Frank Capra, who made the movie It’s a Wonderful Life explains why he left Hollywood in the 1950’s. This should make you think even better of the film than you already did.
“The winds of change blew through the dream factories of make-believe, tore at its crinoline tatters … The hedonists, the homosexuals, the hemophiliac bleeding hearts, the God-haters, the quick-buck artists who substituted shock for talent, all cried: “Shake ’em! Rattle ’em! God is dead. Long live pleasure! Nudity? Yea! Wife-swapping? Yea! Liberate the world from prudery. Emancipate our films from morality!” … Kill for thrill—shock! Shock! To hell with the good in man, Dredge up his evil—shock! Shock! Practically all the Hollywood film-making of today is stooping to cheap salacious pornography in a crazy bastardization of a great art to compete for the ‘patronage’ of deviates and masturbators.”
– Frank Capra, on why he left Hollywood in the 1950’s, in his 1971 autobiography Name Above the Title.
This coincides with the media mantra: if it bleeds, it leads.