Plot Synopsis (continued)
George
is thoroughly depressed and disheartened by the catastrophes of the
day. He wanders home, ready to give up, and on the verge of possible
financial ruin. As he enters into a Christmas-tree decorated living
room, he is thoroughly distracted, disturbed and disoriented. His
daughter Janie practices "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" on
the family piano. Mary decorates the Christmas tree with the older
son. As a fear-stricken George tearfully clutches his son Tommy to
his chest and kisses him, he ignores his wife and other children.
Mary happens to notice George's private display of emotion, self-absorbed
with thoughts of scandal and prison. In an extreme close-up, Mary
senses something is wrong, as his little boy decorates his head with
tinsel. The tinny-sound of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" played
by his daughter (offscreen) causes George to scream at her in frustration.
The family turns toward him, shocked that he has shown such an uncharacteristic
cruelty toward them with his tongue-lashing. It is the Christmas
season, but he feels no love or the spirit of giving, uninterested
in the party being planned for that evening. George sarcastically
calls his hectic day "another big red-letter day for the Baileys."
And then George finds that his little girl Zuzu (Karolyn
Grimes) is sick with a cold, caught while walking home with her coat
unbuttoned so she could protect the rose she had won in school. George
feels everything is a burden, blaming his daughter's cold on the
old Granville house:
George: This drafty old barn! Might as well be living
in a refrigerator! Why did we have to live here in the first place
and stay around this measly, crummy old town?
Mary: George, what's wrong?
George: Wrong? Everything's wrong. You call this a happy family?
Why do we have to have all these kids?
His son asks for help with his homework: "Dad,
how do you spell frankincense?"
George unwillingly snaps back: "I don't know. Ask your mother."
George leaves the kitchen and goes upstairs to see
Zuzu. Another annoyance occurs to him on the way upstairs - he grabs
onto the ball post at the bottom of the stairway railing and it comes
off in his hand. With a crazed look on his face, he is ready to heave
it away in anger, but he restrains himself and recovers enough to
replace it. Mary supplies the spelling for the word for her son in
the kitchen: "F - R - A - N - K - I - N ..." and she senses
that George is seriously upset.
In a tender but sad scene at sick Zuzu's bedside, Zuzu
greets her daddy and shows him the flower she has won. When the petals
fall off her flower, she hands them to her father to paste back on.
Unable to fix the flower, he turns away and pretends to, but he actually
puts the loose rose petals in his pocket. Back downstairs, George
shouts into the phone to Mrs. Welch, Zuzu's school teacher, blaming
her for Zuzu's illness, calling her stupid, silly, and careless.
George also turns on Mr. Welch, and physically threatens him to a
fight.
When his son asks for another spelling, this time of "Hallelujah," George
angrily complains at his children:
How should I know? What do you think I am, a dictionary?
Tommy, stop that, stop it! Janie, haven't you learned that silly
tune yet? You play it over and over again. Now stop it! Stop!
George kicks over a table with models, drawings, and
architectural blueprints of bridges and buildings that he has been
working on and dreaming about - the profession he was forced to abandon.
Self-destructively, he throws things wildly about and then turns
to see his kids and wife looking at him with tears in their eyes.
He catches himself and apologizes to them for his outburst, but he
has frightened and scared them with his violent and bizarre behavior.
Mary asks: "Why must you torture the children? Why don't you...?" George
leaves his home, while Mary calls Uncle Billy, and the children offer
prayers for their troubled father.
George turns to the scrooge-like banker Potter for
an $8,000 loan, sitting in a low-bottomed chair in front of Potter.
Potter taunts him, suggesting embezzlement, misappropriation of funds
or womanizing. He pompously tells George:
Look at you. You used to be so cocky. You were going
to go out and conquer the world! You once called me a warped, frustrated,
old man. What are you but a warped, frustrated young man? A miserable
little clerk, crawling in here on your hands and knees and begging
for help.
Potter refuses to help him, mentioning that George,
with a $15,000 life insurance policy, is "worth more dead than
alive." Potter threatens to call the authorities.
In one of the darkest sections of the film, George
wanders out - on Christmas Eve - into the dark night, heading for
Martini's Italian restaurant and bar. Seated at the bar, he drinks
heavily and utters a prayer for help that is heard up above:
Dear Father, I'm not a praying man, but if you're
up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I'm at the end of
my rope. Show me the way, oh God.
The bartender Nick (Sheldon Leonard) and Mr. Martini
are worried about his heavy drinking: "Why do you drink so much,
my friend?...Please go home, Mr. Bailey. This is Christmas Eve." Near
him at the bar is Mr. Welch (Stanley Andrews), husband of Zuzu's
school teacher. He angrily punches George in the mouth, and explains
how his wife cried for an hour after George screamed at her on the
phone. In defense of George, Martini throws Mr. Welch out of the
bar: "You hit my best friend. Get out!" Sporting a bloody
lip, George mumbles cynically: "That's what you get for praying." He
interprets the sock in the mouth as the only answer to his prayer.
