueness of individual agency – ‘Battleship Potemkin' this ain't. Funny, compelling and moving.

This masterpiece from Frank Capra is a film with much more to it than festive feel-good sentimentality and still has a lot to say about community spirit... The term Capra-esque is too often misapplied: forget the imitations and revel in the genuine article.