“Every Bell Rings Once More”: How 'It’s a Wonderful Life' Teaches Us That Failure Isn’t Final (But Boy, Is It Messy)

Now that the shutdown is over...at least for the Holidays...it's time to get in the 'Holiday Spirit'!!

If you’ve ever hugged a couch cushion full of spare change and thought, “This feels like moral currency,” then the 1940's classic Frank Capra movie 'It’s a Wonderful Life' is your cinematic bank! 

The film’s story of George Bailey — the small-town builder who nearly drowns in despair after Uncle Billy misplaces an $8,000 deposit — is less a sugar-coated holiday special than a crash course in resilience: the idea that failure is often the doorway to a wiser second act.

George’s plunge toward the bridge is the movie’s bruising centrepiece. 

Facing possible criminal charges and seeing his life’s work collapse, he wanders to the icy water and prays in a moment that Jimmy Stewart later called painfully real. 

In a 1987 interview, Stewart said, “As I said those words, I felt the loneliness, the hopelessness of people who had nowhere to turn, and my eyes filled with tears. I broke down sobbing.” 

That line — delivered in one take — still lands like a hand on your shoulder. 

It’s acting as therapy: a man, on film, feeling the human ache that many hide.

The film’s plot then performs its miracle: Clarence the angel shows George a world without him, and Bedford Falls becomes Pottersville — a city stripped of George’s quiet decency. 

The thought experiment is brutal and clarifying. 

It proves a point Confucius and a thousand aphorisms have hammered home: “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” 

George learns that being priceless isn’t about money; it’s about the unbankable deposits of friendship, courage and small acts of stewardship.

This is where the Henry Ford wisdom enters the frame: “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” 

George’s supposed failure — an absent $8,000 and a ruined business — becomes the pivot for every neighbor’s generosity. 

People rally, not because the ledger looks good, but because the man behind the ledger was never merely a businessman. 

Thomas Edison’s stubborn reframe, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work,” is George’s method in miniature: every trial, every mistake, a lesson that deepens resolve.

Capra’s movie itself lived the arc it preaches. 

Initially a box-office flop that didn’t recoup production costs, it seemed to signal the end of a career. 

Yet when the film’s copyright lapsed, broadcasters flooded the airwaves with free showings and a tradition was born: the quiet miracle of a film finding its people. 

In that way it proves Winston Churchill’s paradox: “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” 

The film failed, then failed forward into cultural immortality!!

There’s a practical side to resilience too: “Either you run the day, or the day runs you” (Jim Rohn). 

George didn’t wake up wise; he was shaped by choices, small and large. 

His “success” is not final and not simple. 

As Churchill also said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” 

George’s courage manifests as return — to the bridge, to the people he loved, to the messy work of living.

The movie’s ending is famously sentimental: a community gathers, Harry toasts George as “the richest man in town,” and Clarence signs his note, “No man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings.” 

The line is a capstone to Paulo Coelho’s practical proverb: “The secret of life is to fall seven times and to get up eight.” 

The bell on the tree rings, little Zuzu proclaims her angelic maxim 'Every time a bell rings; an Angel gets its wings', and the audience exhales — not because everything is fixed, but because the story has given us permission to try again.

Capra’s lesson squares with the catalog of truisms we toss around at commencements and funerals: “Mistakes are the portals of discovery” (James Joyce); “Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street” (Zig Ziglar); “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly” (Robert F. Kennedy). 

George Bailey’s failure wasn’t the final act — it was the rehearsal for a truer measure of wealth.

So the next time life hands you an $8,000 problem (metaphorically speaking), remember: failure isn’t a label; it’s data. 

As Henry Ford put it, start again — only this time, smarter! 

And perhaps, when the bell rings, you’ll hear not only the chiming of angels but the echo of millions who, through the film’s odd grace, learned that “it’s a wonderful life” isn’t a guarantee — it’s an invitation to keep going, keep fighting to overcome and never surrender!!

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Sources: Film It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946) — plot details and character names; Jimmy Stewart 1987 interview quote regarding his emotional response during the bridge scene; historical notes on the film’s initial box-office performance and subsequent broadcast tradition after copyright lapse; famous quotations by Confucius, Paulo Coelho, Winston Churchill, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, James Joyce, Zig Ziglar, Robert F. Kennedy, Jim Rohn and other aphorisms as incorporated in the above.