It's a Wonderful Life
(1946)
My, god, there's jazz in Pottersville! And stride piano! And . . . and . . . Negroes!Excellent essay last week in the Times by Wendell Jamieson on the complex epistemology of the film--you're better off reading him than me.
OK, if you're still here, yesterday I said something technically inexplicable about the last two of my hardy annuals; this is the penultimate, even though I happened to watch it last this year, because it's attached only to the season, not to Christmas Day. I can watch it pretty much any time from Thanksgiving on; some years, in fact, I think I've actually watched it in the week between Xmas and New Year's, though that's pushing it.
What I noticed this time that I'd never noticed before: during the you've-never-been-born nightmare, after George socks Bert the cop and Bert, a much less responsible law-enforcement agent for the want of George Bailey's moral influence, starts shooting wildly down Main Street, his random bullets actually take out the S and the V of a POTTERSVILLE neon sign.
Oh, by the way, if you've always been unsatisfied by the conclusion, click here.
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