The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Frank Capra · a film · 1946 · about 130 minutes · from the story “The Greatest Gift” by Philip Van Doren Stern
Mode
Populist chronicle turned fantasy; a Christmas fable that passes through noir
Mythos
The world without me; a descent to the underworld in reverse; Dickens’s Christmas fable inverted, the miser unconverted and the generous man visited; the temptation on the high place
Phase
Twenty-six years of one life in Bedford Falls, from a frozen pond in 1919 to Christmas Eve 1945, shown to an angel; then the town without him; then the return
Presentation
Feature film in black and white, about 130 minutes; a heavenly prologue, a long retrospect, one night in present time, an unborn world and a return; James Stewart in the lead
Register
From a dance floor opening over a pool to a man drunk and bleeding at a bar, praying; a warm small-town light turned to wet neon and shadow
Scale
One man, one family, one town, its mortgages and its rents
Governing Proposition
A man who has given up every departure to keep a small lending society out of a monopolist’s hands comes to a bridge on Christmas Eve, and is shown his town as it would be had he never lived. The wager of the film is that a life’s worth is made of disasters that did not occur, hidden from the one who lives it, and that only by taking the life away can the film make that worth seen.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The film begins above the town. On Christmas Eve, 1945, prayers rise from Bedford Falls for one man, George Bailey, and in the sky, drawn as stars that speak, the case is given to Clarence, an angel second class who has not yet earned his wings. Before he can help he must know the man, and so the life is shown to him, and to us, from the beginning. About two thirds of the film are this retrospect: a ledger read through before the account falls due.
It opens in 1919, with boys on a frozen pond. The ice breaks under George’s younger brother Harry; George pulls him out, and the cold costs him the hearing in one ear. Working in Mr Gower’s drugstore, the boy sees that the druggist has made up capsules with poison in them, and holds them back; in the back room Gower strikes him before he understands. Two scenes of a childhood, each a small rescue, and each will be drawn on later as a debt.
The picture is Frank Capra’s, produced and directed for his new independent company, Liberty Films, and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures: shown in New York in December 1946 and in general release early in 1947, in black and white, about 130 minutes. The screenplay is by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett and Capra, with additional scenes by Jo Swerling, from Philip Van Doren Stern’s story “The Greatest Gift”. Joseph Walker and Joseph Biroc photographed it, William Hornbeck cut it and Dimitri Tiomkin scored it. James Stewart is George; Donna Reed is Mary Hatch; Lionel Barrymore is Henry F. Potter, the town’s monopolist; Thomas Mitchell is Uncle Billy; Henry Travers is Clarence.
Movement II
George means to leave. He wants to travel and to build, and the film keeps him saying so. At the high school dance he meets Mary; the floor opens over a swimming pool and they go in dancing. Walking home, they throw stones at an old empty house and make wishes, and he offers her the moon. The evening is the film’s first height, warm and easy. Then his father dies, and the trip is put off.
His father ran the Bailey Building and Loan, a small society that lends working families the money to own their houses, small credit held against the man who owns most of the rest. Potter moves on it, and George, on the point of leaving, stands against him and keeps it out of his hands at the cost of his own going. Harry goes in his place. Each departure George plans is given to someone else, and the film counts them: the trip, college, later the honeymoon, later a job.
The telephone scene is the film’s love scene, and it is played as a quarrel. George and Mary are pressed cheek to cheek over one receiver; desire rises in him until it is almost anger, and breaks into an embrace. Stewart and Reed play it as one rising pressure and Capra directs it so. They marry.
Movement III
On the day they leave for the honeymoon, in the Depression, a run starts on the bank. The depositors of the Building and Loan want their money, and George and Mary pay them out of the honeymoon money, counted to the dollar, until the society is still standing. The honeymoon is never taken. The money becomes the foundation of Bailey Park, houses for families who had paid Potter rent for his slums: the line, in this film, between a tenant and a citizen.
