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It's a Wonderful Life (1 Viewer)

So everyone's ok that an officer of the law simply tears up an official arrest warrant just so he can join in the singing? 

Savages. 

 
Great real life backdrop to this movie. Stewart was actually suffering from PTSD after serving in WW2 and trying to resurrect his career. He was suffering emotionally from the horrible things he saw in WW2. He was having a tough time finding roles, and didn't even really like the script, but ended up taking the role. Watch the emotional scenes he delivers in the movie, and you know he really is feeling the hard stress of real life.

 
Otis said:
Why aren't there more actors like Stewart in Hollywood today? What he did so perfectly is bring the dialogue to life by stuttering at points and by saying things like "huh?" and "what's that?" on occasion when he pretended not to hear someone. Turns out that human dialogue in real life isn't a perfectly smoothly delivered and executed conversation. More often than not it goes in fits and starts, clumsily, with miscommunication, people mumbling and stuttering, not always hearing each other, etc. The dialogue in this movie is so wonderful.

Now contrast this to most of the glop at theaters today. Hell even the "good" stuff. If the goal of acting is to make this seem like real life, why don't actors try and act and talk like people act and talk in real life? Really does seem like an art form that is dying.
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 That's often not the goal 

 
fantasycurse42 said:
Never seen it before, feel like that is more of the norm than outlier amongst millennials. 

Anyways, my wife is big on Christmas. We went out the 4 of us, came home, kids to bed, smoked weed, and then staged the house like Santa stopped by... We caught the last hour of this afterwards, she's seen it a million times. She explained the plot, but it was pretty easy to piece together even without seeing the first half of it.

Loved it, great flick. Next Christmas I intend on watching the whole thing, possibly the Christmas after that too.
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As others have said, it's not just the best Christmas movie ever made, it's on of the best films ever made. 

 
I will say that the sets on this movie were awesome.  When i was snowing and he ran through what I think was an actual town, that was really cool.  I will also parrot that Stewart's performance was incredibly believable. 

 
AAABatteries said:
It wouldn't surprise me if most of the people who hate it have never watched the whole movie.
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Probably not. Many people say it's cheesy and pure sugar. I think that is a fair criticism of much of Capra's work, but not It's a Wonderful Life. The movie is actually pretty dark.George Bailey isn't a cookie cutter good guy. You Can't Take It With You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town suffer much more from the Capra cheese. 

 
James Daulton said:
I will say that the sets on this movie were awesome.  When i was snowing and he ran through what I think was an actual town, that was really cool.  I will also parrot that Stewart's performance was incredibly believable. 
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The set was gigantic and covered 4 acres. 

 
This is maybe more of a Depression & WW2 movie than a Christmas movie - people today forget the turmoil that Americans went through for 16 years. It's an epic. This is a movie about a truly desperate man who turns to suicide.

 
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Binky The Doormat said:
Anyone else see the show, "Adam Ruins Everything" episode on Christmas?  

He explained that the movie was panned when it came out ...and was so bad, that when the rights expired, no one picked them up - so the movie went into the public domain.  

The movie became popular in the 50s when television stations could play the hell out of it at no charge to them.  
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This movie became a classic by brainwashing rubes. 

 
Binky The Doormat said:
Anyone else see the show, "Adam Ruins Everything" episode on Christmas?  

He explained that the movie was panned when it came out ...and was so bad, that when the rights expired, no one picked them up - so the movie went into the public domain.  

The movie became popular in the 50s when television stations could play the hell out of it at no charge to them.  
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That's not entirely true. It had mixed reviews. Some critics didn't like it, but it was far from panned. It was 26th at the box office for the year. It was nominated for 6 Osars, including Best Picture.

 
Binky The Doormat said:
Anyone else see the show, "Adam Ruins Everything" episode on Christmas?  

He explained that the movie was panned when it came out ...and was so bad, that when the rights expired, no one picked them up - so the movie went into the public domain.  

The movie became popular in the 50s when television stations could play the hell out of it at no charge to them.  
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pretty much every sentence here is wrong.

IAWL was nominated for Best Picture and was seen as 2nd only to eventual winner The Best Years Of Our Lives.

Its copyright was lost in the 1970s due to a clerical mixup at the studio. But it was re-established in 1993 via court ruling.

 
oso diablo said:
Binky The Doormat said:
Anyone else see the show, "Adam Ruins Everything" episode on Christmas?  

He explained that the movie was panned when it came out ...and was so bad, that when the rights expired, no one picked them up - so the movie went into the public domain.  

The movie became popular in the 50s when television stations could play the hell out of it at no charge to them.  




 




 
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pretty much every sentence here is wrong.

IAWL was nominated for Best Picture and was seen as 2nd only to eventual winner The Best Years Of Our Lives.

