Garfield concluded his interesting selection with the timeless classic that is Frank Capra’s 1946 work. It’s a Wonderful Life.

Thirty years after it had been made, for me, it was like, ‘Oh my god, how did he know this is where we were going? With how we commodify the soullessness of our culture?’

The spontaneity, the aliveness, the effortlessness, the pathos, the brutishness, the sensitivity, you just want to keep studying what Brando is doing in that film, and what all the actors are doing, but particularly Brando.

When a young boy makes a wish at a carnival machine to be big—he wakes up the following morning to find that it has been granted and his body has grown older overnight. But he is still the same 13-year-old boy inside. Now he must learn how to cope with the unfamiliar world of grown-ups including getting a job and having his first romantic encounter with a woman.

And I think in terms of the acting, it’s some of the best modern film acting that exists, with [Robert] De Niro and Chris Walken and John Cazale and Meryl Streep.