Cynics take the latter view and I'm sorry for them. James Stewart is the small-town philanthropist whose loan company has gone bust and who is saved from suicide by an elderly angel (Henry Travers), desperately trying to earn his wings. Stewart wishes he had never been born; Travers shows him what a hellhole his home town would have become without him.

Capra is splendidly in control of his material throughout. Of course, such a story of supernatural intervention in the affairs of man could easily have tumbled into sentimentality - or worse - but it never does. An occasional, unexpected hard edge - Stewart railing furiously, illogically against his own family, for instance - makes a timely appearance to cut the sweetness.

Capra's belief in the values of small-town America shines through but he never turns an entirely unblinkered gaze upon them. Greed is the villian of the piece and there's at least a tacit acknowledgement that greed is one of the less desirable by-products of the American Dream, so the warm emotion of the film is tempered by some of the social consciousness that the director brought to Mr Deeds Goes to Town and Mr Smith Goes to Washington. It's a Wonderful Life is certainly simplistic and, if you like, naive, but the doggedly optimistic message of the title is put across by both director and cast with such conviction as to to be irresistible.