It’s a Wonderful Life

Year: 1947
Production Country: USA
Directed by: Frank Capra
Featuring: James Stewart / Donna Reed / Henry Travers
Running time: 129min
Certificate: U

Frank Capra's perennial festive favourite, starring James Stewart as a desperate man offered salvation by an impish guardian angel.

Synopsis

Stewart plays a troubled, partially deaf smalltown family man whose sense of failure and moral despair leads him to contemplate suicide as Christmas approaches. An impish guardian angel (second class) appears, to show him how good his life has been and to steer him back to happiness. Beautifully crafted and acted, its humour and gentleness imbued at times with an almost Dickensian darkness, the film has come to be seen (in Philip French’s phrase) as ‘a complex inspirational work’, achieving cult status as one of the most popular and enduring of all Christmas entertainments.