Potter offers George a salary and a trip to Europe to come and work for him. George is tempted, takes the old man’s hand, and recoils from the handshake. The war comes; the ear keeps George at home, while Harry wins a medal and saves a transport. The film keeps the war at the margin, in the town’s sons away and Harry’s decoration, and the years pass in the small debts and credits of one office.
On Christmas Eve, 1945, Uncle Billy, the partner with strings tied round his fingers to help him remember, loses $8,000 of the society’s money, and Potter, who has it, keeps it. The decent man is the one a clerk’s mistake can ruin. George goes home and turns on his family, shouting at his children and smashing the model bridge. At Martini’s bar, drunk and bleeding, he prays for the first time, and Stewart’s face gives way. Then the bridge in the snow.
Movement IV
At the bridge Clarence jumps first, so that George must save him, and the man who has spent his life pulling others out of the water does it once more. Then Clarence shows him the town as it would be had he never lived. The film, until now a warm chronicle, turns into its decade’s other genre.
The town is Pottersville. Its main street is a strip of bars and dance halls, lit in wet neon and shadow. Mr Gower is a broken man out of prison, because no boy held back the capsules. George’s mother, at the door of her boarding house, does not know him. Mary is a spinster librarian. Bailey Park is a cemetery, and in it stands Harry’s stone: no one pulled him from the ice, and the men on the transport did not come home either. The petals are gone from George’s pocket.
Nothing in the sequence is invented for the occasion; each loss is a scene from the retrospect taken away. The viewer, who has watched every deposit, now sees each withdrawal, and that is why so short a stretch carries the whole film. It is a descent to the underworld in reverse: a living man walks where he never was, unknown, his name meaning nothing, and the knowledge he brings back is of his own worth, which he could not see from inside.
Movement V
George asks to live, and is given back. He runs through the snow, greeting the building and the town, and the newel post comes off again in his hand, and the small fault in the house is now the proof that he is home. Zuzu’s petals are in his pocket.
The town gathers in the living room. Money is poured onto the table, Harry raises a toast to his brother as the “richest man in town”, and the bell on the tree marks Clarence’s wings. It is the film’s warmest height and the one it presses hardest, staged for sentiment more than with precision, the score swelling over an image that already carries the feeling.
What the ending refuses counts as much as what it gives. Potter keeps the money and is never caught; the law does nothing; George never leaves the town, and the rescue does not restore the life he gave up. The ledger is settled by gift, by an angel and a crowd, a settlement the film earns in its theme and strains in its tone. Under the light of the last scene stands a man who was on a bridge in the snow, and the film has shown his despair in full.
Act III · The Twelve
Run the subtractive test and nearly every episode returns later as a debt. The boy who pulls his brother from the ice loses the hearing in one ear, which keeps him from the war, and Harry lives to save a transport; the boy struck in Gower’s back room stops a poisoning, and in Pottersville Gower is a broken man out of prison; the honeymoon money paid out in the run on the bank founds Bailey Park, which without George is a cemetery. The third act takes each scene away and shows the loss: the structure enacts the test. What gives: the heavenly frame runs long in exposition, Ernie and Bert and Violet are thinner than they look, and the pool at the dance is lengthened for its gag. The spine is necessary; some of its flesh is permitted.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The disclosure can be stated and holds: a life spent keeping others afloat looks from inside like a list of departures that never happened, and its worth is hidden from the one who lives it, because it is made of disasters that did not occur. Beneath it lies a social disclosure, stated plainly for a Christmas picture: a town’s freedom rests on small credit held against a monopolist, housing is the line between a citizen and a tenant, and the decent man is the one a single clerk’s mistake can ruin. Potter is never caught; the stolen money stays stolen. What holds the figure is the device: the truth is underwritten by an angel and paid off by a crowd, and the despair at the bridge is answered by a gift the world outside the film rarely gives.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Elevation comes often and in two registers. The warm heights: the walk home after the dance, the moon offered, stones thrown at an old house; the telephone scene, two faces pressed cheek to cheek over one receiver, desire turned almost to anger, as charged a love scene as its decade made; and the last gathering, money poured on the table and the bell on the tree. The cold heights: George shouting at his children and breaking the model bridge, the prayer at Martini’s bar with Stewart’s face giving way, the bridge in the snow, and Pottersville, where his mother does not know him Held below the top because some warm heights are reached by pressure on feeling rather than earned by the image, and the last ten minutes press hardest.