It’s A Wonderful Life by Frank Capra and others Family, Friends, Sense and Sensibility

 It’s A Wonderful Life by Frank Capra and others

Family, Friends, Sense and Sensibility

 

It’s a Wonderful Life if you have family, friends, you have a meaningful existence, you have done acts of kindness… This may the conclusion of this play.

 

It’s A Wonderful Life is a wonderful film, which is included in the top 100 best films, in some places it is placed among the best ten and is anyway a Christmas favorite and reference point.

Based on the script, they have created a play, in which James Stewart plays the lead role, courtesy of “Lux” a brand of soap which was advertising in the old days on radio shows, Cecil B Demille was introducing some of the great plays and speaking about the involvement of advertising, without which they wouldn’t be able to gather all those great actors together, who were otherwise on contracts with different, competing studios.

Today you wouldn’t be able to get some stars near a radio, not to mention a few of them to star on some radio production. On the other hand, in the last decades the stars ‘power has increased, to the detriment of the studios, which for a long time had abused their controlling position.

The storyline is simple and yet so meaningful and poignant.

George Bailey, played by James Stewart in both the screen and Radio productions, is an ordinary guy in appearance, but we wish we would be more like him.

When young, he saves his young brother from drowning and a potential victim from poisoning. When he is on the point of going on the most important trip of his life, a financial crisis hits his office and the people of his community.

Ergo the big secret of this story, confirmed by scientific research today:

·         Be close to your family, in times of hardship it pays off

·         Way more important than money in the bank are a few (3) close friends

·         Random acts of kindness pay off when you measure your level of happiness

The most selfish thing you could do is…a kind deed. I was even thinking that a campaign at the national level might be worthwhile. Together with: exercise every day, don’t smoke- a public message with:

-          Commit acts of kindness

Might be helpful for the population as a whole. As a utopic scenario, I was thinking that the country could change its “label „and ad campaign, from “visit the Carpathian Garden” on to

Romania- A Country With a Meaning

By that, “meaning” that the public policy is encouraging people to do king things, which will make them happier, henceforth more productive, GDP will rise and a virtuous spiral would be set off.

 

It’s a Wonderful Life would be screened often and TV stations would prefer it to streaming Die Hard I, II…IX, and Lethal Weapon I, II and so on.

But that is called wishful thinking.

It is a pity that a story with funny angels and no wings (yet) is left aside to make room for endless repeats of violent movies. Lethal Weapon has been the most repeated movie on the network with the widest audience in my country.

It’s A Wonderful Life is a “wonderful „story of love, involvement in the community, helping those close to you and sacrificing own personal interests in favor of the higher good. It is about being unselfish, grateful and finding a way out of a very tight spot.

In case you have not seen the movie, I will stop short of revealing the plot, which I will just say that involves a funny “second class” angel in search for its wings.

One hero has a depression and is willing to give it all up, when by magic he can see the bad scenario which would result if his wish to never have been born is granted.

We can all imagine what the life of those around would be without us; the only problem is that we would not have people we saved, financial crisis we resolved. But our kids would not be there and there would be some kind things we did.

If there are not many, well, we must try harder. It pays off.