Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life

in Film, Literature | July 20th, 2011 6 Comments

Com­bine Franz Kafka’s 1915 novel­la The Meta­mor­pho­sis (get free etext here) with Frank Capra’s 1946 clas­sic film, It’s a Won­der­ful Life, and what do you get? A rather remark­able absur­dist short film. Direct­ed by Peter Capal­di, Franz Kafka’s It’s a Won­der­ful Life won an Oscar for Live Action Short Film in 1994, plus a BAFTA Award for Best Short Film. Watch Part 1 above, and then find Part 2 and Part 3 on YouTube. The 25 minute film is also added to our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via Film School Rejects H/T @webacion


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Comments (6)
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  • Brad Ovenell-Carter says:
    July 22, 2011 at 9:31 am

    You will cer­tain­ly enjoy this, then: Gre­gor Sam­sa’s cor­re­spon­dence with Dr. Seuss, a cre­ation of Canada’s CBC and one of the clever­est bits of radio I’ve ever heard. http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/wiretap_20100821_33370.mp3

    Reply
  • Garrigus Carraig says:
    August 14, 2011 at 10:01 pm

    Odd. The hypo­thet­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions of Franz Kaf­ka to “It’s a Won­der­ful Life” were pre­vi­ous­ly explored by Jonathan Lethem & Carter Scholz in the sto­ry “Reced­ing Hori­zon” of 1999.

    Reply
  • Paula Reed Nancarrow says:
    December 24, 2011 at 3:05 pm

    Parts I, II and III do not actu­al­ly appear to be the entire movie, which runs 80-some min­utes and is avail­able from Ama­zon and Vudu. Although I’m not sure I could take the entire film — twen­ty-two min­utes was clever, but enough.

    Reply
  • excellency says:
    January 10, 2013 at 10:37 pm

    hi. all these movies aren’t here for free download,are they? how can i down­load them?
    thanks

    Reply
  • Joe D. says:
    March 11, 2013 at 11:35 am

    @Garrigus Car­raig, you’re not much of one for thor­ough­ly read­ing before com­ment­ing are you? This film won an Oscar in 1994, thus it was made it 1993. How exact­ly is a short sto­ry from 1999 “pre­vi­ous” to a film made in 1993? Your com­ment would be accu­rate of the short sto­ry that explored what this film already had six years pre­vi­ous­ly.

    Reply
  • Martin Sachs says:
    August 2, 2013 at 10:55 pm

    I have an ambiva­lent hate-love rela­tion­ship to Kaf­ka. Start­ed in Ger­man Lit­er­a­ture lessons at High school, and con­tin­ued in my own writ­ing. I very much enjoyed the short film, thanks for putting the link here.
    Paula, which movie are you talk­ing about? This one runs 23 min­utes, accord­ing to imdb http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106961/

    Reply

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