It happened again: Why edit "It's a Wonderful Life"?

Michie · Friday at 10:45 AM

Maybe churches should encourage the faithful to dig deeper into this parable

Every now and then, someone sends me a URL pointing to some kind of abomination with a butchered movie running somewhere on basic cable or hidden deep inside the bowels of a streaming service website.

It’s easy to mutter, “We live in a sinful, fallen world.” Frankly, it’s amazing that bored people handling off-hour broadcasts don’t fall asleep at key switches more often. Or maybe, viewers are seeing the results of snarky decisions by tech people reaching to less-than-graceful layoff decisions by callous bosses. Life happens.

This time around, the case study is quite symbolic. We’re talking about a super corporation letting someone cut the heart out of one of our culture’s most beloved Christmas classics — “It’s a Wonderful Life.” And I’m not exaggerating when I talk about “the heart” of that complex movie. They cut the pay-off sequence that defines everything that came before it.

As always, The New York Post had its editorial ear to the populist ground:

Amazon Prime Video is under fire for streaming a butchered version of “It’s a Wonderful Life” that guts the beloved Christmas classic.
Viewers say the abridged cut — roughly 22 minutes shorter than the original 130-minute film — removes the iconic “Pottersville” sequence, the pivotal stretch that explains why despairing hero George Bailey suddenly rediscovers the will to live.
In that part, Bailey declares his wish never to have been born and gets to see how crummy life would have been without him.
Without that sequence, audiences are left watching a man contemplate suicide one moment, then sprint joyfully through town the next — with no logical explanation.

Now, if all of this sounds familiar, it’s because the SAME DANGED THING happened last year and, yes, I wrote about it at Rational Sheep: “Why did Amazon Prime butcher Frank Capra’s classic? I am genuinely curious and rather depressed about this mess.”

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