Government

Last Exit to Pottersville

What the 1946 Christmas movie ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ says about small-town America in 2016.
George Bailey, low-income housing developerAP

The best scene from the 1946 Frank Capra flick It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t the final one, the famous part where everybody sings “Auld Lang Syne” in George Bailey’s living room. It’s the one before it, that long tracking shot that follows George as he bounds exuberantly through the long main street of Bedford Falls, the idyllic little town he’d once vowed to flee.