He reaches for his insurance policy in his coat pocket, convinced
that his suicide will be the best solution for everyone.
In a memorable scene, George despondently wanders outside
into the dark, snowy night and gets in his car. He drunkenly crashes
his car into a tree, abandoning it to go on foot. Stumbling into
the path of an oncoming truck in the snowstorm, he heads for the
river and stands in the middle of the town bridge looking into the
icy river. During these hard times, he loses faith in life itself
and is on the verge of suicide.
Before he jumps to his death, an odd, elderly stranger
(his guardian angel Clarence) hurtles himself into the swirling icy
water. He flounders and calls out for help from below, forcing himself
to be rescued by George. George instinctively jumps in after him,
forgetting for a moment that he had been contemplating killing himself
just seconds before. They are both pulled from the water by the tollhouse
keeper, who takes them into the tollhouse to dry off. They hang their
wet clothes on a line strung in the room, and the stranger also dries
off his favorite book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Wearing funny underwear, the odd fellow claims he purposely
jumped in to save George's life. He also claims that suicide is not
permitted where he comes from - heaven. George thinks things are
in reverse. The stranger calmly explains why he jumped in: "I
knew if I were drowning, you would try to save me. And you see, you
did. And that's how I saved you." The old man claims to be the
answer to George's prayer rather than the bloody lip.
Finally, the guardian angel himself as Clarence Oddbody,
AS2 (Angel Second Class). The bridgetender falls from his chair,
thinking they are both crazy and rushes outside to escape from their
company. George asks why he was sent to save him and berates his
heavenly messenger:
Well, you look about like the kind of angel I'd
get. Sort of a fallen angel, aren't you? What happened to your
wings?
Clarence explains that he doesn't have them yet, but
is attempting to earn them.
The apprentice angel reminds George how much he has
really accomplished in life, but George isn't convinced. Clarence
explains that George's death wouldn't solve any problems but the
despondent man wishes that he had never been born at all.
I suppose it'd been better if I'd never been born
at all.
Looking heavenward, Clarence checks with his heavenly
employers and gets the OK from Angel Joseph. He is permitted to grant
George's wish.
You've got your wish: you've never been born.
In an instant, the snow stops, the wind blows the door
open, and George ceases to exist. With no cares, worries, and obligations,
things change - he can hear out of his bad ear, his lip has stopped
bleeding from Mr. Welch's punch, and his clothes are dry. [His freedom
also brings greater problems: he has no friends, no family, and no
sense of identity.] On their return to Martini's for a drink - where
George expects to return to his normal life, George finds that his
smashed car is gone. He also learns that the town of Bedford Falls
has been renamed Pottersville. These minor changes are a foreshadowing
of what George Bailey will see on his fantasy journey with Clarence.
He will be shown how badly Bedford Falls has fared and how different
life would have been without him and his good deeds.
Martini's has become a smoky, sleazy joint called
Nick's Place, owned by a belligerent Nick, the former bartender who
doesn't seem to know George. [George is at first confused in the
fantasy sequence, not getting the point right away that he doesn't
exist.] In the bar, Clarence orders "mulled wine, heavy on the
cinnamon and light on the cloves." Nick responds with a clenched
fist: "Hey, look, mister, we serve hard drinks in here for men
who want to get drunk fast. And we don't need any characters around
to give the joint atmosphere. Is that clear? Do I have to slip you
my lip for a convincer?" When the cash register is opened, and
a bell sounds, the apprentice angel tells George the way to know
that an angel has earned his wings:
Every time you hear a bell ring, it means that some
angel's just got his wings.
With a child-like and naive nature, Clarence is unafraid
to discuss angels with disbelieving Nick and others in the bar: "Why,
don't they believe in angels?" Embarrassed by his slightly daffy
companion, George tells Nick: "He never grew up." Clarence
divulges his age: "Two hundred and ninety three, uhh, next May." Thought
to be "two pixies," they are about to be thrown out of
the bar when druggist Mr. Gower comes stumbling in. Nick identifies
Gower as a "panhandler." Gower is terrified by George's
show of familiarity for him. George is told that the booze-soaked, "rum-head" drunkard
spent twenty years in jail for mixing a fatal prescription and poisoning
a kid.
In the snow outside the bar, George finds out for
himself that he has no identity, no papers, no cards, no driver's
license, no 4F card and no insurance policy. And Zuzu's flower petals
are gone too, but he has been offered a unique chance: "You've
been given a great gift, George. A chance to see what the world would
be like without you."
