What Year Was Its a Wonderful Life Supposed to Take Place
When we think of Christmas movies it's hard non to conjure up in our minds' center the classics: Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Carol, and of course Information technology's a Wonderful Life. Almost Christmas movies follow a similar enough design: something dire happens and only a Christmas phenomenon can save the day.
In the case of It'due south a Wonderful Life, that miracle actually came many years after the flick'due south initial debut. When the motion-picture show bowed in 1946, it was such a flop that information technology concluded upwards closing down the studio and, more or less, ending manager Frank Capra's career.
Information technology's a Wonderful Life is based on a novel of the aforementioned name by Philip Van Doren Stern, written in 1938. When no publishers responded to the story, Stern instead printed information technology on Christmas cards which he so sent to friends and family. I such card wound up in the letterbox of pic producer David Hempstead, who showed it to movie star Cary Grant.
Watch It's a Wonderful Life on Sky Cinema
Enamoured with the story, Grant brought information technology to RKO movies – the studio with which he frequently collaborated. Later on much dorsum and forth, all the same, the story was sold to Liberty Films for $x,000 and starred James Stewart.
Far from granting the studio its angel wings, It's a Wonderful Life ended up being the death knell for Liberty Films.
Bank of America's archival records prove that the company borrowed $one.54 million to brand the movie, directed by studio co-founder Frank Capra, on a budget of $2.3 one thousand thousand.
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Information technology's a Wonderful Life was released in cinemas in Dec 1946 (pushing it up a calendar month from January 1947 and then it would be eligible for Oscars nominations) to a disastrous turnout. By the end of its run, it recorded a $525,000 loss for the studio.
Initially set upwardly as an independent picture show company (whose films were distributed and, in some cases financed, by RKO), Liberty couldn't survive the financial accident. To avoid a takeover, co-founders Capra and William Wyler decided to sell Freedom Studios and its manager contracts to other competing studios. Paramount eventually won the bid.
Liberty Films was non long for the world, though, and by 1951 it was dissolved by Paramount. And with it went most of Frank Capra's career.
The box-office failure convinced film studios "that Capra was no longer capable of turning out the populist features that made his films the must-see, coin-making events they in one case were". (Marker Eliot, Jimmy Stewart: A Biography. New York: Random House, 2006.)
They were correct. Capra wasn't a Hollywood director, he was truly an independent. The son of Capra's former partner said: "Frank was never establish taking his hat off to conventional wisdom, market research, the front office or the latest trend."
Capra himself knew that Liberty Films was what cost him his reputation and employability. He, perhaps humorously, wrote in his autobiography that the goal of forming Freedom Films was to "(i) influence the course of Hollywood films, (2) make 4 former Army officers independently rich, and (3) almost prove fatal to my professional career."
Information technology wasn't merely artistic conviction that led to his downfall, though. Capra left soured relationships in the wake of It'due south a Wonderful Life, perhaps well-nigh importantly with pop screenwriting duo Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. Chauvinism was a problem.
A New York Times commodity said: "Frank Capra could be cavalier and you just didn't address Frances equally 'My honey woman.' When nosotros were pretty far forth in the script but not done, our agent called and said, 'Capra wants to know how soon you'll be finished.' Frances said, 'We're finished right now.' We put our pens downwardly and never went back to it."
He as well hired other writers in secret to rewrite their work (a no-no with the Screen Writers Guild) and continued to meddle with it, leaving the pair wholly disenchanted with the film and with Capra.
It's a Wonderful Life also proved fatal to Capra's long-time cooperation with composer Dimitri Tiomkin. Unhappy with Tiomkin'south score, Capra cutting many songs without conferring with Tiomkin. In his autobiography, the composer called it "an accommodating scissors job".
Capra blamed shifting trends in the film industry – with the rise of the 'film star' resulting in him existence forced to compromise his artistic vision. In his autobiography he wrote: "practically all the Hollywood picture show-making of today is stooping to inexpensive salacious pornography in a crazy bastardisation of a slap-up fine art to compete for the 'patronage' of deviates and masturbators".
And and then there are the communists.
The FBI and the Business firm United nations-American Activities Committee (HUAC) – Senator McCarthy's paranoid, red-menace coiffure – investigated It's a Wonderful Life for having communist leanings. Hard-right philosopher and author Ayn Rand said it had 'pernicious threats to Americanism' and the HUAC agreed.
They wrote that protagonist George Bailey's story was rife with subversive tendencies, like demonising backer bankers and attempting to instigate class warfare. Oh no!
They also concluded that "those responsible for making Information technology's a Wonderful Life had employed two mutual tricks used by communists to inject propaganda into the film". Further, the film used a "subtle endeavor to magnify the problems of the and then-chosen 'common man' in club".
With all this going against it, it'due south a wonder that It'southward a Wonderful Life ever became up as popular as information technology was. And it was likely a clerical error that allowed the picture show to re-enter the zeitgeist.
The 1909 Copyright Act stipulated that artistic works were protected for 28 years, after which the copyright holder would have to renew the copyright. Past 1974, either the studio was so not bad to distance itself from the turkey or they simply forgot, but the copyright protection was non renewed and thus Information technology's a Wonderful Life roughshod into the public domain.
This meant that Goggle box stations were free to run the film all year round (non just at Christmas) at almost no cost. So it was on all the fourth dimension. Peradventure this constant playing on screens beyond America meant the public before long realised what they had missed.
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You may think that watching It'southward a Wonderful Life whatever fourth dimension other than Christmas is sacrilege, but Capra never saw information technology as a Christmas motion picture, he just liked the idea of it.
Though Capra suffered profoundly for his fine art, It's a Wonderful Life somewhen got the credit it was due, and Capra did too. In 1982 he was awarded the American Film Institute'south lifetime achievement accolade.
At the ceremony, Capra said: "Don't follow trends. Start trends! Don't compromise. Believe in yourself! Because just the valiant can create. Simply the daring should make films. And only the morally courageous are worthy of speaking to their fellow human being for two hours and in the night."
It's a Wonderful Life is bachelor to watch on Sky Cinema and NOW.
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Source: https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a30117820/its-a-wonderful-life-flop-frank-capra/
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