CLASSIC MOVIE REVIEW: It’s a Wonderful Life and The Bishop’s Wife
Before there is Light there is Darkness.
By Alan Herrmann
MOVIE COLUMNIST
Picture a wild-eyed, unshaven man shouting at and shoving a meek elderly gentleman who breaks down in tears. Try to picture an angel falling for a lovely woman who is married to a man of the church. Now imagine these are scenes from two Christmas movies made in the 1940s described as heartwarming, hilarious, and uplifting. Both films are classics enjoyed by millions of viewers each year and those descriptions are accurate, but so are these: intense, unconventional, violent, and dark.
It may come as a shock to learn that we’re talking about It’s a Wonderful Life and The Bishop’s Wife. It seems surprising that these two films could have such strong contradicting themes, but it is not entirely unusual for Christmas stories.
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the quintessential Christmas tale, is full of darkness and cruelty, and yet it also includes overwhelming joy that has left readers and viewers filled with holiday spirit.
But these two films also include a more modern sense of cynicism because they were released in 1946 and 1947, after the end of World War II. Perhaps there was a stronger sense of urgency to combat the despair felt throughout the world.
The plots of these films are quite different on the surface, but the emotional trauma and hardships faced by the leading characters are shared at different levels. Both George Bailey (James Stewart) in It’s a Wonderful Life and Henry Brougham (David Niven) in The Bishop’s Wife, are having a crisis of faith.
George, a beloved small town family man is considering suicide to cash in his life insurance policy because of his involvement in a financial scandal that could ruin his family and the townspeople. Henry is an Episcopalian bishop in a large city who is pressured to build a massive cathedral to honor the deceased husband of a very rich widow.
Both men need money to rectify their situations, and their desperation takes its toll on their families. George lashes out at his family as they cheerfully prepare for Christmas and is downright abusive to his gentle but absent-minded Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) after he misplaced a large sum of money. Stewart is downright frightening in these scenes, totally out of character with the guy who charmed audiences in earlier films with his “aw, shucks” persona. This has been attributed to Stewart suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from the war. He appears to be channeling these emotions in darker roles after 1946.
Henry’s anger in The Bishop’s Wife is not as volatile as George’s. He is sullen and scolds his wife in an impatient and arrogant tone when she tries to explain her unhappiness. Niven suffered the loss of his wife only months before working on The Bishop’s Wife and some film historians have suggested this impacted his performance.
George and Henry are visited by angels who are sent to help them in their moments of crisis. But these two unearthly creatures couldn’t be more different. Clarence the angel (Henry Travers), is an old, elfish kind of character dressed in a Victorian nightshirt whose childlike innocence is in stark contrast to the troubled and angry George Bailey. Dudley the angel (Cary Grant), is younger, handsome, debonair, worldly, and intelligent, and these qualities make Henry Brougham uneasy and jealous.
As in many Christmas stories, both of these films have Scrooge-like villains. It’s a Wonderful Life has Mr. Potter, played with conniving menace by the great Lionel Barrymore. It wasn’t a stretch for him because he played Scrooge on the radio for years. Potter is extremely wealthy, old, mean-spirited, manipulative, and greedy. He also has great disdain for the poor and needy. The major difference between Potter and Scrooge is that Potter has no backstory, whereas we know how and why Scrooge became such a miserable miser. Potter also never finds redemption. He remains rotten to the end.
In The Bishop’s Wife the Scrooge-like character is a woman, Mrs. Hamilton, who is very rich, entitled, and bitterly cold. She is portrayed by Gladys Cooper who hits every note perfectly. Her character, unlike Potter and more like Scrooge, has a backstory of lost love and regret. Then she is visited by the charming Dudley who, like Scrooge’s three spirits, helps her find redemption.
Each of the leading women in these films are loving supporters of their husbands and strong women in their own right. In It’s a Wonderful Life, Mary Bailey – played by Donna Reed in her first starring role – is on a par with Clarence when it comes to saving George, and the rest of the town for that matter. She gives away honeymoon money to Bailey Savings and Loan clients when there’s a run on the bank. When George is in full crisis mode, it’s Mary who seeks out help and raises funds to keep George out of jail.
In The Bishop’s Wife, Julia has supported her husband for years, but she becomes disillusioned after Henry becomes consumed with building the cathedral and ignores her, their daughter Debby, and their friends. Her visits with Professor Wutheridge (Monty Wooley) exemplify this best. She explains how much she misses their friends from the old neighborhood, before Henry became a bishop and they moved uptown. Even though she becomes charmed by Dudley, who has fallen for her, she shows tremendous courage by asking him to leave after he has brought her so much happiness.
Darkness aside, both of these films are uplifting and have gorgeous, festive scenes that help penetrate the darkness. It’s a Wonderful life has the snow-filled and beautifully lit Bedford Falls – based on the real town of Seneca Falls, New York – and a lovely musical score by Dimitri Tiomkin. The Bishop’s Wife also has a powerful musical score by Hugo Friedhofer along with renditions of Christmas hymns and carols. Gregg Toland’s deep-focus cinematography shows the emotional, sometimes literal, distance between Henry, Julia, Debby, and their household staff. The use of special effects adds a sense of awe to Christmas tree decorating, and a clever and funny scene where the professor’s sherry glass magically keeps filling up.
Here are a few pieces of trivia from these movies:
David Niven and Cary Grant actually switched roles after Grant thought he’d be more convincing as Dudley. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine Grant as the stiff-collared Henry and Niven might be charming, but his Dudley wouldn’t hold a candle to Grant.
Child actors Karolyn Grimes and Robert J. Anderson were in both films. Grimes played Zuzu in It’s a Wonderful Life and Debby in The Bishop’s Wife. Anderson played young George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life and the snowball fight leader in The Bishop’s Wife.
The famous skating scene (that goes on forever) from The Bishop’s Wife was filmed on location in a real park in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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