It’s a Wonderful Life

1. Select a full-length film and identify the title, writer, director, major actors and the year it was released.

Title: It’s a Wonderful Life

Writer: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett

Director: Frank Capra, Arthur S. Black

Year: 1947

Actors: James Stewart (George Bailey), Donna Reed (Mary Hatch Bailey), Lionel Barrymore (Mr. Potter), Henry Travers (Clarence Oddbody)

2. Summarize the story and plot of your chosen movie.

Story – Starts on Christmas Eve and a story about George Bailey at Bedford Falls, New York. He is thinking about jumping off the bridge and killing himself. There is an angel named Clarence that is trying to get his wings. He is given the assignment of getting them by helping George Bailey reconsider his life and see that without him it would be a lot different.

Plot – To show George Bailey that life is worth living and not to give up. Showing that a life without him would be so much different for all of the people that he loves. Also, the lives that he didn’t know that would be affected by him being alive.

“Clarence is shown George’s life: As a child, George stops his younger brother Harry from drowning in an icy pond, then catches a bad cold and loses his hearing in one ear. Weeks later, George goes back to work at his after school job in Mr. Gower’s drugstore and prevents Gower, who has gotten drunk after learning that his son has died of influenza, from accidentally dispensing arsenic-filled capsules to a sick child. George promises the remorseful Gower never to tell anyone about the incident and he never does.”

“Revisiting Martini’s and other places in town, George is not recognized by anyone and discovers that everything has changed. Harry drowned and Gower went to jail for poisoning the sick child. The town was renamed Potersville and is full of vice and poverty. When George finally makes Clarence show him Mary, he discovers that she is a lonely unmarried librarian.”

3. Discuss whether your film is presented chronologically or non-linearly. In your discussion, address the following:

a. Was the film presented chronologically or non-linearly? I think that with this film it was done non-linearly starting with George and his brother being young, then jumping to him as a young adult, and then showing what it would be like without him. It does start out as a chronologically done film and I think would have been except for them jumping to him not being there at all to show that effect. I do think that this was done well and helped with the movie and the feelings of the characters.

b. How are elements like character development or foreshadowing impacted by the choice of storytelling methods? This for me would be character development. I think that it helped a lot with this story because it showed a build up of George and who he was, and showing why he made the choice to jump and then his reason to want to live.

4. If the film had followed a different presentation style, how would the general effect on the audience have been different? With this movie it was easy to say because they did change it from black and white to a color film. For me turning to color really changed the film and it lost its feel of the movie. I liked the black and white for the fact that it made it old and a classic for me.