Its copyright was lost in the 1970s due to a clerical mixup at the studio. But it was re-established in 1993 via court ruling.




 




 
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Adam has misled me.  Hell, I don't know ...I recently saw the show and thought I would post what I thought I heard.  Here is the result of a quick google search from "Plagiarism Today".

From Copyright Failure, to Public Domain Success

“It’s a Wonderful Life” debuted in 1946 and was based on a short story, “The Greatest Gift”, which was written by Phillip Van Doren Stern in 1939. The film, despite being headlined by James Stewart, one of the biggest actors at the time, was not a commercial success.

The film, in its time, was largely forgotten and that includes the original copyright holders in the film, Republic Pictures.

Under copyright law at the time, a work was protected for 28 years but that copyright protection could trivially be extended for another 28 by paying a small fee and filing a form with the U.S. Copyright Office. However, regardless of whether Republic forgot or simply didn’t feel the film was worth renewing, that renewal was not filed. As a result, in 1974, the film lapsed into the public domain.

But it was in the public domain that the film saw a revival. TV networks, eager for cheap holiday-oriented content, latched on to the film and began to play it during the holiday season. Though near-constant airplay, the film found something it hadn’t before, an audience. It grew from an obscure 1940s film to a holiday classic and became a staple of many families’ holiday traditions.

This is how the film was played for nearly 20 years and it could have stayed that way forever, if an unrelated copyright case had not changed the course of its history forever.

 
Binky The Doormat said:
“It’s a Wonderful Life” debuted in 1946 and was based on a short story, “The Greatest Gift”, which was written by Phillip Van Doren Stern in 1939.
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Capra graduated from high school on January 27, 1915, and in September of that year, he entered the Throop College of Technology (later the California Institute of Technology) to study chemical engineering. The school's annual tuition was $250, and Capra received occasional financial support from his family, who were resigned to the fact they had a scholar in their midst. Throop had a fine arts department, and Capra discovered poetry and the essays of Montaigne, which he fell in love with, while matriculating at the technical school. He then decided to write.

"It was a great discovery for me. I discovered language. I discovered poetry. I discovered poetry at Caltech, can you imagine that? That was a big turning point in my life. I didn't know anything could be so beautiful." Capra penned "The Butler's Failure," about an English butler provoked by poverty to murder his employer, then to suicide.
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http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001008/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

- I couldn't help but notice the similarity of IAWL to his butler's tale.

 
Binky The Doormat said:
Adam has misled me.  Hell, I don't know ...I recently saw the show and thought I would post what I thought I heard.  Here is the result of a quick google search from "Plagiarism Today".

From Copyright Failure, to Public Domain Success

“It’s a Wonderful Life” debuted in 1946 and was based on a short story, “The Greatest Gift”, which was written by Phillip Van Doren Stern in 1939. The film, despite being headlined by James Stewart, one of the biggest actors at the time, was not a commercial success.

The film, in its time, was largely forgotten and that includes the original copyright holders in the film, Republic Pictures.

Under copyright law at the time, a work was protected for 28 years but that copyright protection could trivially be extended for another 28 by paying a small fee and filing a form with the U.S. Copyright Office. However, regardless of whether Republic forgot or simply didn’t feel the film was worth renewing, that renewal was not filed. As a result, in 1974, the film lapsed into the public domain.

But it was in the public domain that the film saw a revival. TV networks, eager for cheap holiday-oriented content, latched on to the film and began to play it during the holiday season. Though near-constant airplay, the film found something it hadn’t before, an audience. It grew from an obscure 1940s film to a holiday classic and became a staple of many families’ holiday traditions.

This is how the film was played for nearly 20 years and it could have stayed that way forever, if an unrelated copyright case had not changed the course of its history forever.
Click to expand...
It was a flop based on it's large budget. Some blame poor marketing (it was marketed as a romantic comedy) and others blame it opening against the mega hit "The Best Years of Our Lives" (tremendous movie BTW). While it's not normal for a film to lose copyright, it happened to plenty of movies back then. Movies weren't considered the art that they are today and the studios didn't really think many movies would have a future (no TV, VHS, etc). 

 
AAABatteries said:
Wait for the Michael Bay remake - #### will be blowing up left and right.
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Yeah don't really need explosions. Every year I watch the 1951 Scrooge with Alistair Sim in the titular role. Quite simply the best version. Well acted, well written. A staple at Chez NCC every Christmas Eve at midnight. No explosions and really low tech special effects. All about the story.

 
maxwelledison said:
NCC, I agree with you most of the time but if George Bailey alone doesn't warrant a thumbs up...
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Just never resonated with me. Don't know why. I like plenty of old movies and I like Jimmy Stewart. But come on it started life as a Christmas card that was vanity published. Because no one would publish the original story. It was a box office dud as well. People have been taught to like it as NBC got the rights for all but nothing and shoved it down the public's throat ever since.

