One day he is going to write a sentence so dense with stupid it will collapse in on itself under the weight of its own idiocy forming a massive vacuum of dumb from which no intelligence will be able to escape.

We are doomed.

Are you for real? I see “I’m a Hick” corrected you as well below but I can’t help but remark on the idiocy of this comment. Lionel Barrymore appeared in every role he did after 1938, some 40 odd films, in a wheelchair because of physical ailments.

Barrymore wasn’t cast because he was in a wheelchair. He was cast because he’s a great freakin’ actor.

As to other points made here, Capra was no Communist. Indeed, he spent much of his later years traveling to various international film festivals as a representative of good old fashioned American values in the face of Communist propaganda. Read his autobiography some time. Much of the tail end of it, after he stopped making films, is spent describing these trips and his hatred of communism and Communists. Which is ironic because he had long been accused of leftist Commmunist sympahties becuase of his films. But while I haven’t read Joseph McBride’s book on Capra apparently Capra was quite the right wing reactionary:
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/03/books/it-wasn-t-such-a-wonderful-life.html

Potter loses again this year.

If today’s White House would have had Final Cut, George would have never been able to save up enough for the honeymoon. The Pay Czar would have seen to that.

If that’s the idea Capra was trying to convey, then why did he portray Uncle Billie as an incompetent buffoon, nipping at the sauce just as the bank was going to have a run on it?

Because he was too stupid to have a bonded carrier transfer a large sum of money and decided to run it across the street himself, and the bank nearly failed, this is the fault of monied interests? Why didn’t Capra simply film the Potter character cheating Bailey out on an important business deal in the town that had the Bauley Building and Loan losing a large sum of money that created the run instead of because of an incompetent’s foolish error?

Or is that an accurate depiction of liberalism?

And her line: “I been saving this money for a divorce, if I ever get a husband.””[/i]

Seriously? The Movie is from 1942, one black person is amazingly progressive, but hey your heartfelt embrace of political correctness is noted. I’m sure you’ll be just as concerned next time a republican caucus sends out a mailer with racist overtones or comment’s on putting the speaker of the house in her “place”.

ZOINKS!!!!

By the way; I only counted a total of one black person in that whole movie, and she was the Baily family’s housekeeper, presumably the only black person in town from the way Capra presented it. All she wanted was a man. I wonder why Capra didn’t just show her at the end of the movie getting married to a white guy if this was such an amazingly liberal movie and all.

And her line: “I been saving this money for a divorce, if I ever get a husband.”

How can you defend a movie with horrible stereotype like that?

C’mon, dude. This movie’s got all kinds of holes in it to be championing it as amazingly liberal. It’s more big business versus small business than it is capitalism versus your beloved communism.

Besides, that town’s probably got two Lowes and Home Depots now and no small hardware stores, a Walmart Supercenter, and a Kroger and a big regional grocer as the only two grocery stores- forget the mom and pop stores.

And this is a popular movie because it hearkens back to the days people use to remember fondly about community and helping your neighbors. The exact kind of thing people are talking about when they say ‘real Americans’ and ‘we’re losing our country’. In short, the kind of things you and the Heckle and Jeckles here laugh and scoff at.

I love the movie too; I just don’t get the ‘amazingly liberal’ bit.