Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson

and in this Christmas week we focus on the comfort of seasonal family favorite films from the past.

It's a wonderful life. Look daddy, teacher says every time the bell rings, an angel gets his wings.

Charlie Chaplin's masterpiece, The Great Dictator.

I don't think anybody understands how courageous it was of Chaplin to make that film at that time,

both physically and commercially.

Plus, a real Von Trapp, an Indian classic,

and from Japan, the castle in the sky.

What are you?

After the screening, some people were shouting,

Bravo, and giving us a standing evasion.

Some had to dry their eyes with handkerchiefs,

and others were really sobbing.

That's all coming up in this podcast on Films,

and we're going to begin with Christmas

1946 and the premiere of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. A work now so steeped in its

own mythology and so revered by its many millions of fans that it's regularly cited as among the very best films of all time.

A film whose message is so warm and life affirming that I even read somewhere that a judge in America once ordered

the guilty party as part of his punishment to watch it's a wonderful life several times.

Enough already. Simon Watts has been speaking to one of the film's Child Stars. A bell rings and I say,

bell rings and I say, Daddy,

teacher says, every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.

...