The original title is “It’s a wonderfull world”. A bank employee has wasted money, an arrest warrant follows. He thinks about taking his own life. But friends and acquaintances – mobilized by his wife – make up for the shortfall. Happy ending: Bailiff leaves, arrest warrant is torn up.
Now the seemingly harmless film and its director find themselves in the crosshairs of the FBI’s communist hunters under its boss J. Edgar Hoover. It’s the era of the McCarthy witch hunt.
The reason for the film’s communist nature is summarized by an informant: “The film is quite obviously an attempt to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘Scrooge’ type, so that he became the most hated man in the film. This is a popular tactic of the communists. In addition, this film deliberately denigrates the upper class by trying to show that the people who had money were evil and despicable characters.” In the fall of 1947, 79 cultural figures were summoned before the Committee on “Un-American Activities” to testify, whether they were ever a member of the Communist Party.
The “Hollywood Ten” refused to testify and went to prison. Capra celebrated Roosevelt’s New Deal before the war and propagated the fight against Hitler’s fascism during World War II. Politically, he was a Republican.
2023-12-25 17:04:05
#life #wonderful