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The myth is built and bears the whole third act. The man shown the world without himself makes a descent to the underworld in reverse: he walks where he never was, unknown to his mother, and returns by asking to live. Around it the film builds a Christmas fable that inverts Dickens: the miser is never converted, and the man visited by the spirit is the generous one, made to see not his own future but the world’s. Potter’s offer of a salary and travel is a temptation on the high place, and George’s recoil from the handshake is the refusal. The particular stays particular: Zuzu’s petals, a newel post, a ledger. Held below the top because the angel is drawn for comedy, and the heavenly machinery is evoked lightly, not built to the depth of the unborn world.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The inheritance is Capra’s own: the populist pictures of the 1930s and Meet John Doe (1941), in which a decent small man stands against money, and the angel fantasies of the early 1940s, in which the heavenly correct a mortal’s account. The turns inside it are real: a Christmas picture brings a man to a bridge in the snow to kill himself, by way of a long realist chronicle rather than a farce; the unborn town is shot as a noir, the genre of the decade; the villain goes unpunished. The stake was real too: the first picture of Capra’s independent company. What holds the axis lowest is the shape: the wager is placed on Capra’s proven path and on a form the studios already sold (fantasy frame, flashback, sentiment).
Score: 7.9 / 10
Change the form and the film loses its knowledge. The life is shown to an observer, Clarence, before the crisis, so that the viewer holds the whole ledger while George sees only the failures; then the unborn sequence takes him away, and the viewer, who has watched every deposit, sees each withdrawal. The form is the argument: worth that cannot be seen from inside is made visible by being removed. The retrospect’s gathering of small sacrifices (the trip, college, the honeymoon, the job offer) makes the bridge inevitable, and its length is what lets Pottersville carry so much. What holds the figure is the frame: the heavenly scenes are a container, told as starfields that speak, and the closing crowd is the conventional happy ending, so the knowledge the structure earned is partly cashed by convention.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Eighty years of return, much of it annual, are evidence of a kind few films have: the same people watch it year after year. It yields on return chiefly in its darkness: George’s entrapment, the dreams of travel and building given up one by one; the town that rescues him having first, without knowing it, consumed his life; Potter’s theft never answered; Mary’s fate in the unborn world, a spinster librarian, read as the film’s narrowness about women. Readings have run from Christmas piety to anti-capitalist fable to a study of depression and suicidal despair. What holds the figure is that they converge on one question, how dark the film is under its light, and once that is seen the meaning stands rather than deepens. Return deepens George more than the film’s structure.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Released in 1946, so force and reach are scored together, in the cinema of the 1940s. The film made the alternate world in which a man is shown his absence into a complete dramatic form, and it put despair and the economics of a small town at the centre of a holiday fantasy. In its own decade it carried little: Liberty Films did not survive, and Capra’s career declined after it. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the reach came late, through television in the 1970s and 1980s, and then grew very wide; the “world without me” premise is now a stock form across film and television. Delayed reach is credited and discounted, and it is reach of a pattern more than of a way of making film.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, across eighty years. The form is whole: the film survives as released, in its one cut, and restorations are repair. Its presence is among the widest any film has: from the 1970s it was shown on many stations each December, and it has been broadcast and screened every year since, a fixture of the season beyond the cinema. Fame is presence, not proof, and earns little on its own. Colorized versions circulate beside the original without replacing it, a small charge. The surface, postwar sentiment and the small-town Christmas, is of its period, but it ages as period, and the subject has not aged. Eighty years of demonstrated survival at the widest presence carry the axis to the highest figure on this page.
