It's A Wonderful (Frantic) Life

I'm interested in other viewers' thoughts about what I experience as the strangely frantic pace of the film, 'It's A Wonderful Life'.

Rapid edit cuts, sudden appearance and disappearance of characters in a scene, and snappy back and forth conversation, even including between George and his father as they sit eating their supper together - which normally, one might think, would be a time to relax, but not those two! And also, for example, at the school graduation dance, with wise-cracking between friends popping in and out of the scene, and the hypersctive giddy Charleston scene.

It's almost like everyone was on amphetamines.

Was this a film-making style of the mid-1940's? A symptom of post-war hysteria?

I believe that it would be extremely unusual for a movie to be made, or to be accepted, in 2015, with jerky dialogue and action like that.

Are there cultural differences between then and now, so that such rapid, pressured interaction was seen then as desirable - people looking smart and quick-witted? I've seen that snappy comeback, wise-cracking dialogue in other older American movies.

I recognize that this movie is popular at Christmas time, and I was interested to see it, but, because of the general frantic pace of it, I found it difficult to watch. I just wanted everyone to slow down and take it easy, but they were all in far too much of a hurry for that.

I am interested in others' thoughts on the this, possibly on cultural differences between then and now, as I'm thinking, such that the frantic pace of this film was normal then, but strange now.

Or is it just me, in senior years, living relaxed, quietly in the country, in Canada, unfamiliar with fast-paced, pressured, younger, urban, American culture?