Updated
Dec 23, 2020
It took an immigrant to make the ultimate American movie.
By Zachary D. Carter
Herbert Dorfman/Corbis via Getty Images
The resurrection of Frank Capra s It’s A Wonderful Life was almost as strange as its creation.
“It’s A Wonderful Life” was supposed to mark Frank Capra’s triumphant return to Hollywood. After four years making war films with the Army, he was running his own movie studio on his own terms and had crafted an intensely personal statement with his latest film ― an expression of everything the Sicilian immigrant loved about his adopted country. He called it “my kind of film for my kind of people.”