Where to stream It’s A Wonderful Life this holiday season
Don’t be an Uncle Billy, here’s where to stream It’s A Wonderful Life this holiday season
Aux News Wonderful Life
The joy of a suitcase, the relief of a bloody lip, the pride of winning a set of wings. Few films better articulate these feelings better than Frank Capra’s seminal It’s A Wonderful Life. One of the best films ever made, It’s A Wonderful Life wasn’t always so warmly received. It traveled a circuitous path from a studio-tanking, suspected communist propaganda Christmas movie released in mid-July to the standard-bearer for all holiday entertainment. Endlessly imitated but never equaled, George Bailey’s creeping realization that maybe his life hasn’t been so bad after all is a must-watch every holiday season, and this one is no exception. But how does one watch it while avoiding those bizarre colorized versions?
Currently, It’s A Wonderful Life is streaming for “free” on Prime Video. However, one needs to search for “It’s A Wonderful Life (Black & White Version)” to find the original. The colorized version is also on Prime, but we can’t, in good faith, recommend anyone watch that. It’s worth the $4 to see a jaundice-free Donna Reed.
It’s A Wonderful Life is available to rent on all major platforms, including Apple TV, Google Play, YouTube, and VUDU. The movie is also available for purchase on 4K UHD, which remains the best way to watch it short of a theatrical screening.
If you’re more of a Yuletide traditionalist, the movie will also air, as it does annually, on NBC on December 24 at 8 p.m. There is no better way to experience It’s A Wonderful Life than interrupted by Flo from Progressive, reminding you to call Progressive after driving into your neighbor’s old tree.
Hee-haw and Merry Christmas, The A.V. Club.
5 Comments
What’s the deal on this movie’s rights? Wasn’t it public domain? But then somehow NBC got “exclusive” rights to it in the mid-’90s because the studio had rights to the story, but not the film? Or something like that?
Basically yes. Basically people realized that the short story it was based on was still under copyright (because the author renewed it) even though the movie was public domain (because of a technical error in its copyright renewal).
Yes, and because of that period in public domain, for some of us it’s unnecessary to stream it. We have the entire film pretty well burned into our visual cortex. I remember sitting around at a Christmas Eve family gathering one year, playing a game of seeing whether I could keep a TV continuously showing a broadcast of the film, switching channels each time Zuzu was told that Clarence got his wings. I made it through the entire evening, 7-8 hours, and could have kept it up longer if the gathering hadn’t finally ended.
Which service will have the killing spree ending?