BackIt's a Wonderful Life
(book in English)
- Type
- Studies
- Subject
- One Film > Life Is Beautiful
- Frank Capra, James Stewart
- Publishing Date
- 2023 (September 07, 2023)
- Publisher
- BFI Publishing
- Collection
- BFI Film Classics
- Language
- English
Relative size
- Physical desc.
- Paperback • 168 pages • 18 €
5 ¼ x 7 ½ inches (13.5 x 19 cm) - ISBN
- 978-1-8390-2348-4
- User Ratings
(0 vote)Average rating:
0 rating 
= We can do without0 rating 
= Good book0 rating 
= Excellent book0 rating 
= Unique / a referenceYour rating: -
Book Presentation:
Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the aftermath of war that is one of the central movies of the 1940s, and a key text in America’s understanding of itself. This is a film that remains relevant to our own anxieties and yearnings, to all the contradictions of ordinary life, while also enacting for us the quintessence of the classic Hollywood aesthetic. Nostalgia, humour, and a tough resilience weave themselves through this movie, intertwining it with the fraught cultural moment of the end of World War II that saw its birth. It offers a still compelling merging of fantasy and realism that was utterly unique when it was first released, and has rarely been matched since.
Michael Newton's study of the film investigates the source of its extraordinary power and its long-lasting impact. He begins by introducing the key figures in the movie’s production - notably director Frank Capra and star James Stewart - and traces the making of the film, and then provides a brief synopsis of the film, considering its aesthetic processes and procedures, touching on all those things that make it such an astonishing film. Newton's careful analysis explores all those aspects of the film that are fundamental to our understanding of it, particularly the way in which the film brings tragedy and comedy together. Finally, Newton tells the story of the film’s reception and afterlife, accounting for its initial relative failure and its subsequent immense popularity.
See the publisher website: BFI Publishing
See Life Is Beautiful on IMDB ...
> From the same author:
Kind Hearts and Coronets (2003)
by Michael Newton
(in English)
Subject: One Film > Kind Hearts and Coronets
> On a related topic:
Romantic Comedy in Hollywood (1998)
From Lubitsch to Sturges
by James Harvey
(in English)
Subject: Genre > Comedy/Humor
Le populisme américain au cinéma (2015)
de D.W. Griffith à Clint Eastwood
Subject: Countries > United States
Note: A book on a slightly gray background is a book that is no longer currently published or that may be difficult to find in bookstores. The shown price is that of the book at its release, the price on the second-hand market may be very different.
A book on a beige background is a book published in a language other than French.