It’s a Wonderful Life — or is it?

The weird morality of a Christmas movie classic.

What could be more wholesome than ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ — the classic 1946 film directed by Frank Capra and starring the ever-likeable Jimmy Stewart?

It’s an uplifting, feel-good movie about the importance of family and friendship and all-round decency. Or is it?

Look more carefully and the film seems to be constructed around a rather twisted, perhaps even sinister sense of morality.

George Bailey, the apparent hero of the film, attempts suicide over some missing money and the threat of bankruptcy. He is thwarted in his suicide attempt, however, by Clarence, a kindly but slightly disheveled old man, who is actually an angel attempting to earn his wings.

When George despairs that it might be better if he had never been born, Clarence uses his heavenly powers to show George the state the town might be in, if George hadn’t been there to make such a positive difference to so many people’s lives.

We’ll leave aside the fact that George, by killing himself, might have caused no end of pain to his family. He was, after all, sick with worry and thus ‘not in his right mind’ at the time.