It's a Wonderful Life (1946, Frank Capra)

"Strange, isn’t it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"

After surviving the Great Depression, the Second World War claimed over 60 million human lives between 1937 and 1945. The final months of 1946 saw the release of three classic films: William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives, Michael Powell’s A Matter of Life and Death, and Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. As those echoing titles suggest, the era’s greatest directors were preoccupied with find some perspective to help the human race to continue living. Much like Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Capra’s soul-searching flashbacks show the audience the moments that transformed a boy playing in the snow to a tired adult man on the brink of death. Whereas Welles set out to find the meaning in the life of a great man, Capra’s story finds the value in the life of ordinary man (who nonetheless demonstrates his own greatness). A simple fantasy premise involving a guardian angel becomes as a thought experiment to answer the question quite directly. After a lifetime of cashing in his dreams to bail out his ungratefully needy small-town, he comes to see himself as nothing more than $500 of life insurance. A prolonged vision sequence reveals a world where he never existed, using the negative to expose the positive. Brought to life by the legendary Hollywood everyman James Stewart, George Bailey shows that the highest emotional peaks can be reached only after exploring the lowest depths of despair. Despite countless parodies and valid complaints of sentimentality, his journey retains its emotional power. Sooner or later, misfortunes will pile up and every man finds himself staring over the edge like George Bailey. Without the benefit of miracles of the heavenly or fictional variety, perspective is our only guardian angel.