The history of It’s a Wonderful Life, the 1946 film directed by Frank Capra and starring James Stewart and Donna Reed, plays like its own Hollywood fairy tale of failure, perseverance, and redemption. A critical and financial failure when it was originally released, the film was highly demonstrative of “Capricorn,” a discouraging epithet critics attached to Capra’s work for its joyful characters and gushing, unrealistic climaxes.

Bosley Crowher of The New York Times perfectly summarized the “Capricorn” critique when he wrote in his review of the film, “The weakness of this picture from this reviewer’s point of view is the sentimentality of it—its illusory concept of life.”

While box office revenues placed the film at a decent 26th for the year’s top grossing films, It’s a Wonderful Life immediately faded into obscurity, surviving as an art-house attraction for cinephiles and a memory of Capra enthusiasts.

Then, in the 1980s, copyright restrictions lessened, and the film became a sudden Christmas hit, as multiple cable stations jumped to show the film’s sunny, Christian message on endless time slots throughout December. Using its holiday ubiquity as a springboard to the popular conscience, It’s a Wonderful Life is now understood to be not only an American classic, but also one of the defining moments in the long and storied careers of both James Stewart and Frank Capra.

Despite the heartwarming success, however, an important, fundamental question lingers: is It’s a Wonderful Life really a “Christmas movie”? Is its modern status as a beloved American classic for the Christmas season a justified accomplishment? Or are we witnessing one of the great misinterpretations this side of “This Land is Your Land?”

The answer, in part, lies in the career of director Frank Capra. Though Capra was prone to sickening sentimentalism, his movies carry an underlying populist message, emphasizing common-man triumphs in the face of corporate greed.

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, were some of the first explicit statements of this message.

In Mr. Smith, for example, Stewart portrays Jefferson Smith, a naïve do-gooder chosen to replace a deceased senator’s seat in the US congress. As Smith arrives in Washington, though, he quickly learns that not all that glitters is gold, as politicians are pawns to powerful lobbyists and special interests dictate agendas while poverty rises and the common man suffers. The film still features a “Capricorn” ending that nearly ruins the preceding 120 minutes, but it stands today as the first true, dark entry in Capra’s filmography of an unfair universe for the common man.

It’s a Wonderful Life, therefore, further develops this theme, which is in direct opposition to a Christmas film. While the film features heavy overtones of religion and good cheer in its final act, the preceding segments, which focus on the history of George Bailey, are rite with poverty, despair, and neglect. In other words, they are painful depictions of Depression-era America, as the citizens of Bedford Falls lose their life’s savings on Black Tuesday, have their homes foreclosed by failing banks, and are forced to turn to the evil, greedy Mr. Potter for help.

Bruce Eder, film critic at All Movie, writes, “The movie is in fact a dark, disturbing look at small-town American life between the two world wars, rife with class envy and fears of modernity, and featuring a before-its-time portrayal of George Bailey’s middle-aged sense of failure that seems more appropriate for an American film of the Seventies.”

Eder makes an essential point on Bailey’s mid-life crisis, but I see Capra dealing with a different middle-oriented fear: the terror of middle-class inferiority. George Bailey, for all his ruthless ambition and razor-sharp intelligence, is an ordinary man. He wakes up, goes to work at a job he hates, and returns to a modest, comfortable home with a loving wife and adorable children. This life, for all its apparent joy, is painfully devoid of the existence Bailey yearns for, one of adventure and danger.

The film’s first hour makes this point patently obvious, with Bailey waxing poetic about how, “I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Coliseum.”

“Then,” he continues, “I’m comin’ back here to go to college and see what they know. And then I’m gonna build things. I’m gonna build airfields, I’m gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, I’m gonna build bridges a mile long…”

This was a man of vision, yet he suffers a menial existence of seeming irrelevance. While he makes a few dozen dollars a week, scrapping by with pennies and barely supporting his family, old high school friend Sam Wainwright makes millions, donning his wife in expensive firs, taking exotic trips to Europe, and, in one of the most impressive symbols of the movie, drives an impressive luxury car (while Bailey makes due with a clunker that barely keeps its doors shut).

This is a concept that has been frequently used in modern films dealing with the middle class, most recently Little Children, and American Beauty.

Though we all know the climax—George realizing that yes, he really does have a wonderful life—his middle-class nausea is a clear theme of the film, and these kinds of ideas are in direct opposition to the warm, fuzzy motifs required of a Christmas movie.

“It’s a Wonderful Life is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams,” writes Wendell Jamieson in The New York Times. “It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife.”

Jamieson also describes a bittersweet reality behind the film’s conclusion: though Bailey’s friends and family raised the necessary funds to fill an $8,000 gap at his building and loan, the act does little to stunt his impending arrest. Though Bailey puts the money back, he still committed the act of larceny, which would result in, at least, probation, and possibly 2 ½ to 7 years in prison. “And a Merry Christmas to you…in jail!” to quote Mr. Potter.

So, the question beckons—why is It’s a Wonderful Life considered a holiday classic? Why is this painful, nuanced look at Depression-era economics and the suffocating mediocrity of middle-class living held in such high regard among American viewers?

The climax is the simplest explanation. The realizations that Bailey has a wonderful life, and that no matter how insignificant, we can all make a difference, is a powerful moral that resonates with audiences. Plus, the overwhelming Christian population in America no doubt loves a good story involving guardian angels and a kind, caring God whose omniscient presence can stop suicide attempts and rejuvenate spirit.

Yet, the film does still not meet the rubric of a “Christmas film,” and not just because of its dark nature, as other holiday classics (Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer, The Santa Claus, Santa Claus is Coming to Town) have disturbing undertones. With It’s a Wonderful Life, Capra was not consciously filming a Christmas movie, meaning, a film specifically made for a Christmas audience and the period between Thanksgiving and New Years Eve; instead, he was creating an unsettling portrait of corporate greed and middle-class strife, a film that continued his tradition of common-man triumph and populist propaganda. To think that he made this film with the same intentions as Deck the Halls is a tragedy to both Capra and Stewart.

So while It’s a Wonderful Life will inevitably retain its position as an endearing Christmas classic, the least we can do is understand its purpose and respect its craft.