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'How beautiful it is to live!': The movie that invented modern Christmas turns 75

2021-12-22T17:36:59.504Z


The Frank Capra classic was a fiasco at its premiere to end up becoming one of the most viewed films in history


We didn't believe in angels until we met good old Clarence earning his wings.

Every year around this time, televisions around the world broadcast, and some cinemas reload,

How beautiful it is to live!

, the movie that invented modern Christmas.

The Frank Capra classic starring James Stewart turns 75 and remains unbeatable as the best movie out there to keep hope alive.

More information

It is not so beautiful to live

It was not an immediate success. Its premiere in 1946 was rather a fiasco and only years later and unexpectedly the film was reunited with the public when it began to be broadcast on television in the seventies until it became, especially in the nineties, a mandatory menu every Christmas. The film was intended to be the Christmas jumpstart in the first year after World War II. However, the story of a good and responsible man who had not moved in the life of his people did not connect with the collective trauma of the postwar period or with the mentality of his veterans.

Filming was not easy either, also due to the aftermath of the war. James Stewart, an actor capable of handling emotions like Fred Astaire's feet to dance, was stuck and about to leave acting. His passage through the front had changed him. It was Capra who insisted and who convinced him, but the actor spent the shoot with permanent doubts and insecurities about his future in the trade. Nor was there much chemistry with his main co-star, Donna Reed, who played his wife and who, unlike Stewart - who was reunited with the pleasure of acting thanks to the film - was slow to overcome failure.

Living is beautiful!

It is about a man in a dead end and ready to commit suicide. In his desperation he runs into an angel, Clarence, whose mission is to save him and, incidentally, earn his own wings. Stewart portrayed the guy trapped by his goodness and the rosy, smiling British actor Henry Travers his

clown

from heaven.

At 81, Karolyn Grimes is one of the few survivors of the film's art team. She played the Bailey family's youngest daughter, Zulu, in charge of uttering the phrase from the most famous shot in the entire movie: "Dad, every time a bell rings, an angel has earned wings." In an interview these days with

The Washington Post

,

Grimes evokes a movie that every year forces him to attend all kinds of tributes, conventions and events.

This year, in addition, the Festival

How beautiful it is to live!

, which has been taking place for two decades in Seneca Falls, New York, has offered a marathon week of talks and anecdote exchange in a town that is considered the source of inspiration for the people of the film. Although this was shot entirely in California, Capra had been in Seneca Falls while preparing the script and called the town of the film Bedford Falls. The remarkable coincidences are already part of local tourism. For the 75th anniversary, the festival, which aims to host a museum about the film, has created a gift box with new

memorabilia

, including a Christmas tree cutout for the angel Clarence with his newly won wings.

There are other perfect films for Christmas, from

Cita en San Luis

to

La jeya de la familia,

but none start with a conservation between two constellations in the sky that are presented as God and Saint Joseph.

While blinking, they both talk about a mission on Earth run by the most disastrous angel in the universe.

"He has the brain of a mosquito," Saint Joseph tells God.

"Yes, but also the pure faith of a child," adds God about a character who still in the form of a tiny star is presented with

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

under his arm.

An angel with the air of a clown whose purity explains the miracle of the film that best represents the Christmas spirit.

Source: elparis

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