It's a Wonderful Life you two guys? You were here on my wedding night!" Streaming audio It's a Wonderful Life It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas fantasy comedy-drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra, based on the short story and booklet "The Greatest Gift", which Philip Van Doren Stern wrote in 1939 and published privately in 1945. The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his dreams in order to help others, and whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George
It's a Wonderful Life "to combat a modern trend toward atheism". It ranked 283rd among critics, and 107th among directors, in the 2012 "Sight & Sound" polls of the greatest films ever made. The film's positive reception has continued into the present. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 94% based on 71 reviews, with an average rating of 8.9/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The holiday classic to define all holiday classics, "It's a Wonderful Life" is one of a handful of films worth an annual viewing." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film