In a garish, noisy, Las Vegas-style Bedford Falls without
George, in one of the most frightening dream sequences ever filmed,
George is given a nightmarish, perverted image of life without him,
as he views all the changes in the characters and familiar landmarks
of his life:
- Mr. Gower, the druggist, would have been sent to
prison, where he would become an alcoholic bum suffering from DTs
(the tragedy of a poisoned prescription-delivery would not have
been averted without George's intervention and the boy would have
died)
- Potter would run everything and life would be very
different - dismal, merchandized capitalism at its worst. The peaceful
small-town of Bedford Falls would become the garish Babylon of
Pottersville, filled with bars (note the Blue Moon Bar and Cafe
and George's earlier promise to lasso the moon for Mary), pool
halls, midnight dance clubs, pawn shops, burlesque houses, girlie
peep shows, with prostitutes and drunks roaming the streets. (George
is seen in front of the flashing light of the "Indian Club" sign.)
- the Building and Loan would be gone replaced by
a jitterbug dance hall
- Violet would become a cheap, gaudily made-up floozy
who sells her body and is arrested by police in front of a dime-a-dance
hall
- Bailey Park would not exist
- George's best friends, Bert and Ernie, wouldn't
recognize him, replacing friendliness with suspicion and hostility,
attempting to arrest him
- the old Granville house at 320 Sycamore would be
as it was before he and Mary moved in - empty and haunted, deserted
for twenty years and becoming a dilapidated, cheerless mansion
- George would have no children, because he himself
was never born
- George's mother would be the proprietress of Ma
Bailey's Boarding House, subsisting on a meager income, with a
weary, unhappy, hardened, frightened and suspicious look at George
- Uncle Billy, who attempted to run the building and
loan after the death of Mr. Bailey, would go insane when it collapsed,
and become institutionalized in an insane asylum
As George stumbles down the steps of Ma Bailey's Boarding
House after his mother has shut him out, his confused, desperate
and horrified face is viewed in a tremendous close-up. Clarence wisely
shows George how much his life has mattered, and he begins to understand
the differences his absence made in others and himself:
Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many
other lives, and when he isn't around he leaves an awful hole,
doesn't he?
When George attempts to locate Bailey Park, he finds
a cemetery where Bailey Park once stood. Clarence clarifies why there
aren't any houses: "You weren't here to build them." There
in the graveyard in a harrowing scene, he finds his brother Harry's
grave and tombstone (1911-1919). He would have died in the childhood
sledding accident ("at the age of nine" according to Clarence)
because George wasn't there to save him. And Harry would have never
grown up to be a war hero, saving all the lives of the men on the
naval transport: "Every man on that transport died. Harry wasn't
there to save them because you weren't there to save Harry."
You see, George, you've really had a wonderful
life. Don't you see what a mistake it would be to throw it away?
Slowly, George realizes that Clarence is right. But
he feels that if he can just find Mary, things will be back to normal.
Mary is discovered as an old maid librarian, a sad, lonely, frightened
and plain widow without a spring or joyfulness in her step. Her hair
is tied back tightly, and she wears unsightly spectacles. George
approaches toward her as she closes up the library, pleading and
begging Mary to help him, but she doesn't recognize him and screams
to get away from him. In a panic, she runs from George when he accosts
her. Bert comes to her defense, but is knocked to the ground. His
fears deepened, George flees from the center of town, with gunshots
ringing in his ears.
At the bridge where he jumped in, George pleads with
his angel to end the vision and go back - to take back the wish that
he'd never been born. He realizes the consequences of having never
existed and begs to be restored to life, to a sense of belonging
to everything and communicating with those around him. He prays for
the chance to rejoin the living, to reclaim his social identity,
his home, his family, and his life, accepting it for what it is rather
than worrying about what it is not:
Clarence! Clarence! Help me, Clarence. Get me back.
Get me back. I don't care what happens to me. Get me back to my
wife and kids. Help me, Clarence, please. Please! I want to live
again! I want to live again. I want to live again. Please, God,
let me live again.
Suddenly his life returns: the wind dies down, and
a gentle snow falls. Bert's police car turns onto the bridge. To
the first person he encounters when restored to life, George asks
an important identity question: "Bert, do ya know me?" Euphorically,
life is back to normal. Bert demands to know where he has been, since
the whole town has been looking for him. George gleefully cackles:
My mouth's bleeding, Bert! My mouth's bleed... (He
reaches in his pocket) - Zuzu's petals! Zuzu's...There they are!
Bert! What do you know about that! Merry Christmas!
