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It's a Wonderful Life
Directed by Frank Capra
Produced by Frank Capra
Written by Philip Van Doren Stern
Screenplay:
Frances Goodrich
Albert Hackett
Jo Swerling
Frank Capra
Starring James Stewart
Donna Reed
Lionel Barrymore
Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures
Release date(s) Flag of the United States December 20, 1946
Running time 130 min
Country United States
Budget $3,180,000
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 film produced and directed by Frank Capra and based on the short story 'The Greatest Gift' written by Philip Van Doren Stern.

The film takes place in the fictional town of Bedford Falls during the Second World War and stars James Stewart as George Bailey a man who's attempted suicide on Christmas eve gains the attention of a guardian angel Clarence Oddbody (Henry Travers) who is sent to Beford Falls to help him in his hour of need. Most of the film is told through flashbacks spanning George's entire life and narrated by an unseen Angel who is preparing Clarence for his mission to save George. Through these flashbacks we see all the people who's lives has been touched by George and the difference he has made to the community he is part of, although George is blind to this until Clarence shows him how different the lives of everyone would be had George not been born at all and the film ends with the realisation that he did have a wonderful life after all.

The film is regarded as a classic and is a staple of Christmas TV around the world although at the time of its release was widely considered to be a flop. Although not an Oscar winner at the time it has been since named by the American Film Institute one of the best films ever made and was placed number one on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers list of the most inspirational American films of all time.

Contents

[edit] Plot

It is Christmas Eve, 1946 and George Bailey is in a dark place. Facing losing his business, the scandal of bankruptcy and wanted by the police for misappropriation of funds he is on the verge suicide. Its is the prayers of his family and friends that alert an angel to George’s state of mind and arrangements are made to send to earth Clarence Oddbody, angel second class, who after over 200 years of trying has still not earned his wings, to help George realise that suicide would be a mistake.

In preparing for his mission Clarence gets to see a review of George's life, and from here we see most of the film as flashbacks spanning the entire life of George Bailey and highlighting all the good he has done in his life. We see George save his brother Harry’s life in a sledging accident, managing to stop the chemist (H.B. Warner) from poisoning a child when accidentally putting poison in the child’s medicine bottle. Time and time again giving up his dreams of travel, college and becoming an architect in order to stay in Bedford Falls so that his brother could go to college, and after the death of his father is left with no choice but to stay and run the Building and Loan business on which many of the townspeople depend on to keep a roof over their heads and which the mean old owner of the bank and most of the town Mr Potter (Lionel Barrymore) is itching to get his hands on.

Henry Travers as Clarence after "saving" George
Henry Travers as Clarence after "saving" George

George married his first love Mary Hatch(Donna Reed)but on the day of their wedding a run on the bank left the Building and Loan in serious danger of going under and George used their honeymoon funds to lend the townspeople enough to keep them going and another disaster is diverted thanks to George’s generosity. George unable to fight in the war due to deafness in one ear (caused while saving his brother from the ice) stays at home to play a major role in the war effort at home, while brother Harry is a fighter pilot and is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for saving the lives of many men on a transporter.

While pre-occupied with the news that Harry is meeting the president Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) managed to lose $8000 while on his way to deposit the money in the bank. When the bank examiner is informed of what has happened the police are called and George starts to realise how much trouble he is in and heads for the river with the intention of committing suicide. It is here that Clarence makes his presence known to George and proclaiming that he wishes that he had never been born, Clarence decides to grant him his wish. Trying to show to George how good his life is he allows George to see life as it would have been had he never had been born at all. Bedford Falls is now called Pottersville and is in most parts a slum, George sees the people he knows and loves but none of them recognize him, seeing how many lives he has touched, and the difference he has made to the town is enough for George to realise that despite his problems he does have a wonderful life.

George, Mary and Zuzu
George, Mary and Zuzu

[edit] Production

[edit] Background

The original story "The Greatest Gift" was written by Philip Van Doren Stern in November 1939, after being unsuccessful in getting the story published he decided to make a Christmas card with the story enclosed and mailed 200 copies to family and friends.[1] The story came to the attention of a Hollywood agent and in 1945 RKO Pictures bought the rights to the story for $10,000 hoping to turn the story into a vehicle for Cary Grant, who was under contract to the agent. RKO created three unsatisfactory scripts before shelving the planned movie with Grant going on to make another Christmas picture in The Bishop's Wife.[2] At the suggestion of RKO studio chief Charles Koerner Frank Capra read "The Greatest Gift" and immediately saw its potential. RKO, anxious to unload the project, sold the rights to Capra's production company Liberty Films for $10,000, throwing in the three scripts for free.[1] Capra along with writers Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett turned the story and what was worth using from the three scripts into a screenplay that Capra would rename 'Its a wonderful life'.[1]

[edit] Filming

It's a Wonderful Life was shot at the RKO studio in Culver City, California, and the RKO ranch in Encino, where Bedford Falls was a set covering four acres assembled from three separate parts with a main street stretching 300 yards, three city blocks, a tree-lined center parkway, and 75 stores and buildings, and 20 full grown oak trees. Filming started on April 15, 1946, and ended on July 27, 1946.[2]

[edit] Featured cast

[edit] Reception

It's a Wonderful Life premiered in New York on December 20, 1946 at the Globe Theatre[2] and opened to mixed reviews. Time magazine said, "It's a Wonderful Life is a pretty wonderful movie. It has only one formidable rival (Goldwyn's The Best Years of Our Lives) as Hollywood's best picture of the year. . . . Director Capra's inventiveness, humor and affection for human beings keep it glowing with life and excitement." But Bosley Crowther, writing for The New York Times, complained that "the weakness of this picture, from this reviewer's point of view, is the sentimentality of it—its illusory concept of life. Mr. Capra's nice people are charming, his small town is a quite beguiling place and his pattern for solving problems is most optimistic and facile. But somehow they all resemble theatrical attitudes rather than average realities."

