Stuart returned home from serving as a flight leader in World War II, and this 1946 film was his first since witnessing the horrors of war. With this post-war mentality, Stuart and director Frank Carapara take a film titled “It’s a Wonderful Life” and are antithetically crescendo for failed attempts at self-confidence.
Throughout the film, George Bailey’s life often feels anything but wonderful. The audience looks like a young man with worldly dreams, the shock comes instantly, everyone is like a nail in his coffin. Running his late father’s business, trapped in his hometown, the story culminates when George Bailey believes he is more dead than alive.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a real and echoing address Issues of self-worth and failure. Fresh from the war, Stuart himself has struggled with these tests, as he shapes George Bailey’s deeply related character. Without Stewart’s real acquaintance with the dark, a renaissance perspective on the holiday classic life would not be able to shine so unforgettably bright.
Became a classic
This meant that in the 1970s, “It’s a Wonderful Life” was cost-free for broadcasters to broadcast frequently. Audiences began to take note of the less fun movie than Christmas, which flooded the airwaves at Christmas time, and thus the holiday tradition was born.
The movie captures a period of American life filled with some of the most significant historical events of the 20th century, including the Great Depression and World War II.
After serving in the Army Air Corps, Stuart had been absent from Hollywood for five years, when he was offered the role of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” According to biographer Robert Metzen, he was initially reluctant to make the film, but it was his only offer, apart from a film featuring his war service.
One of the film’s most iconic, unencrypted scenes is when George Bailey finds himself at the end of a rope: “I’m not a man of prayer but if you’re there and you can hear me, show me the way.”
George Bailey was not scripted to cry, but Jimmy Stewart did.
“Jimmy Stewart was following his own experience and she was using it in her character. It’s a very difficult thing to do. The audience feels its intensity because it was clearly authentic,” Manquix told CNN.
“That Wonderful Life” has become a classic because it connects viewers emotionally, Manquez said, and is able to resonate in our daily lives.
“It’s a movie we see at Christmas time, but the power and feeling that the film gives is no less powerful in June,” Manquix said.
Military service
When Stuart joined the Army in 1941, he won an Academy Award for “The Philadelphia Story”.
Entering the Army Air Corps as private, he was assigned to the Motion Pictures Unit to make films for the War Department. Stuart, who comes from a family strained in military service, fought against orders and pushed for the opportunity to serve abroad.
After earning his wings as a pilot, Stuart was finally sent to England in 1943 as a flight leader. Metzen called Stewart an “aerial quarterback,” who was responsible for calling the pilots real-time shots in the air.
Stuart flew 20 times for physically and mentally challenging combat missions, which he rarely talked about after the war.
Through Stuart’s combat mission reports, Metzen was able to focus on the worst Stewart-led mission to the German city of Gotha in 1944. During this bombing campaign, Stuart lost men at his behest, a devastating cost to a leader who believed he was responsible for every life.
Also, Stuart’s personal experience with Gotha was something of a nightmare. Metzen explained that the floor of Stuart’s plane had been hit, leaving a hole under his foot. His damaged bomber had to retreat to England while Stuart was looking down at enemy territory through a hole in his cabin. Metzen estimates that Stuart experienced temperatures as low as zero to at least 20 degrees.
Metzen said the mission was “too many” for Stuart. Ten years from the recommended age of pilots flying heavy bombers, experiences like these took a tremendous toll on Stuart in the mid-30s.
“No one recognized Jimmy Stewart who came home from the fight. He had changed a lot. He says some ten years, some say 20. He has a lot of PTSD symptoms,” Metzen said.
These symptoms include convulsions, shortness of breath and nightmares. Metzen said short temperament changes mood in contrast to the explosive fit, destroying a part of the George Bailey family’s living room.
When asked what the horrors of war were for Stewart, Metzen said Stuart’s perfectionism afflicts him: every life he lost under his command was a work he could do better.
The challenge of overcoming his alleged failures and rediscovering his own economy as a citizen is where the audience meets the next Stuart on screen in 1946.
Watching during an epidemic
It’s with a new perspective that George Bailey has resisted every little thing about his life, he now enjoys.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” is one of the biggest movies ever made, as it can change the way we look at the world, says Walderma. What this film tells viewers is that success is not measured in materialism, but how much one gives back.
“I’m very grateful to the grocery clerks, the guy who shows up to bring my food – how much it’s needed. I’m so grateful to these front line workers – these people are heroes right now,” Valderma said.
The bravery of these everyday heroes has been shining through the darkness of 2020, but questions of strength and purpose are still this year for many. “That Wonderful Life” serves as a reminder that every life is necessary, and with a new perspective, wonderful.
CNN’s Amy Wray and Fernando Alfonso contributed to this report.
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