Every year in Seneca Falls, N.Y., a festival celebrates “It’s a Wonderful Lifetmt play,” Frank Capra’s heartwarming 1946 drama about the trials and triumphs of a family man named George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart in a beloved role.

Thousands of visitors descend on the hamlet, which local boosters say bears a striking resemblance to Bedford Falls, the Bailey family’s charming and tight-knit hometown. The festivalgoers can meet cast members or, as they did this year, attend a dance at a local high school gymnasium that hopefully won’t end like the film’s comically disastrous one does, with decked-out revelers cannonballing into a swimming pool.

But this year’s event, which ran through Sunday, emphasized, more than it has since it began in the ’90s, a significant turning point in the film’s otherwise heartwarming message — a moment that some people might not want to dwell on in December when “It’s a Wonderful Life” is their comfort and joy.

It comes down to this: “It’s a Wonderful Life” is achingly, yet redemptively, a movie in which a man almost dies by suicide.

ImageThe It’s a Wonderful Life Museum in Seneca Falls, N.Y., helps put on the festival.Credit...Fiona Veronique for The New York TimesImageFans brought images for Grimes to autograph.Credit... Fiona Veronique for The New York Times

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Overall, violent crime fell 3 percent and property crime fell 2.6 percent in 2023, with burglaries down 7.6 percent and larceny down 4.4 percent. Car thefts, though, continue to be an exception, rising more than 12 percent from the year before.

But the move backfired in a way that few supporters expected. Californians in 2021 actually tossed nearly 50 percent more plastic bags, by weight, than when the law first passed in 2014, according to data from CalRecycle, California’s recycling agency.

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