I agree.....
with Ms. Shaidle’s assessment of It’s a Wonderful Life as a not particularly sentimental movie:
So I'm glad Colby Cosh agrees with me: People always say It's a Wonderful Life is sentimental. The film's few gentle sexual innuendos pretty much negate that. It can be pretty gritty. It has a boarding house, for God's sakes.

And besides: sentimentality is the cornerstone of fascism, and one would be hard pressed to find a less fascistic film.

Do read the Colby Cosh article. It brings up things I had never thought of before......such as the pre-figurement of old embittered Mrs. Bailey running a boarding house when George exclaims about his “last meal at the ol’ Bailey boarding house.”

I was always taken with the ease with which Violet’s character was drawn from the very beginning:
Violet: I like him.
Mary: You like every boy.
Violet: What’s wrong with that?

It’s not a sentimental movie. (Unlike a movie I heard advertised on the radio yesterday - repeatedly - with Vanessa Redgrave intoning, “listen to your feelings.”) George Bailey may have listened to his feelings. But he didn’t necessarily act on them. We see a certain melancholy bitterness in his character - or some people just see a chump. It’s a Wonderful Life is a bittersweet reassurance, with just enough Christmas schmaltz, for all the George Baileys of the world - born older - who do the right thing, do not follow their bliss and make the world a better place for their being in it.