Support independent journalism and set up a regular donation to Navarro media from just one pound a month.

Head to Navarro media forward slash support. Hello and Merry Christmas and happy holidays. My name is Eleanor Penny.

This week we're taking a special Navarro media style look back at one of the great

classic Christmas movies. It's a Wonderful Life came out in 1946. This was when the shadow of both World War II and the Great Depression

loomed large in the American imagination, and it was just before the economic boom time of the post-war period kicked off in earnest.

In the film we meet heroic every man George Bailey in a moment of personal crisis one Christmas

when an angel intervenes to show him just

what his life has been worth all along. It's a story about war and banking, family

and home ownership about small town life and semi-home. and across millions of

of homes across America and indeed the rest of the world.

So what do we make of it?

Is it a socialist masterpiece?

Is it a flattering portrait of the petty bourgeoisie? Is it a Catholic

conversion story? To talk about all this and more, I was joined by James Butler. James is a writer, a contributing editor at the London Review of Books and the co-founder of Navarro Media.

Quick content note. This episode contains discussion of suicide as that is a significant plot point in the movie

but we don't talk about it in much detail. So with that said on with the show. Get me back. I don't care what happens to me. Get me back to my wife and kids. Help me

Clarence please! Please!

I want to live again!

I want to live again!

I wouldn't live again!

Please, God, let me live again.

James, hello, welcome back.

...