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The streaming model of It’s a Fantastic Life that’s exhibiting on Pluto, Tubi and Roku is an abomination with a brand new title and a horrible new musical rating.
Not since previous man Potter stole $8000 from Uncle Billy and the Financial savings & Mortgage has poor George Bailey needed to cope with a lot misfortune on Christmas Eve. A minimum of, that’s what I assumed once I was skimming PlutoTV final evening and found, to my horror, that the model of It’s a Fantastic Life streaming on the service’s 24-hour channel devoted solely to that film has an alternate rating. Certainly, Dimitri Tiomkin’s traditional rating has been changed by a brand new rating that sounds prefer it was lifted out of a Hallmark vacation film. No, scratch that. That’s not truthful to Hallmark films. It sounds just like the type of rating you’d hear in a Canadian Hallmark rip-off or one thing on the Nice American Household Community. And that’s not it. The film additionally has a brand new title, A Fantastic Life, and the credit declare it’s primarily based on “a narrative by Charles Dickens.” WTF? For the file, It’s a Fantastic Life has nothing to do with Charles Dickens. It’s primarily based on a brief story referred to as The Best Present by Philip Van Doren Stern. I tapped out after 10 minutes, but when anybody else occurred to undergo by means of extra of this bastardization, then by all means, tell us within the feedback.
So what provides? It comes all the way down to a rights problem. One of many fascinating issues about It’s a Fantastic Life is that the movie was a infamous flop when it got here out in January of 1947. Audiences on the time, maybe reeling from the fallout of WW2, had been extra keen on movie noir than an upbeat Christmas film (albeit one with a heavy dose of noir-inspired melancholy labored in), stayed away, and the movie sunk into obscurity. It was put out by a short-lived firm, Liberty Movies, based by the film’s director, Frank Capra, nevertheless it went below, and Capra’s profession by no means recovered. A lot of the firm’s movies lapsed into public area, together with It’s a Fantastic Life. Oddly, that was the film’s salvation, as TV networks might present the movie at no cost at any time when they needed to. It turned consistently proven across the holidays starting within the seventies, and that’s the way it turned a vacation staple.
Ultimately, Republic Footage (now owned by Paramount) might resecure the copyright as a result of whereas the movie components had been not protected by copyright, the musical rating was. Thus, whereas nonetheless being proven by networks like NBC (who’re nonetheless exhibiting the legit model), the film was not free to air. Nonetheless, some ad-supported streaming companies who don’t need to shell out large bucks for the streaming rights have discovered a approach round this authorized loophole by (badly) muting the rating by Dimitri Tiomkin and changing it with an inexpensive new model.
To me, that is nothing wanting creative vandalism. It makes a film that’s distinctly not tacky or low cost come off that approach, and locations like Pluto shouldn’t be allowed to do that because it trashes the unique movie’s legacy and units a nasty precedent. Studios are higher at defending the copyright of their films than they had been again within the forties, however there are numerous traditional movies from that space within the public area, and God forbid they get the identical remedy.
Fortunately, the model of It’s A Fantastic Life obtainable on good previous bodily media (or for buy by means of digital retailers) is the actual deal. So do yourselves a favour and skip this Pluto TV bastardization (additionally exhibiting on TubiTV and Roku within the States) in favour of the legit model.
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