His mouth is bleeding again, and Zuzu's petals are
in his pocket! Joyous, he calls out Mary's name, welcomes his ramshackle
car (still smashed into the tree) with a door that doesn't open and
close properly. He races back through town ("Yea! Hello Bedford
Falls!") enthusiastically and ecstatically greeting every familiar
face he sees and shouting out: "Merry Christmas." In his
second run through town, he is equally hysterical - but now overjoyed.
He even shouts at the buildings he recognizes - the Bijou movie theater
and its marquee [ironically for the sentimental movie The Bells
of St. Mary's, echoing the theme of bells at the end of the film],
the Emporium, and the Bailey Bros. Building and Loan. He even wishes
Potter a "Merry Christmas" through the window of Potter's
office.
Returning home, George bursts through his front door
and finds the bank examiner and local sheriff. He greets them with
a smile, assuming they are there to punish him for bankruptcy and
serve him with a warrant for his arrest. He is delighted at the prospect: "Isn't
it wonderful - I'm going to jail!" He happily leaps up the stairs,
accidentally yanking out, kissing and carefully replacing the railing
post ball on the stairpost - for the third time. He chuckles
to himself. At the top of the stairs, he blissfully embraces his
children. Mary enters the house and runs into his arms on the stairs.
He kisses her on the face again and again, asking: "Let me touch
you. Are you real?" Dragging him downstairs to stand in front
of the Christmas tree, she tells him: "It's a miracle." Mary
has brought his faithful friends, relatives, depositors and citizens
of Bedford Falls to their home. They have all rallied with good will
and Christmas spirit to support him and save him from going to jail.
Almost
everyone in Bedford Falls who was positively affected by his presence
is there - Mr. Martini, Mr. Gower, Violet, Annie the cook, and all
the people who participated in the bank run. Incredulous, George
silently says the name of each one as they come forward, relieved
and thankful that they're alive to him. Proving their faith in him
for the life he had given them, the townspeople collect gifts of
enough money from their private reserves and put them in a large
basket. The money amounts to thousands of dollars - enough to save
his business from Potter's control. Billy excitedly pours out the
donations onto the table. The man who had demanded all his money
back during the bank scare comments: "What is this, uh, another
run on the bank?" and then promptly puts his money down on the
table.
A wire from London arrives from financially successful
Sam Wainwright, offering an advance of $25,000 if George needs it
for financial solvency - it includes greetings of "Hee Haw and
Merry Christmas." Janie plays "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" on
the piano, and everyone joins in singing. Even the bank examiner
contributes to the bulging pile of cash, and the sheriff tears up
his arrest warrant. Flying through a snow storm, Harry arrives and
offers a toast to George and the group, recognizing the real treasure
of friends that George has (and wryly commenting on the money in
the basket): "A toast...to my big brother, George. The richest
man in town." The voices of people burst into communal song
- Auld Lang Syne fills the air.
In a touching ending and the film's most famous scene,
while holding his daughter Zuzu in his arms, George glances down
at the pile of money. His eye catches what is buried on the pile
- Clarence's copy of Tom Sawyer left for him as a gift. Zuzu
opens it and they find an inscription written in it:
Dear George, Remember no man is a failure
who has friends. Thanks for the wings! Love Clarence.
People who have real friends know the best there is
in life, rather than reaching for rewards and yearnings elsewhere
- real riches can be found in the treasures nearby. Mary looks up
at George and inquires:
Mary: What's that?
George: That's a Christmas present from a very dear friend of mine.
Suddenly, a little bell on the Christmas tree begins
to tinkle as it sways back and forth. Zuzu points to the bell, dutifully
reciting what her teacher told her about the significance of a ringing
bell:
Zuzu: Look, Daddy. Teacher says, every time a bell
rings, an angel gets his wings.
George (grinning): That's right, that's right. (He congratulates
Clarence, looking upward and giving a wink.) Attaboy, Clarence.
Only George realizes the full significance of the bell
ringing - it rings for Clarence who has earned his wings by succeeding
with a tough assignment - and also for George's awakening of consciousness
through divine intervention in his experiences, enabling him to be
freed from the confines of earthly pressures. He has found his own
rewards and gifts - life, redemption, and freedom. The swelling sounds
of Auld Lang Syne build to a crescendo in an affirmation of
life. [The film originally ended with 'Ode to Joy.']
[Note: Scrooge-like, covetous banker Potter, despite
reprehensibly stealing money from the Bailey Building and Loan and
helping to cause George's suicide attempt, remained unpunished and
unrepentant -- something unusual for the average Hollywood movie
at the time. The inclusion of this cliche would have diluted the
message of the movie - that one man's life touched everyone else's.
It would also have weakened the sentimental ending as the community
of characters celebrated despite Potter's successful, unpunished
chicanery and spiritual bankruptcy.] |