Script To Screen: “It’s A Wonderful Life”

A memorable scene from the 1946 movie It’s A Wonderful Life, screenplay Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett and Frank Capra, story by Philip Van Doren Stern.

Setup: After experiencing what the world would have been like had he not been born, George Bailey has a change of heart…

Here is the movie version of the scene:

The scene marks a notable turn in George’s personal transformation: from 
“I wish I had never been born” to “I want to live again.” Note: The snow begins just as George says the word “God.” I’m sure Capra planned that.

One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a Go Into The Story series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.