Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 359: Tue Dec 24

It's A Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946): Prince Charles Cinema, 12.30pm & 6pm


Christmas Eve and It’s A Wonderful Life at the Prince Charles is always one of the best screenings of the year. The 6pm showing is already sold out — but don’t worry if you can’t get along on December 24th their are plenty of other screenings of this bona fide great film (regardless of Christmas or not). You can find the full details here (and most are from 35mm).

Chicago Reader review: 
The film Frank Capra was born to make. This 1946 release marked his return to features after four years of turning out propaganda films for the government, and Capra poured his heart and soul into it. James Stewart stars as a small-town nobody, on the brink of suicide, who believes his life is worthless. Guardian angel Henry Travers shows him how wrong he is by letting Stewart see what would have happened had he never been born. Wonderfully drawn and acted by a superb cast (Donna Reed, Beulah Bondi, Thomas Mitchell, Lionel Barrymore, Gloria Grahame) and told with a sense of image and metaphor (the use of water is especially elegant) that appears in no other Capra film. The epiphany of movie sentiment and a transcendent experience.
Dave Kehr


Here (and above) is the trailer.

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