Holiday cheers turned to jeers directed at Amazon last week as some film fans were surprised by a gutted version of the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” on Prime Video.
The 1946 film stars Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, a man who learns the value of his life after seeing what the world would be like without him.
In a story on Christmas Day, the New York Post called out Amazon for airing a “butchered” version of the film that is shorter than the original and missing a key sequence that the newspaper calls “the movie’s emotional core.”
Unsuspecting viewers who clicked on the cut copy vented on social media, calling it “an abomination” and “sacrilege.”
A search of the movie title on Prime Video on Monday morning brought up a few options, including a black and white version, a color version, and one clearly marked “abridged.” That version included a description which read, in part, “a condensed ending but still contains all the sweetness and Christmas wonder.”
It’s unclear if Amazon recently added the “abridged” labeling on that version. We reached out to the company for comment and will update when we hear back.
The Post story, and an accompanying video (below), detailed how the missing sequence factors into the film as a distraught George Bailey — who wishes he’d never been born — sees how his hometown of Bedford Falls devolves into a corrupt, neon-lit “Pottersville” without his existence.
The sequence helps Bailey realize how important his simple life is in shaping the fate of many, and his despair turns to joy.
The existence of the shorter version of the movie is not the work of Amazon editors, but rather is rooted in the copyright history of the film, as the Post points out.
A 2022 University of Connecticut law school blog post explains how the film fell into the public domain when its distributor failed to renew its copyright in 1974. This lapse helped turn “It’s a Wonderful Life” into a holiday classic because TV stations freely aired the movie for decades around Christmas without paying royalties.
In the 1990s, Republic Pictures regained control of the movie when it argued that it held properly maintained rights to two underlying elements: the original short story “The Greatest Gift,” by Philip Van Doren Stern, and the musical score by Dimitri Timokin.
Television networks were directed to stop playing “It’s a Wonderful Life” without permission or the payment of royalties. The Post reported that the abridged version appears to be a workaround that removes the “Pottersville” sequence to avoid infringing on a key portion most directly adapted from the short story.
