It's a Wonderful Life you two guys? You were here on my wedding night!" Streaming audio It's a Wonderful Life It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas fantasy comedy-drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra, based on the short story and booklet "The Greatest Gift", which Philip Van Doren Stern wrote in 1939 and published privately in 1945. The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his dreams in order to help others, and whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George
It's a Wonderful Life dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher, and your oppressively perfect wife." In a 2010 Salon.com piece, Richard Cohen described "It's a Wonderful Life" as "the most terrifying Hollywood film ever made". In the "Pottersville" sequence, he wrote, George is not seeing the world that would exist had he never been born, but rather "the world as it does