It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) – DVD

***/****
OUV DVD – Image B+ Sound A- Extras C
AE DVD – Image A Sound A- Extras C
starring James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Beulah Bondi
screenplay by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett and Frank Capra
directed by Frank Capra

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The year was 1990. I was 17, and had managed to elude the silver-backed beast known as It's a Wonderful Life for most of my young life. Having heard of the corn factory known as Frank Capra, I, a hard-bitten cynic, naturally feared the worst–I was more interested in corrosive (and recent) films like Do the Right Thing or Drugstore Cowboy than in some schmaltzy old battleaxe starring Jimmy Stewart. But I was working in a video store at Christmastime, which meant only one thing: the constant rotation of It's a Wonderful Life on the store monitor. And I was shocked to discover that the movie is pretty disturbing; it may have come dressed as the lamb of sentimentality, but inside it was a howling wolf, seething with failure and loneliness and wishing for something to take it all away.

I don't mean to say that the film is the full-blown masterpiece its supporters insist it is, because it's not. Nevertheless, it has more going on than the label of "Capra-corn" would initially suggest. As I watched it over and over again (as millions have done since the '60s, when it entered the public domain and became a television staple), I found that it has an underbelly of shame and desperation that ordinary melodrama simply doesn't possess. The film doesn't introduce evil into a paradise to be roundly defeated–it places someone who yearns for such a paradise in a world about to topple into evil, and shows that in beating it back one sometimes has to make ludicrous sacrifices. This is not the stuff of cheap Hollywood fantasy, it's something else, and the movie sticks like few "optimistic" fairy tales ever do.

To be sure, there's enough oblivious bliss to go around. Bedford Falls is filled with the sort of Norman Rockwell types who give a surface of peace and tranquility, a variety of "healthy" individuals living together in the happy community conformists insist existed before the disaster of the 1960s. But because the social fabric that holds it together is frayed and delicate, it requires a guardian, in the form of George Bailey (Stewart), to keep it from falling apart. There is no idyllic capitalist god shining prosperity and benevolence, only old man Potter (Lionel Barrymore) trying to buy up the town so that he might destroy it for profit. The one thing standing in his way is Bailey's building and loan, and to keep the town alive, Bailey has to keep himself in a tiny place too small for his ambitions–a cruel irony that a lesser film would never have the guts to admit.

True, the picture never gets around to reconciling the pain of failed ambitions with the joy that the town seems to exude–it wants to have it both ways and only winds up contradicting itself. In reality, Bailey would still be bitter even after his re-introduction to his importance by the angel Clarence–maybe even more so, as he now knows that the whole town is wired to his claustrophobic ass. Too, the film's eleventh-hour rescue of his building and loan and subsequent affirmation of everything that depressed our hero is simply Hollywood pretense on a massive scale. But one doesn't really remember the "happiness" of the movie; one remembers a vulnerable community and a dogged attempt to stop it. For this reason alone, It's a Wonderful Life has power to spare that makes it worth watching for even a pseudo-sophisticate teenager trapped behind the counter at his afterschool job.

THE DVD – ORIGINAL UNCUT VERSION
Artisan has reissued their THX-certified It's a Wonderful Life DVD from 1999 (containing the "original uncut version") with new art that drops the unsightly "Silver Screen" banner from the front cover. The disc itself may not be exactly wonderful, but it's certainly creditable, with the fullscreen image boasting of fine detail and a well-defined B&W chromatic range even though picture quality is somewhat compromised by the nicks and scratches of a slightly damaged source print. Meanwhile, the Dolby 2.0 mono mix sounds crisp and even, with no background hiss of which to speak. The flipside extras, however, are mostly substandard. There is a 22-minute 1990 TV special ("The Making of It's a Wonderful Life") hosted by Tom Bosley in a bad sweater; most of the information won't come as much of a shock to most Capra-heads, and it's further marred by cheap sets and a blurry transfer. Even worse is "A Personal Remembrance" (14 mins.), which can be barely deciphered through the video noise. Therein, Frank Capra Jr. manages to reiterate most of the salient points made by the Bosley featurette while paying tribute to his father; it's stiff and sentimental and not worth viewing. The film's theatrical trailer rounds out the package, which includes a glorified photo album of production stills as a keepcase insert. Originally published: October 23, 2003.

THE DVD – 60TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
by Bill Chambers Following the dissolution of Artisan, Paramount inherited more than half of Republic's catalogue, and if I'm not mistaken It's a Wonderful Life is the studio's first official reissue of a Republic title. Based on it, I can't wait to see Pursued and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (and, of course, Highlander II: The Quickening), for transfer-wise, this is a tenfold improvement on the previous disc(s) even without the benefit of THX certification. At no cost to its celluloid character, the image has been leeched of print defects and sports richer contrast, while advancements in encoding technology led to increased fine detail; the phrase "Criterion-worthy" springs to mind. On the other hand, those who aren't sticklers for picture quality are advised to stick with the Artisan DVD(s), as the Dolby Digital 2.0 mono sound remains the same and Paramount has predictably done away with the insert booklet while recycling the Tom Bosley- and Frank Capra Jr.-hosted segments in lieu of producing fresh supplementary material. If only Warner owned It's a Wonderful Life, this seminal film might finally get the definitive SE it deserves. Note that although Paramount's release of It's a Wonderful Life allegedly runs two minutes shorter than Artisan's, the film's oft-reported running time of 132 minutes is a misnomer.

• OUV DVD – 132 minutes; NR; 1.33:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 2.0 (Mono), French DD 2.0 (Mono), Spanish DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-10; Region One; Artisan
• AE DVD – 130 minutes; G; 1.33:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 2.0 (Mono), French DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Paramount