At 6'3", Jimmy Stewart possessed a good-natured lankiness that underscored an inherent earnestness and sincerity--an impression augmented--despite his gawky build--by his soft eyes and mouth. In so many ways, the Stewart character was that archetypal American: the innocent, the babe, the naif. And to dwell on his career is to dwell on the difficult art of self-enciphering; in role after role Stewart seemed to excise from his characters anything that might suggest guile
and depth, duplicity
and ambiguity, plotting
and sophistication, irony
and ambiguity. To be regarded as a man who knows too much--in the Stewart ethos--is to imply the possibility of hidden motivations, to assume a complexity that would compel the viewer to--in the words of my students--read too much into the character. Undoubtedly, those suffering under the weal of the Depression would have found something reassuring in the "What you see is what you get" simplicity of Stewart's cinema.
But the effect, of course,
is artifice--a testament to Stewart's ability to so thoroughly efface his characters of anything that implies real profundity. Some might argue, "What about
It's a Wonderful Life?" But George Bailey's engagement with the darker region of his being must be viewed conditionally. The religious cosmology of the film's opening make clear from the beginning that this is a man who--despite his lapses and his failures--is always-already saved: his life, his wealth, and his faith restored. He will, in the film's iconic ending, be the richest man in Bedford Falls. And so his encounter with his dark self is ultimately tantamount to a very scary ride at the amusement park, shaking us momentarily but not fundamentally.
Could he make it today? There's a world of difference between the guileless and the vapid.