 
NCCommish said:
Just never resonated with me. Don't know why. I like plenty of old movies and I like Jimmy Stewart. But come on it started life as a Christmas card that was vanity published. Because no one would publish the original story. It was a box office dud as well. People have been taught to like it as NBC got the rights for all but nothing and shoved it down the public's throat ever since.
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People keep saying this - you really believe they would keep showing it if nobody watched?

 
AAABatteries said:
People keep saying this - you really believe they would keep showing it if nobody watched?
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You may not be old enough to remember but when this started it was a time when there were 4 networks if you count PBS. Your choices were limited. Especially late when they would play this movie. They play stuff late because rating aren't great and it is filler. People have grown attached over the years so it is more popular now. But it didn't start that way.

 
NCCommish said:
You may not be old enough to remember but when this started it was a time when there were 4 networks if you count PBS. Your choices were limited. Especially late when they would play this movie. They play stuff late because rating aren't great and it is filler. People have grown attached over the years so it is more popular now. But it didn't start that way.
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So why are they still showing it? 

 
NCCommish said:
Just never resonated with me. Don't know why. I like plenty of old movies and I like Jimmy Stewart. But come on it started life as a Christmas card that was vanity published. Because no one would publish the original story. It was a box office dud as well. People have been taught to like it as NBC got the rights for all but nothing and shoved it down the public's throat ever since.
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Meh. There's a lot of movies that didn't find their audience at the box office, that are now considered classics and great movies. 

Obviously the "public domain" blitz of the 80s/early 90s exposed it to a big portion of the population who might have never seen it....but if it wasn't well received....it would have faded into holiday obsurity ala Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. 

 
RBM said:
How ####### obnoxious. 
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To me it's like beer. Everyone told me I had to drink enough of it to develop a taste for it. Well no. I liked my first Jack and Coke never looked back. People are taught to like stuff all the time by advertising and societal pressure.

 
NCCommish said:
Just never resonated with me. Don't know why. I like plenty of old movies and I like Jimmy Stewart. But come on it started life as a Christmas card that was vanity published. Because no one would publish the original story. It was a box office dud as well. People have been taught to like it as NBC got the rights for all but nothing and shoved it down the public's throat ever since.
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Well, not really, more like a box office disappointment. It was a box office dud in the sense that it lost money due to the high production costs of $3.6 million with only a box office take of $3.3 million - the major costs attributed specifically for the set created for Bedford Falls. However, for that year it was the 26th highest grossing film: 

http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/6-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-its-a-wonderful-life

And get this: Out of the 400 films released in 1947 (it was technically released on Dec. 20, 1946, so that it could be considered for the Academy Awards but went into general release on Jan. 7, 1947), “It’s a Wonderful Life” placed 26th in box office revenues, one spot ahead of another dripping-with-cheesy-sentiment Christmas classic, “Miracle on 34th Street.”

 
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squistion said:
Well, not really, more like a box office disappointment. It was a box office dud in the sense that it lost money due to the high production costs of $3.6 million with only a box office take of $3.3 million - the major costs attributed specifically for the set created for Bedford Falls. However, for that year it was the 26th highest grossing film: 

http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/6-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-its-a-wonderful-life

And get this: Out of the 400 films released in 1947 (it was technically released on Dec. 20, 1946, so that it could be considered for the Academy Awards but went into general release on Jan. 7, 1947), “It’s a Wonderful Life” placed 26th in box office revenues, one spot ahead of another dripping-with-cheesy-sentiment Christmas classic, “Miracle on 34th Street.”
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Miracle was also billed a romance and not as a holiday movie. It was released in May and the studio even tried to hide the fact it was centered around Christmas. 

 
NCCommish said:
Just never resonated with me. Don't know why. I like plenty of old movies and I like Jimmy Stewart. But come on it started life as a Christmas card that was vanity published. Because no one would publish the original story. It was a box office dud as well. People have been taught to like it as NBC got the rights for all but nothing and shoved it down the public's throat ever since.
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The self-published "Christmas Card" featured a different script and several different characters. IAWL is far superior in every way. Trying to use the original story to bash IAWL is like saying "The Beatles sucked because they couldn't get a record deal back when they were The Quarrymen".

Also, if the movie was really as overrated as you claim, then the TV ratings would have declined as the years went by. The fact that the movie continues to get high ratings year after year is a testament to how good it really is. Furthermore, the movie is no longer in the public domain, and it is only aired a few times a year. So it's no longer being "shoved down the public's throat", yet it is still as popular as ever.

 
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