New in PJ Media:
Amazon gave viewers an ugly Christmas surprise this year, when those who engage in the American yuletide tradition of watching the cinematic classic ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ found a key scene of the movie cut out, rendering the rest incoherent. Amazon offered an “abridged” version that left out the entire “Pottersville” scene, George Bailey’s vision of what the world would have been like if he had never been born. Apparently the whole thing was over a copyright issue with that scene in the 1946 film, but it’s also worth noting in this connection that America is poised to emerge from its own Pottersville, the four years of the Biden-Harris regime. As it was once fashionable to say, I question the timing.
You remember the story. The angel, Clarence, treats a despondent George to an extended look at what his home town of Bedford Falls would have become if he had not been around to exert his quiet, modest influence for the good. George, astonished, sees that Bedford Falls has been renamed Pottersville, after the heartless and amoral businessman with whom George locks horns. It’s a grim, dark place, full of battered souls whose hopes and dreams have been beaten out of them.
As George surveys the wreckage of his beloved little town, he realizes that just as many in the town have good reason to be grateful to him, he has abundant reason to be grateful as well. His vision over, George rushes home proclaiming that it is, indeed, a wonderful life.
Fox News reported Thursday, however, that “on Amazon Prime’s version of the movie, details of what led to his changed attitude towards his life are left out. Instead, after the angel tells George he has to earn his wings, the scene cuts to George joyously running through the streets after he’s realized the value of his own life.”
This not only makes the movie meaningless and impossible to understand. It also leads to inevitable questions about whether woke Amazon executives decided that a trip through Pottersville was just what America didn’t need this Christmas. Look at it this way: from 2017 to 2021, Donald Trump was president. For the first time in ages, America got involved in no new wars. Inflation wasn’t eating away at Americans’ life savings. Gas prices were lower than they had been in years. Putin didn’t move a fingernail against Ukraine. Hamas hatched no plots to massacre Israelis wholesale. Trump started building the wall on the southern border, and illegal entries slowed to a trickle.
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Yaakov Holansky says
Generally speaking, it’s the Leftist intent and action over several years to rewrite historically significant pieces of work such as MarkTwain. They’ve stated that this is their Revisionist goal.
Mick says
They need to check the eay passages in Moby Dick where Ishmael refers to tatooed Polynesian Queequeg as a savage and a cannibal.
He later sees the light and compares him to George Washington
.
Peter Burrows says
Uncle Joe (Stalin) Lives!
Emilie Green says
They took out Nick’s “Hey look, mister. We serve hard drinks in here for men who want to get drunk fast, and we don’t need any characters around to give the joint “atmosphere”. Is that clear, or do I have to slip you my left for a convincer?”
Suffering succotash!
somehistory says
Didn’t that make for a very short movie?
I have only watched the movie once, but if memory serves, the entire part where the angel talks to george, is quiet lengthy. Taking it out, not only distorts the story, but makes it really short, too.
Of course, I might be wrong, as stated, only watching it once some time ago.
James Lincoln says
somehistory,
Perhaps I am being over analytical, but I think that the top brass at Amazon may think that the movie is “pro-life”.
somehistory says
I think you are most probably correct, James. If the life had been snuffed-out, George would never have been born.
Imagine all of the babies who have been murdered….what wonders they may have performed, what grand accomplishments, what great love they might have shown, how sweetly they may have smiled.
James Lincoln says
Yes, somehistory.
Wellington says
Makes no sense but then the Left makes no sense and so, fittingly and paradoxically, it does make sense.
Vietnam Veteran says
Wellington says I agree.
gravenimage says
Amazon Cuts Key Scene from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ Just as We’re About to Emerge from Pottersville
………………………………….
I just watched this wonderful movie with my husband again last night. (On E!–a few awkwardly placed commercials, but otherwise intact).
Without the Pottersville sequence, the movie is not just incoherent–it has lost its entire point–what the world would be like if its modest hero George Bailey had never been born. And his influence for good extends beyond his small home town, to events in the outside world and WWII as well, because his younger brother never would have lived to become a hero and save lives in that terrible conflict.
Despite George’s very real–and very relatable–frustrations with his life and his plans, he realizes that he as an individual has been able to be a big influence for good for scores of people–his family, his friends, his clients, his town, and those that those these other people have touched. It is a great celebration of the individual and the effect he can have.
That makes is a very American–and very human–story. Can’t have that…