Holiday classics come to Kiggins, Liberty

“It’s a Wonderful Life:” sentimental sap or searing social commentary? Maybe it’s both, somehow, and much more too?

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is one of a big Santa sack of holiday classics that return to the local independent screen this month. The Kiggins Theatre in downtown Vancouver and the Liberty Theater in Camas have lined up many familiar favorites that recall simpler times.

Or were they? The world that George Bailey (James Stewart) contends with seems awfully fraught, even when he’s just a lad. That’s when he prevents the local pharmacist, who’s blinded by sorrow over the loss of a child, from accidentally poisoning a customer. What does George earn for his lifesaving good deed? Blows to the head that leave him bleeding. It’s an intense and disturbing scene that sets the tone for what’s to come: It may be a “Wonderful Life,” but there are still steep dues to pay and tragedies to endure.

George is a complicated hero. We know his heart is gold, but he’s so desperate to escape Bedford Falls that he treats the local girl he’s obviously meant for (Donna Reed) with unforgivable rudeness. (Why does she forgive him?) Bedford Falls is a rigidly stratified world, where the ethnically diverse poor struggle to afford homes while the rich do their best to keep things that way. When scheming banker Mr. Potter steals a wad of cash from the struggling Baileys — with his own hands, and with relish — George is driven to the brink of suicide.

Sentimental sap? This is dark, gritty stuff — and the final stretch gets even darker and weirder, in a sort of extended “Twilight Zone” episode. There’s a happy and logical ending, of course, as the people pull together and prevail.

Maybe you never considered the political implications, but J. Edgar Hoover sure did. On May 26, 1947, Hoover’s FBI issued a memo stating, “(T)he film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘Scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This … is a common trick used by Communists. … (T)his picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters.”

That was about six months after “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released, in time for Christmas 1946. The film was a box-office disappointment; audiences preferred “The Best Years of Our Lives.” Its place among the holiday classics came only after “It’s a Wonderful Life” became copyright-free in the 1970s, leading to endless TV screenings.

Nobody was more surprised than Director Frank Capra, who told The Wall Street Journal in 1984: “It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. The film has a life of its own now, and I can look at it like I had nothing to do with it. I’m like a parent whose kid grows up to be president.”

The real Scrooge

You don’t have to settle for a ‘Scrooge-type’ character. The man himself, in person, comes to the Kiggins on Dec. 20 for the sixth annual performance of “A Radio Christmas Carol,” sponsored by the Re-Imagined Radio project at Washington State University Vancouver and featuring voice actors and sound artists from the community and Metropolitan Performing Arts. This “Christmas Carol” is based on the 1938 radio broadcast by Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air — which was based on the 1843 short story by Charles Dickens, credited with launching Christmas as we know it today.

‘Shop’ till you shop

Meanwhile, over in Camas, a less-famous but truly delightful James Stewart film gets some love. “The Shop Around the Corner” takes place in Budapest, not Bedford Falls, and Stewart is a salesman who bickers bitterly with a colleague (Margaret Sullavan) while falling in love with an anonymous correspondent. Guess who that correspondent turns out to be? Thanks to a snappy script and creative direction, “The Shop Around the Corner,” released in 1940, is far more beloved by critics than “It’s a Wonderful Life.” (It gets a 100 percent thumbs-up on Rotten Tomatoes, the film review website.)

That screening is a matinee, set for 3:30 p.m. Dec. 15, and right afterward you can pop into the shop next door, Camas Antiques, for treats, games and prizes, a movie-themed scavenger hunt — and, of course, Christmas shopping.