A post war film about a small town called Bedford in which James Stewart's character Bailey runs a small home loans business. He is portrayed as a selfless man who has passed up better opportunities to stay running the family business. The town also has a hard nosed banker who would want to see the business run on less benevolent terms.
The business hits hard times, there is a run on the loan company (where Stewart gets to explain fractional reserve lending rather well). Potter makes Bailey an offer for a much better paid job, which would be useful now that he is married and has family commitments. He turns it down on point of principle. This makes Potter want to see Bailey fail and he has his chance when he intercepts some deposit money from the loans company, enough to make them bankrupt.
With the investigators called in Bailey contemplates ending it all. At this point his guardian angel is sent down (who has been incentivised with the promise of earning his wings if he can sort out Bailey and save him). The guardian angel takes Bailey shows him how the world would be had he not being born. Predictably the Bedford town is called Pottersville, and he now has a very hard grip on the small town. His wife would never have married and is running the local library, and various things that affected other lives would not have happened.
The whole story ends with Bailey being sent back to his real existence and with the local town rallying round and raising the money to replace the stolen cash. A bell is also sounded to indicate that the angel gained his wings on the back of convincing Bailey to carry on.
A classic film, Stewart does feel a little overplayed at times - for example it does take him an awful long time for him to realise that the angel is showing him life in Bedford had he not lived. I would rate 6/10, IMDB has this much higher but maybe that's a nostalgic thing.
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