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If you jumped into a cab and started yelling about knowing the driver's wife, I don't think you could expect much civility in return either. They're not unkind to him either, though.
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Bert and Ernie are two of Bailey's closest friends in the original dimension (apparently it's just a coincidence that the Sesame Street characters have these same names), but here they don't treat him too kindly. And imagine, if he dances there, he wouldn't end up submerged in a high school gymnasium pool, fully clothed.īailey ends up hopping in Ernie's taxi cab.
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Then there's a billiards club next to a billboard for an upcoming boxing match–a good Friday night to me! After that, we see the "Midnight Club" which advertises "Dancing." Kind of hypocritical for Bailey, a Charleston-dancing champion, to be so wary of a nightclub. First, we see a bar called Blue Moon that resembles the kind of trendy spot you might find on Franklin Avenue in Brooklyn (pretentious bartenders, decently-priced craft beer, maybe a foosball table). We don't get to see too much of Pottersville, but in the brief glimpses director Frank Capra shows us, it looks like a place I'd like to go. Inside, the bartender repeatedly dings the cash register and makes the joke, "Look at me, I'm giving out wings!" You gotta admit, it's not a bad burn. Martini's bar, to find that it has been replaced with "Nick's." But it's fun now! There's live music! A chummy bartender with a Trans-Atlantic accent! Bailey is short with the bartender, Clarence tries to order a "Flaming rum punch," then mentions his spiel about angels getting wings when bells are heard, and the two of them end up face-first in the snow outside. Bailey is acting like an asshole!Īnd then he goes to his old buddy Mr. Bailey, drunk off his ass, accosts a passerby, and insists the town is called "Bedford Falls." The guy responds, "Don't you think I know where I live?" He's not in the wrong. When Jimmy Stewart's All-American loan banker first drifts through the multiverse and lands in the alternate dimension of Pottersville, everybody’s really mean to him. Pottersville looks fun as hell! At least, more fun than sleepy Bedford Falls, where the coolest thing you can do is throw rocks at a condemned house or sled into an icy pond and suffer lifelong hearing loss.Īdmit it, Clarence–Bedford Falls is better off without George Bailey. Potter, the immoral real estate mogul who stakes claim to the place, is obviously is a very shitty old coot, so it's sad to see him in power, but you just can’t deny the irony of the situation. Can you imagine? Jazz music! Not in my Christian street!īut over 60 years after the film was released back in 1946, Pottersville doesn't look quite so bad anymore.
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Without George Bailey, Bedford Falls becomes "Pottersville," a hive of sin and villainy, where sex workers roam the streets freely and the film's orchestral soundtrack is replaced with jazz music. The picturesque storefronts on the town's main road turn into a drag of "jitterbug" bars and billiards halls, there's flashing lights everywhere, and we even see advertisements for strip clubs. When George Bailey contemplates suicide and recedes into the Twilight Zone in It's A Wonderful Life, the old-fashioned American values of Bedford Falls go dark.