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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 hometown 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, but 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.
Then came the misrule of Old Joe Biden, and Trump’s Bedford Falls became Pottersville. Putin’s armies moved against Ukraine. Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. Inflation went through the roof. Gas prices became prohibitive. Old Joe and his “Border Czar” Kamala Harris erased the border, and untold numbers of criminals and terrorists streamed in, along with hordes of economic migrants who added a further strain upon the sputtering economy. Crime went through the roof. Racial resentment went through the roof. Mentally disturbed men who claimed they were women were forced upon us from the highest levels, and everyone had to play along and agree that they were women, on pain of deplatforming and vilification as a “bigot.”
And then, like that great, big, lovable lug George Bailey, America had a vision. It didn’t have to be this way. If Old Joe Biden’s America was a vision of what the country would have been like if Donald Trump were not president, Trump himself was still around, offering a way back to Bedford Falls. America had enough of the woke hegemony, the high crime, the high prices, the lessening respect around the world, the enforced gender madness, and all the rest and voted against Old Joe’s Pottersville.
Amazon is one of the wokest companies out there. It is in the process of killing off the James Bond series, which has run for sixty years, in pursuit of its far-left agenda. Is it possible, just possible, that the Pottersville scene got axed out of concern that too many Americans would watch it and draw the obvious analogy? Nah. Amazon wouldn’t do something like that, would it? Oh, surely not!
Cutting scenes from movies can change the whole meaning of the movie.
Those cuttings happen more often than we think. I re-watch a lot of old movies and notice that scenes have been cut out.
It’s annoying. Not as annoying as my girlfriends but pretty close.
That’s why I never watched movies on network TV. Some of it is just making it fit the time slot with commercials, some cuts are for language and graphic nudity or violence. R rated movies end up almost cut in half, and I’d prefer bleeps to the ridiculous overdubs. No need, since the 70s.
Grumpy Mr. Potter was a Democrat Supporters and Voter thats quite plain
Not because he sincerely believed in Marxism but because he actually had no political convictions at all and simply kissed the ring of whoever was in power. Just look at Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and others visiting Mar A Lago to bow down and kiss the King’s ring. It’s disgusting.
“ As a group, businessmen have been withdrawing for decades from the ideological battlefield, disarmed by the deadly combination of altruism and Pragmatism. Their public policy has consisted in appeasing, compromising and apologizing: appeasing their crudest, loudest antagonists; compromising with any attack, any lie, any insult; apologizing for their own existence. Abandoning the field of ideas to their enemies, they have been relying on lobbying, i.e., on private manipulations, on pull, on seeking momentary favors from government officials. Today, the last group one can expect to fight for capitalism is the capitalists.” – Ayn Rand
If Amazon cut out the Pottersville scene then the Marxists at Amazon are dummer than their Marxist ancestors because the most obvious conclusion for the audience to make of Mr. Potter and his Pottersville is greedy capitalist banker bad, capitalism evil.
I’m surprised they didn’t ADD a scene with a character named Luigi Mangione stalking Mr. Potter early Christmas morning and killing him in cold blood.
Does this imply that we are in the Potterville timeline?
interesting that when Hunter Biden used the word, the press, and especially the paper of discord, ignored it.
I am in my seventies and FILM is THE definitive art of my generation. The censors are cretinous morons imposing their idiotic notions on everyone else. Their sheer STUPIDITY is breathtaking. In the restored and definitive version of The French Connection, they censored out the ‘n’ word. Gene Hackman is showing us the bigoted, violent and bitter dark side of the detective Doyle and it is a vital and off-putting aspect of his character. They are drooling idiots snipping up our cinematic heritage.
Amazon censoring original material? Say it isn’t so. Such butchery would be akin to cutting out the spirit of Christmas Yet to Come chapter in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” No wonder we’re turning into an ignorant illiterate society.
Well, Whammy’s On have censored out most of the small independent retailers on their site using false accusations of piracy thus leaving themselves as he sole seller of those products.
I do personally know of two manufacturers who, once aware of Amazon’s game, simply refused to supply Amazon with any more of their products, and THEN established an ironclad policy that no resellers of their products may well on the Amazon platform on any basis.
I made certain to convey my hearty approval of this policy. At last, SOMEONE stood up again the utter corruption of The Zon. I cheered again.
I am not a copyright attorney, but I wonder how this could be a copyright issue–due to the age of the film, I would have thought it is in the public domain by now. That segment has always been in the film since I began seeing it in the 70s. Suspicious how a “copyright issue” affects only the segment that graphically illustrates how each never-birth/abortion affects many lives tragically. An incredibly powerful segment. One of my favorite films for many years. One of those times I re-commit to minimize the business I do with Amazon.
From my understanding, there is the possibility that this version that was available on Amazon was a public domain version that trimmed out certain scenes to retain its public domain status. Apparently, some time in the 1990s, an offshoot of the original film distributor (Republic Pictures) claimed that it still owned the copyright to the short story the film was based on as well as select pieces of the film soundtrack. That meant that anyone who broadcasts the movie in whole would have to pay royalties to Republic Pictures for the parts of the film it does own (I think Paramount acquired Republic Pictures in the years since, so now it would be Paramount that owns those elements to It’s A Wonderful Life.) But if a distributor wanted to release the public domain version, they would have to remove the scenes Paramount owns elements to.
As you might have guessed, I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to knowing which corporate entities own certain movies and movie libraries.
Boy do I miss Ted Turner. He would have done the right thing.
Robert, as usual, you are right on the money with this analysis.
Ditto on your James Bond article in PJ Media.