Score: 8.8 / 10
The making bears weight in the performance above all. Stewart carries a man from boyish appetite to rage and terror, and the bar, the living room and the bridge are among the best film acting of the decade. Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore are exact; Thomas Mitchell’s Uncle Billy is comic and pitiful at once. The telephone scene is directed and played as one rising pressure. Joseph Walker’s photography lights a warm town and turns it, in Pottersville, to wet neon and shadow, and William Hornbeck’s cutting keeps a long chronicle moving. The costs fall where they matter: the heavenly frame is crude, talking lights in the sky; some broad comedy is slack; Tiomkin’s score swells where the image already carries the feeling; and the closing crowd is staged for sentiment more than with precision.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the stars conferring in heaven over a second-class angel’s wings, and George drunk and bleeding at Martini’s bar, praying for the first time. One law governs both: an account is being kept, and no one in it can see the whole book. The Building and Loan’s ledger, the honeymoon money counted out to the dollar, the lost $8,000, Clarence’s wings and the bell are entries in one reckoning of what a life is worth, and the comedy (the pool under the dance floor, Uncle Billy’s strings tied round his fingers) obeys it as much as the despair. What holds the figure is strain: the frame’s whimsy sits uneasily against the noir of Pottersville, and the ledger is settled by gift, which the film earns in theme but strains in tone.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Judged on what a film of about 130 minutes holds. The family is held across two generations, from father to four children. Consciousness is George’s, fully, from boyhood to the bridge. Labour and money stand at the centre, in the Building and Loan, the mortgages, a run on the bank in the Depression and Potter’s rents; housing and class in Bailey Park against Potter’s slums. History enters through twenty-six years, the crash and the war; the sacred is a frame and a prayer; death is a father, a drowning averted and a suicide refused. What holds it is that all of this is held through one town and one man: the war stays at the margin, and the world beyond Bedford Falls is the place George never reaches. The narrowness is the subject, and also the limit.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.4 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.8, then The Archetypal Deep, The Living Form and The Made at 8.6. Eighty years of survival in one cut, with a presence few films have; a myth of the world without one man, built so that it bears the whole third act; a form that shows a life to an observer and then takes it away, so that its worth is seen by subtraction; and a making that rests on Stewart’s performance, the telephone scene and Walker’s two towns.
Limiting Dimension
The Swerve at 7.9: the darkness inside the form is a real turn, a suicide at the centre of a holiday picture, a town shot as noir and a villain unpunished, but the wager is placed on Capra’s proven path and on a form the studios already sold. Above it, The Encompassed at 8.0, where family, consciousness, money, housing, class and history are held through one town and one man, and The Bottomless Well and Pressure on Tradition at 8.2, a return whose readings converge on one question, and a reach that came late and is reach of a pattern.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.4 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.6, The Made at 8.6, The Inner Law at 8.3, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on three axes: The Imperishable at 8.8 and The Archetypal Deep at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 8.4 falls a tenth short, Pressure on Tradition at 8.2 three tenths short and The Swerve at 7.9 six tenths short. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.9, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 8.0. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The summit is withheld by the Epochal Gate and by the aggregate, 8.4 from a sum of 100.5, below the 9.0 that Tier V requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of It’s a Wonderful Life as released in 1946, the black-and-white theatrical release of about 130 minutes, the one version its makers released, from the prayers over Bedford Falls to the bell on the tree: produced and directed by Frank Capra for Liberty Films and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, written by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett and Frank Capra with additional scenes by Jo Swerling, from Philip Van Doren Stern’s story “The Greatest Gift”, photographed by Joseph Walker and Joseph Biroc, edited by William Hornbeck, with music by Dimitri Tiomkin. The colorized versions made later for television and home video are altered versions, not the object, and are weighed only as part of the film’s life. Stern’s story and the later adaptations are separate works. No print, script or recording was consulted. Dialogue is quoted only where its words are certain, and otherwise described. Details that could not be verified, among them the exact running time, the scene and shot counts, the length of the unborn sequence, the dates of the colorized versions, the film’s takings and awards in its own decade, how it came to annual television broadcast, and accounts of official reactions to it, are not given.