Community and Comedy in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (Critical Essay‪)‬

ALMOST AS LONG AS RELIGION and film have been discussed academically, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life has been a focus of attention. (1) This is hardly surprising, considering it features an act of divine intervention, which can hardly be counted as your typical Hollywood plot resolution. (2) Among the various approaches, the most fruitful course to date for the exploration of religion in Capra's film has been to examine the distinct sacramental sensibility filtered in part through an Italian ethnicity discernable in the work. (3) The potential for plumbing It's a Wonderful Life in this vein has hardly been exhausted. In my own effort, among others, I wish to provide a broader context for the Catholic sensibility by examining its confrontation with the dominant "cultural code" of American society. (4) It is useful, however, to rehearse the salient points of the Catholic sensibility. Andrew Greeley has examined the subject, starting from David Tracy's theological concept of the analogical imagination and buttressing it with sociological research, and termed the sensibility the "Catholic imagination." (5) Fundamentally, on the one hand, the theistic imagination pictures God as distant from creation, which is more likely for the Protestant sensibility; on the other hand, God is also felt to be close to people. Although the relationship of these two tendencies is dynamic and shifting, the Catholic imagination inclines toward accepting the closeness of God to creation. (6) This, among others, explains the importance of the sacraments, which stress the availability of grace to God's creatures. The religious sensibility that evolves from this perspective is more sacramental and multiplies metaphors demonstrating the proximity of God to humanity. Greeley stresses the complementarity of the two religious sensibilities and that neither is superior to the other.