The Anchoress: Portrayed so perfectly by the perpetually likable James Stewart, it is easy to miss the fact that George Bailey is not a simple and good-natured cornpone from upstate New York; he is a man whose heart and faith are essential to him, because they balance out a real bitterness that shows itself in little ways. A man who has had to cast aside every dream in order to do “the right thing,” Bailey is -thanks to an old injury- denied even dubious adventure of soldiering during World War II. Watch him spit in disdain at himself and his situation, after he has responsibly handled a blackout drill in his neighborhood. When the big man from the small town comes beeping by in a slick, shiny car and a shinier woman, see George Bailey’s lip curl, not because his wife is wearing a baseball cap and sitting in his old clunker, but because she is so clearly content with the cap, and the clunker, and with comfortable, sacrificing, trapped old George, who always wanted so much more. He adores his wife; he wants what she wants, but why doesn’t she want more?
He kicks the car door.
George Bailey, who is a very good man living by what our post-Christian era might consider “quaint” morals, is deeply distressed. He loves much. He hates, too. Where there is great goodness, there is always equal potential for badness and mayhem, and it is a testament to James Stewart’s talent, and Frank Capra’s direction, that we barely notice Bailey’s flaws for all his good points. The truth is, though, that Bailey’s flaws are what define him; they challenge him, constantly, to transcend his own instincts. Subconsciously, I think we see the man in full -good and bad, light and dark- and recognize ourselves in him.
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