The film placed 26th in box office revenues for the year (out of more than 400 features released), one place ahead of another Christmas movie, Miracle on 34th Street. It received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor.

[edit] Awards and nominations

Contrary to its widespread acclaim in recent years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not give an award to It's a Wonderful Life for any of its Oscar nominations. Best Actor, Best Editing, Best Director, and Best Picture were lost all to The Best Years of Our Lives, directed by Liberty Films co-founder William Wyler.

These losses can be explained in part by Best Years' box office success in 1946, and its relevance to the movie-going audience of the time. Best Years is a dramatic look at the lives of servicemen returning home after World War II, and is itself considered a milestone film. The ingredients of Best Years – drama, social relevance, a character overcoming disability, another character facing madness – are all quite in keeping with what is considered an "Oscar Winning Film". Seen today, the movie still retains much of its power, though not the same place in the American psyche as It's a Wonderful Life.

It's a Wonderful Life's nominated categories in 1946 were:

Capra won Best Motion Picture Director from the Golden Globes, and a CEC Award from the Cinema Writers Circle in Spain, for Mejor Película Extranjera (Best Foreign Film). Jimmy Hawkins won a "Former Child Star Lifetime Achievement Award" from the Young Artist Awards in 1994; the awards centred out his role as Tommy Bailey for igniting his career which lasted until the mid-1960s.

[edit] Ownership and copyright issues

Liberty Films was purchased by Paramount Pictures, and remained a subsidiary until 1951. Paramount owned the film until 1955, when they sold a few of their features and most of their cartoons and shorts to television distributor U.M.&M. T.V. Corp.. This included key rights to It's a Wonderful Life, including the original television syndication rights, the original nitrate film elements, the music score, and the story on which the film is based, "The Greatest Gift".

National Telefilm Associates took over the rights to the U.M.&M. library soon afterward. However, a clerical error at NTA prevented the copyright from being renewed properly in 1974. A popular fallacy began that it entered the public domain, and many television stations began airing the film without paying royalties. Although the film's images had entered the public domain, the film's story was still protected by virtue of it being a derivative work of the published story "The Greatest Gift," whose copyright was properly renewed by Philip Van Doren Stern in 1971. Around this time, people began to take a second look at this film. In the 1980s (the beginning of the home video era), the film became a perennial holiday favorite. For several years, it became expected that the movie would be shown multiple times on at least one station and on multiple stations in the same day, often at the same or overlapping times. It was a common practice for American viewers to jump in and out of viewing the movie at random points, confident they could easily pick it up again at a later time. The film's warm and familiar ambiance gave even isolated scenes the feel of holiday "comfort food" for the eyes and ears. The film's accidental public domain success is often cited as a reason to limit copyright terms, which have been frequently extended by Congress in the United States.

In 1993, Republic Pictures, which was the successor to NTA, relied on the 1990 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Stewart v. Abend (which involved the movie Rear Window) to enforce its claim of copyright. While the film's copyright had not been renewed, it was a derivative work of various works that were still copyrighted. As a result, the film is no longer shown as much on television. (NBC is currently licensed to show the film on U.S. network television, and only shows it traditionally twice during the holidays, with one showing primarily on Christmas Eve from 8-11 Eastern time)and now Paramount (via parent company Viacom's 1998 acquisition of Republic's then-parent Spelling Entertainment) once again has ancillary rights for the first time since 1955. Artisan Entertainment (under license from Republic) took over home video rights in the mid-1990s. Artisan was later sold to Lions Gate Entertainment, which continued to hold home video rights until late 2005 when they reverted to Paramount.

[edit] Belated success

The film's success decades after its release came as a welcome but unexpected surprise to those who worked on it, including Capra. "It's the damnedest thing I've ever seen," he told the Wall Street Journal in 1984. "The film has a life of its own now and I can look at it like I had nothing to do with it. I'm like a parent whose kid grows up to be president. I'm proud … but it's the kid who did the work. I didn't even think of it as a Christmas story when I first ran across it. I just liked the idea."

[edit] Colorization

Two colorized versions have since been produced; they are widely considered inferior to the black-and-white original and are often held up by opponents of colorization as an example of the flaws associated with the process: in the scene of the dinner-table chat between George and Peter Bailey, for example, James Stewart's shirt is conspicuously pink. For many years, some television stations paid substantial royalties to show a colorized version, figuring that color would attract more viewers. Both colorized versions of the film have now been withdrawn and the only version shown on TV and available on DVD now is the original black and white version.

[edit] Popular culture

Main article: It's a Wonderful Life in popular culture

[edit] Notes / References

  1. ^ a b c Ervin, Kathleen. Some Kind of Wonderful. Faliure Magazine. Retrieved on 2007-06-2.
  2. ^ a b c Weems, Eric. Frank Capra online. Retrieved on 2007-06-02.
  3. ^ a b c Blockbuster MediaRoom It's a Wonderful Life. Blockbuster Inc. Retrieved on 2007-06-02.


[edit] External Links

v • d • e
Films Directed by Frank Capra
1920s
The Strong Man • For the Love of Mike • Long Pants • The Power of the Press • Say It with Sables • So This Is Love? • Submarine • The Way of the Strong • That Certain Thing • The Matinee Idol • Flight • The Donovan Affair • The Younger Generation
1930s
1940s
1950s-1960s