IT IS A WONDERFUL LIFE - Educating Mr. Bailey About the value of being alive !!

This movie is a perennial favorite at Christmas time and I have watched it in B&W on TV reruns earlier. However, I did watch it again last night in color !! [I wanted to make a few sarcastic comments about the reality of modern life in US and this fable like story but will refrain from doing so!!]

The story is about the very honest and upfront young Mr. Bailey whose ever positive attitude overflows into the audience !! He decides to run a bank but is labeled an emotional fool by the conniving and villainous Mr. Potter who runs the town with his money and his goons. Mr. Bailey also falls in love with a pretty lady and is soon married after romancing her for a short while (about 15 minutes of screen time!). When a scare is created that the people who have deposited  their money at the bank will loose all of it they rush to withdraw their funds as Bailey and his new wife are preparing to go for a honeymoon!! Generously, the couple decide to forgo their honeymoon and distribute their honeymoon funds to the bank's customers to save the bank's reputation!!

However, when $8000 of bank's money is stolen, Mr. Bailey cannot fathom how to replace the funds because he is poor. He bids goodbye to his family and attempts suicide on a cold winter snowy night. Just in time, an angel in the shape of an obese old man appears and saves his life. However, when the very depressed Mr. Bailey wishes that he had never been born, the angel turns the history of the town to the events that would have followed had Mr. Bailey not been born. Nobody recognizes Mr. Bailey as the angel and he walk thru the town - not even his wife who panics when he tries to hold her . Next he visits the cemetery where he finds the tombstone of his brother who had drowned at the age of seven - in real life Mr. Bailey had saved his young brother from drowning while sledding in winter and his brother was a rich business man. He is thrown out of the bar which he used to visit often  when the bartender does not recognize him because Mr. Bailey was not born in the angel version. Also the town is now called Pottersville, instead of Bedford Place, after the shrewd Mr. Potter, I believe.

Scared and frustrated Mr. Bailey now realizes that his life did have importance for his family, friends and the history of his town - that he was not worthless!! He had provided the town an alternate bank to that run by greedy Potter and made the town more civil as well !! In tears, he prays that God restore his life back to the way it was before his wish came true and miraculously his prayer is answered. He cannot contain his joy at being alive and being recognized by his friends and neighbors once again. He runs to meet his family in the dark snowy streets glowing with Christmas lights and first on his way is Mr. Potter, whom he wishes "happy holidays" from outside his window. When he reaches his home his wife and kids are preparing for a Christmas party. The townspeople surprise him by donating their savings one by one and the dining table is soon buried in a pile of dollars!! That is how he will replace the missing $8000 !!

Mr. Bailey and the audience have learnt an important lesson that life is worth living joyfully because of the recognition and respect we get from our family and friends, in spite of  some Potters that inhabit our neighborhood !!