A WONDERFUL LIFE, REALLY?
IT is Christmas Eve and a haggard, bloodied fellow stands on a bridge, contemplating suicide. All seems lost. His good name, his family and friends, his future. He can see no way out of a mess that is not his fault but to end his own life. Happy Christmas everybody!
Given the pivot point of It’s A Wonderful Life, it is something of a Christmas miracle that it should feature in anyone’s top ten films, never mind come in at number one as it does in a Radio Times poll of favourite festive movies.
Glaswegians in particular love the tale of George Bailey (James Stewart), his fall and rise, which is why every December at the Glasgow Film Theatre is It’s a Wonderful Life season. Frank Capra’s 1946 classic does a roaring trade for the cinema every year, with tickets for the Christmas Eve screenings selling like Greggs’ steak bakes.
It’s a Wonderful Life has been worked and reworked down the decades. Long before he was Malcolm Tucker or Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi won an Oscar for his small but perfectly formed film, Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life.
Only a few days ago the Saturday Night Live crew produced It’s a Wonderful Trump, taking a pop at the US President’s sons (“Since Eric doesn’t run the entire Trump organisation he was able to attend adult education classes.”) More than 70 years since it opened to relatively little acclaim – it was nominated for five Oscars but won zip – the movie continues to move and delight audiences, hence its standing in the Radio Times poll.
Personally, however, I would rather sit through the cinematic toothache that is Love Actually, number four on the list, than endure It’s a Wonderful Life. Jimmy Stewart and co are simply too upsetting.
Oh, I know everything ends well, a bell rings and Clarence gets his wings, but man alive the movie puts the viewer through the emotional wringer before we get to that point. At the GFT screenings it is not uncommon to see grown men and women crying like babies as Clarence, Angel Second Class, shows George what Bedford Falls would have been like if he had never been born.
You would need a heart of stone not to cry. It is a scientifically proven fact that not even the toughest of the old school Glasgow hard men could withstand It’s A Wonderful Life. That, and Little House on the Prairie. And Mickey’s Christmas Carol, especially when Mickey and Minnie are weeping over Tiny Tim’s grave. Given the sentimentality of its psychopaths, it is a wonder Glasgow ever got its hard man reputation at all. (Don’t tell them I said that, obvs).
There is no shame, then, in shedding a tear or two over It's a Wonderful Life. But there is a world of difference between getting a little moist around the eyes and being a full blown blubber. We blubbers know who we are. We are the children who were carried out of Bambi, prostrate with grief, when mum was shot. We are the adults who cannot make it through a Pixar film dry-eyed. Show us a lost dog limping and we dissolve into puddles. Such is the level of sobbing to be expected during It’s a Wonderful Life the cinema would have to hook every blubber up to a drip lest they become dehydrated and faint. Some cinemagoers already go berserk if someone talks during a film or eats popcorn noisily. Imagine what they might do if a screening of It’s a Wonderful Life was interrupted regularly by blubbers being stretchered out. There would be riots.
So no disrespect to those whose Christmas is not complete without sitting down to three courses of Capra. Season’s greetings to all who find comfort in the film’s celebration of redemption and community. To each their own, which is why when it was my year to select the family film to watch at Christmas I chose The Shining, Kubrick’s horror classic about a man’s descent into madness.
Not a wet eye in the house, I'm pleased to say. Plenty of nightmares later, but that’s a story for another time.
HOW TO GET AHEAD IN POLITICS
WHERE do you stand on Stupidgate? The row over what Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said to Theresa May at PMQs brought the year to an end in the Commons in a suitably bonkers fashion.
The best moment was when the Commons leader, Andrea Leadsom, turned on the Speaker after he said it was incumbent on members to be courteous, and if someone failed to do so they should apologise. If that was the case, asked Ms Leadsom, why he had not said sorry for calling her “a stupid woman”?
Conservative MP and Remain rebel Anna Soubry made up some of the 10 billion Brownie points she has lost with Whips by tearing another strip off the Speaker.
I have a soft spot for Ms Soubry, largely occasioned by her collection of nutty hats. My favourite is the fake fur, half a Cossack number, often worn by lady television directors of a certain age. I wish I was bold enough to wear such a hat, or any hat. I once attempted a beret on Sauchiehall Street. It took all of five seconds for the first Frank Spencer impression to be heard.
AT HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
WATCHING the chaos at Gatwick Airport I was grateful, and not for the first time, for my self-imposed ban on travelling at Christmas.
Weather, strikes, maintenance work: there is always something to throw timetables out the window and cause passengers to be stranded.
Given the increasing number of near misses involving drones and aircraft –some 92 last year – there has to be a better way of enforcing the rules about using the devices around airports.
The only surprise about what happened at Gatwick is that no other idiot thought of doing such a thing before. Here’s hoping there are no copycat actions.
Many people have no choice but to travel at Christmas, and for some it is all part of the fun and excitement. Too many nights spent waiting at London airports for delayed flights home cured me of any such romanticism.
Still, I do miss those reunions at the airport or the train station, the arms thrown wide, the corny running towards each other, the laughter and tears.
You don’t get that on coming home from the big food shop, but you should.
WHO LET THE MEN OUT?
SPEAKING of the big shop – it's the quantity that's large, not the items, silly – I have a question for all the ladies out there. It's outrageously sexist, but it has to be asked, so here goes.
Who did it? Who broke the golden rule about Christmas shopping and allowed their male partners to go the the shops outwith the designated day of Christmas Eve?
There is no point denying it, because I personally suffered the consequences. Picture the scene. Tesco, almost closing time. I had seven minutes and 23 seconds to get my own bodyweight in groceries into a trolley and home. Being a seasoned pro it should have been a doddle. What I had not factored in was the presence of a stray male in the store.
There he was, clutching a basket (a basket!), wandering around with no clue as to what was where. Spying something, he lurched suddenly left or right to the shelf, forcing the woman trolley driver behind to swerve sharply.
For their own sakes, sisters, keep men indoors till Christmas Eve.
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