Republican 'It's A Wonderful Life' Movie

[appalachiablue]

('Mr. Potter & The Commies of Bedford Falls'!) It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas fantasy drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra, based on the short story and booklet The Greatest Gift, which Philip Van Doren Stern wrote in 1939 and published privately in 1943. The film is one of the most beloved in American cinema, and has become traditional viewing during the Christmas season.
The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his dreams to help others, and whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched, and how different life in his community of Bedford Falls would be if he had never been born.
Despite performing poorly at the box office due to stiff competition at the time of its release, the film has become a classic and is a staple of Christmas television around the world...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Wonderful_Life

[Binkie The Clown]

1. LOL. I just forwarded this video to all my Republican friends and relatives. nt

[dem4decades]

2. I have thought that America under Trump is just like nasty Pottersville.

Unfortunately there's no angel to get us back to the way it should be.

[California_Republic]

3. Loved it! But so true it hurt a bit.

[katmondoo]

4. Hated that movie

Seemed every scene was staged for you to get emotional.

[BuffaloJackalope]

10. Capra-corn

I love it

[nuxvomica]

14. That's how movies are made

They literally stage scenes to induce an emotional reaction.

[Moostache]

5. Nice satire, but here's the rub...Fox News viewers BELIEVE THAT stuff, marrow deep and unchanging.

How do you deprogram and entire population? De-nazification programs should be starting to get serious reviews...reason and explanation alone will NOT suffice.

[appalachiablue]

6. How we reach them I don't know except maybe by such a

successful WH administration (like an amazing FDR) that they are drawn over. Can't use force, as in post military WWII.

We need to somehow grow the Democratic Party, a whole lot.

[BigmanPigman]

7. A frontal lobotomy would be a good start.

[Thekaspervote]

13. I like that approach!

[andym]

8. Ironic that director Capra was a Republican

who disliked FDR. Jimmy Stewart was a Republican as well.

[appalachiablue]

9. Capra was using scripts that had an anti capitalist frame

and socialist appeal that had been successful in his earlier 1930s Republican-Depression era films.

The writer of 'Frank Capra, Socialism and the American Hero' claims that by 1946 and later, Americans were not as receptive to the common man, small town hero characters and socialist themes that had been so effective in his works years earlier. Because of his films it's natural to think of Capra as more egalitarian politically when in fact as you say he was a Republican, like Stewart.

Before reading the WaPo article I had no idea Stewart was suffering from PTSD when filming the role of George Bailey. My father had shell shock post war although I wasn't born until years later and so observed nothing. Stuff happens.

http://sghistory.blogspot.com/2011/03/frank-capra-socialism-and-american-hero.html

While Capra was a staunch anti-Communist activist, the content of his films—the villanizing of bankers and government bureaucrats, the portrayal of community as the site of moral redemption—are often characterized by a sharp undercurrent of socialism. The ideology in his films and characterization of the American Hero proved popular with American audiences in the early and mid-1930s; as the decade wore on, however, Capra's films became less and less appreciated, grossing lower box-office revenue and receiving criticism from both the film community and the federal government.
What, then, changed in the thirteen years between 1933, when Capra released his first film Lady for a Day, and 1946, when It's a Wonderful Life was released to almost no box-office revenue? As Capra's protagonists are the products of a socialist envisioning of the American Hero, their relevance to the American public fluctuated with the general sentiment toward socialism. Capra's films were most successful when many Americans saw socialism, or some of its elements, as a solution to the national woes of the Great Depression. In the years directly before and during America's participation in World War II, however, Capra's films underwent much more scrutiny, as they seemed to promote the ideology of a potentially dangerous foreign power.

[LiberalLovinLug]

11. Brilliant!

[FailureToCommunicate]

12. That was a refreshing take on that old socialist corn!