Product Description

In this award-winning festival standout, Academy Award nominee Michèle Ohayon (Colors Straight Up) presents a riveting and powerful account of six women who are members of America’s growing "hidden homeless" population. Narrated by Jodie Foster, and with

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68534 in DVD
• Brand: New Video
• Released on: 2004-02-24
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 82 minutes

Amazon.com
The 1992 documentary It Was a Wonderful Life won several awards for its depiction of homeless women--the "hidden homeless" who don't sit on the streets and beg for change, but who live in motels and cars, often with children, while they desperately try to set their lives right. Several of the movie's subjects were left helpless from a bad divorce; one woman, a former singer, was abandoned by her affluent husband while pregnant with his sixth child. He now avoids paying child support, trusting in an over-loaded bureaucracy with limited power to enforce the law. It Was a Wonderful Life isn't the most artfully made documentary, but after listening to the revealing stories of these women--all struggling but determined to survive--you'll find yourself sizing up your own life, wondering if a brief illness or a lost job could steal your own life away. Narrated by Jodie Foster with music by Melissa Etheridge. --Bret Fetzer

Los Angeles Times, October 23, 1993
"It's worth seeing this fine and unsettling film....."

Jerusalem Post, July 6, 1993
"...a devastating documentary which does much to shatter public perceptions of who exactly the three million American homeless are."

Customer Reviews

Unsettling, if you're a middle-aged woman without security
I'm in my late 40s, and this film portrayed the situation that I fear most - losing my job and not being able to find another one, then losing my apartment, and then being at the mercy of the elements. I have very little family to fall back on, and I could only count on them for very short-term assistance. I suffer from mental illness that can only be controlled with medication, so losing access to medical insurance would plunge me back into depression and emotional instability.

I found the six women who were portrayed in this film to be a lot more resourceful and optimistic than I feel my potential to be.

The film was shot in the early 1990s, so watching it a decade later is a bit strange, since I wonder how much LA has changed in the interim. I suspect that the huge amount of illegal immigration into that area makes it even more difficult to find cheap housing than was the case 10 years ago.

In the late 80s and early 90s there was also a lot more sympathy for homeless people than there appears to be now, and there are probably less municipal/state/federal resources available now than there were back then. Now that the states are all running large deficits in their budgets, and the cost of housing has skyrocketed, it's probably a dreary prospect to be tossed out of the "safe" world.

Jodie Foster's narration was a bit underwhelming, but then that may have been appropriate, since the focus should remain on the subjects of the documentary.

This film shared the same problem with the whole concept behind most documentaries, namely: why do the documentarians not provide assistance to their subjects? Or do they have an obligation simply to portray what they observe without interfering?

Unsettling, if you're a twentysomething suburbanite
This is the type of film that haunts me, that reminds me to figure out what the heck I'm doing with my life to promote fair policies and foster cooperation in my community. Unlike more recent and flashier "social issue" documentaries, this film, and the stories of these working homeless women, play gently and firmly on your conscience. I remember these characters -- I'll remember them for a long time. Foster's narration is note-perfect.

I'm thankful for films like these. The trick, then, is for me, for us, to turn it into to some form of support.

It Was a Wonderful Life
I like Jodie Foster and I happened to find this movie. It turned out to be so good. This movie is a documentary about hidden homeless women. Those could be any one of us. I want to have the strength of holding myself tight enough that it won't affect by any changes around me.