They cover a lot of ground, including, unsurprisingly, the sound design and cinematography, but they also discuss such topics as the film’s box office failure and its resurrection as a perennial holiday favorite. Secrets From the Vault: It’s a Wonderful Life (22 minutes): Ben Burtt, the sound designer and editor who’s known to many fans from his work on the Star Wars movies, and Craig Barron, a visual effects supervisor and historian, dig into Capra’s career in the context of the making of this film.There’s plenty of technical detail here for folks who enjoy that kind of thing. Restoring a Beloved Classic (13 minutes): A pair of Paramount executives talk about the extensive process that the film went through to restore and preserve it in 4K resolution.This edition includes the same bonus features found on the 2019 4K disc, although my understanding is that there are some extras that weren’t ported over from other releases. I’ll admit I’m not as much of a zealot about colorization as I was way back when it was a big controversy in the 80s, but it still bugs me. Also included is a Blu-ray that houses a colorized (gasp!) version of the film. Paramount clearly put a lot of effort into restoring the movie, and it shows. Like the 4K version released last year, this edition of It’s a Wonderful Life features image quality that’s probably about as good as this film has looked since 1946. But I’ll admit that I’m a Jimmy Stewart fan, and this movie gets me every time, even as I’m wondering what a guy married to Donna Reed has to feel bad about. Sure, the story is sappy, and it’s very much a product of its time, especially those post-World War II years when many people wanted to move past that awful conflict and feel positive about life.

Spoiler alert: It turns out that life would have been much worse for many people, and George realizes that he did have an important impact on the small town of Bedford Falls. With the story caught up to the beginning of the film, Clarence intervenes to show George what would have happened if he had never been born. Time and again, George puts others’ needs ahead of his own, and when he makes a costly mistake that threatens to destroy the family business, he finds himself on a bridge contemplating suicide and wishing he was never born.

It's a wonderful life movie poster