The Impact of Lighting Choices on Theme in the Movie It’s a Wonderful Life
Title: It’s a Wonderful Life
Writers: (Screenplay) Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett
Director & Producer: Frank Capra
Year: 1947
Actors: James Stewart as George Bailey, Donna Reed as Mary (Hatch) Bailey, Lionel Barrymore as Mr. Potter, Thomas Mitchell as Uncle Billy Bailey, Henry Travers as Clarence Oddbody, Beulah Bondi as Mrs. Bailey, Frank Faylen as Ernie (the cab driver), Ward Bond as Bert (the cop), Gloria Grahame as Violet, and Todd Karns as Harry Bailey.
(IMDb, 2010)
In the fantasy genre film, It’s a Wonderful Life, lighting is indispensable in creating the mood of the movie as it walks the audience through scenes of utter bliss down and until scenes of hopeless despair. As one can imagine, cinematography plays a vital role in creating the ambiance necessary for the audience to believe the magical and marvelous happenings that pervade the movie. The lighting is key in the construction of each magnificently produced scene.
Type of Lighting:
It’s a Wonderful Life contains all the elements of the traditional three-point lighting, along with high-key lighting for the more livelier scenes, and lastly, low-key to extremely low-key lighting used in the scenes evoking the feelings where the audience is supposed to read the most despair into the main character George Bailey’s world.
In the following scene, character George Bailey, with the help of Clarence his “guardian angel,” return to the home where George lives with his wife and children. Since Clarence has made it possible for George to see what his life would be like if George had never been born, this house is now dark (with the use of low-key lighting) and in complete disrepair, as it was before he and his wife moved in. Notice the lighting used in the clip. At the onset, the key-light coming from the left provides most of the light coming into the scene. This contrast of shadows toward the right side of the actors’ faces makes their appearance, and the appearance of the set, strangely dark and foreboding. When Bert the “cop” and Ernie the “cab driver” appear, the significant source of light is the backlight, making it so only the outline of the figures appear adding to the atmosphere of desperation felt by the character George. From the entire movie, this is the scene which most expertly provides the greatest contrast of light and dark through the use of light and shadows.
“Vanishing Act” (1946) (Movieclips,2011)
In the next picture taken directly from the movie, a livelier scene of “Uncle Billy” looking for the lost bank deposit, which begins the downward spiral of events for the character George, demonstrates the use of high-key lighting. This is the type of lighting that pervades most acts in this film during the scenes from offices and banks. Note that there is a complete lack of shadows. The three-point lighting can be viewed in this picture as the backlight makes Uncle Billy’s character stand out in the scene. The almost complete absence of shadows depicts the fill light being obviously nearly just as bright as the key-light.
(Capra, 1947)
In this next picture, also taken directly from the film, the audience sees depth and dimension added to the character of Mary, George’s future wife. The soft lighting and medium brightness key-light directed from the right angle provides a shadow across the left side of the actress’s face with the use of a dimmer fill light. This provides the viewer with a type of “romantic” aesthetic appearance.
(Capra, 1947)
Impact of Lighting Used to Establish Theme:
As the audience can see from the above clip and pictures, the benefits of the style of lighting used is that the lighting has the ability to create the mood which changes the audience’s state of mind during the film. In one scene, the audience can feel the blossoming romance between characters. In another scene, particularly the bank and office setting scenes, the audience has a feeling of a more “industrial” mood. In the clip above, the audience, with the use of dramatic shadows, feels desperate and frightened for the character, George.
The overall theme that pervades this movie is the old cliché that every cloud has a silver lining, and life doesn’t always turn out as we expect that it will. Nothing that George expected to happen in his life ever came to fruition. But at the end of the day, when he stopped forcing his own will upon his life, he realized that he had a wonderful life, a life that most people could only wish for. This technique of using lighting to help in changing the mood of the film contributes to the theme that the producer is trying to create. Capra wants the audience to feel a certain way at certain times during the film, and we do. We feel happy when he wants us to, and we feel sad when he wants us to. The use of lighting contributes to the feelings that in the end help to foster the movie’s theme.
The lighting technique was suited to the genre of the film because in the dark, desperate moments of George’s life, the lighting was low-key. Darkness and shadows were used to set the stage. In the moments when George and Mary were presumably falling in love, a more romantic lighting set the stage. When the characters were in work mode, at the office or in the bank, an industrialized/sterile lighting was used on the set. All of these moods were needed to create the fantasy atmosphere that the story was based on. Truly, at the bottom of it all, it was a story about an angel that was sent to help a “real” man discover that his life was wonderful.
Different Lighting Choices:
If different choices of lightings were used, the mood would not be what is was throughout the film. For example, if while George and Mary were walking home from the dance the evening that they became flirtatious with each other and the scene was set in mid-day with high-key lighting, there would have been no romance to the scene at all. If, while George was at his lowest moment, low-key, dramatic shadow lighting was not used, the atmosphere would not have been as sad and depressing. There would have been no feeling of desperation created. If low-key lighting was used in the office scenes, the “bank” atmosphere would have been absent. The lighting made the fantasy of the entire film more realistic and believable.
Resources:
Capra, F. (Producer & Director). (1947). It’s a wonderful life [Motion picture]. United States: Paramount Studios.
IMDb. (2010, Oct 26). It’s a wonderful life – Photo 23 of 65. Retrieved fromhttp://www.imdb.com/media/rm1510710784/tt0038650?ref_=ttmi_mi_all_prd_23
Movieclips. (2011, October 9). It’s a wonderful life (6/9) Movie clip – Vanishing Act (1946) HD [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4xJLbsa4PQ
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