The only previous occasion when I’d been in a cinema audience that burst into spontaneous applause as the end credits rolled was in the summer of 1975. It was at the old ABC cinema on Sauchiehall Street where I’d gone with my school friends to see Jaws. It was every bit as thrilling and scary as we’d been led to expect.
As Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfus paddled away from the blasted bits of the Great White they’d just slain, the Glasgow audience cheered. It wasn’t just that our heroes had escaped being the shark’s dinner; we’d also been entertained by three actors (including the great Robert Shaw) under the direction of Steven Spielberg who was just beginning to cast his spells.
And then on Wednesday night, at the Glasgow Film Theatre, it happened again at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life. Glaswegians are more than a little circumspect when it comes to outward signs of enthusiasm or approbation. So, when a few people behind me began to clap, I hesitated before joining in with the rest of the theatre.
I’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life many times, but only once before at the GFT, not long after the cinema had adopted it as their annual festive treat to the city. Even so, I was surprised at the spontaneous acclaim greeting Wednesday’s showing. Surely, everyone there had seen this film many times too?
Read more:
- What's gone wrong with Catholic Church? Has it taken a vow of silence?
- Worried church-goers step up their fight against Archbishop's plan to dissolve parish
- 'Demise of the Kirk has had negative effect on Scotland. Its values were good for us'
- 'SNP went astray after Alex Salmond's departure and Sturgeon followed a false trail'
Afterwards, I see my friend Andrew and his two teenage children. “I’ve been taking these two for the last five years and the applause is baked into the tradition,” he tells me.
I can’t give you a detailed analysis of why Glasgow has taken Frank Capra’s 1946 small-town, American fantasy to its heart so much. Perhaps other cities have taken ownership of it in this way too. The GFT screens 650-700 films a year and It's a Wonderful Life annually sells more tickets than any of the rest.
Since it was first screened more than 20 years ago, total admissions for It's a Wonderful Life have come in at around 150,000.
I’ve seen many films at this wee art deco jewel in Glasgow’s cultural life. It was where you went once in a while to brood over an existential French language production that sharper, brighter girlfriends with greater reserves of empathetic engagement than you had recommended. And you’d exited them wondering what the hell they’d been all about and could you ever be as cool and pale as that or affect such nonchalance when your world was collapsing around you.
This was where you’d been rather startled by your first gay sex scene and then later tried to pretend to your sophisticated female companion that you and the boys were right into our Tales of the City and our Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. You’d felt a long way from home.
So, there was something reassuringly homespun and safe and uplifting about It’s a Wonderful Life and about its status as a GFT icon.
We all assume that everyone knows the film’s plot and the dystopian events that lead us towards its chaotic finale. In Glasgow though, it seems that there is always a new generation waiting to be enchanted by it. And so, I’ll try to be sparse with the spoilers.
Our hero is George Bailey, played by James Stewart, America’s designated actor if you wanted to depict the person to which all good Americans must aspire. Throughout his life, George chooses always to put the needs of others above his own, including his dreams of leaving couthy Bedford Falls and travelling the world.
And then on Christmas Eve, 1945 when an ungrateful world has just rattled his haw maws, he comes to the realisation that everyone would be much better off without him, literally and figuratively. Touched by the entreaties of his nearest and dearest who all sense he’s having a meltdown, his guardian angel, Clarence visits him and shows him what life would have been like if he’d never been born.
And by the way, there’s not very much that’s homespun and reassuring at all about the film. If it was being made now it would come with a deluge of Gen Z trigger warnings; “deals with themes, including suicide and child abuse of such an emotional intensity that you should contact our special helpline should you require counselling.”
The story about the making of It’s a Wonderful Life and its aftermath are as melodramatic as anything that unfolds in Bedford Falls. Director Frank Capra was an immigrant who embraced the American dream and remained uncomfortable about his Italian peasant roots. He’d never have dreamed of making The Godfather, a film which glorified the Italian exile’s experience and which rebuked the racism and snobbery at the root of post-war, capitalist America.
Even so, he was investigated by J Edgar Hoover, the FBI chief who took it upon himself to root out any dodgy characters in American public life. This was just prior to the McCarthy witch-hunts against suspected Communists when you could be summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee if you’d been seen telling a shopkeeper to keep the change.
It’s a Wonderful Life was nominated for five academy awards, including Best Picture, yet American audiences were initially unconvinced and it failed to break even. When its copyright expired in 1974, the Hollywood studios simply let it pass on and the television networks eagerly pounced on a film that could be shown without royalty fees. Its status as a Christmas television crowd-puller dates from this time. It’s now revered as a classic and sits among the best 100 films ever made in the American Film Institute’s hall of fame.
Seonaid Daly, CEO of the GFT and Glasgow Film Festival said. “I think our audiences love It's a Wonderful Life because, although it is dark - and GFT audiences like their films to have an edge - it's ultimately about community, supporting each other and how small acts of kindness really do make a difference. We all need a bit of hope sometimes.
“Coming to watch It's a Wonderful Life at GFT has become a tradition for many of our customers. It's a moment in itself, an opportunity to experience something meaningful with your nearest and dearest, or with fellow film fans.”
It was one of the first big Hollywood films that featured issues around men's mental health in an industry where male stars were never be permitted self-doubt. In 2018, Virgin painted quotes from the film on a Central Station Platform as part of a men's mental health campaign.
And so you wonder too, if part of the film’s appeal in Glasgow is similar to the role football plays in the West of Scotland: an acceptable outlet for men's emotions in a place where men can’t cry.
I meet Tracey, a Glasgow languages teacher. “Glasgow is full of people who grew up here and never left,” she said. “I think that’s because if you grow up in a great and very liveable city with world-class universities; great job opportunities and breath-taking scenery just up the road, you’d be mad to leave and go to university miles away only to emerge with an iffy degree and thousands in debt.
“But that doesn't mean you never felt like leaving and perhaps felt you should have left. I’ve often felt a lot of Glasgow people I know have that feeling, so they relate to George Bailey and are comforted by the conclusion that faith and family and community are worth more than that.”
Afterwards, I meet Francesca and Monica who also love the film. They’re both cinema aficionados and Francesca says: “It’s a Wonderful Life is such a manipulative film.”
“What do you mean,” I ask, bracing myself for a metaphysical treatise. “It’s designed to make you cry,” she says. And then, she asks me that question you must never ask a male Glaswegian of a certain age. “Did you cry at the end?” I mumble a gruff Yes and then change the subject.
As the film ended, I saw other unaccompanied older blokes emerging from their seats. Like me, some had immediately fished out their smartphones. And I wondered if, like me, they’d done so lest anyone notice that they’d cried too. Alone in the dark has always been the safest way for us imprisoned Glaswegian males to shed the odd tear for no good reason.
