"David H. Adler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Warning, film geekage follows.
>
> It's A Wonderful Life cannot be fully understood outside of the context
> of the similar films that preceeded it.
[...]
> This brings us to It's A Wonderful Life. How this turned into the
> feel-good christmas film everyone takes it for is beyond me. Except
> for the "happy ending", which, if one thinks about it at all is
> *not* really all that happy, the movie is horribly depressing. The
> absence of one, admittedly very good, man causes the entire town to
> turn into a cesspool of corruption and deceit (well, sort of...
> following a theme here...) - *one* man's life is removed from the
> equation and *every single person* in town becomes evil (or, at
> best, self-absorbed) or crushed underfoot. This is a *happy* film?
> The ending is usually taken to show that everything is going to be
> just fine - with little justification. All we see is this one
> impending disaster momentarily averted. Everything that led up to it
> is still in place.
Note too that in this film the *truly* evil man gets to walk away,
scott free, with everybody's money. (And if that was a spoiler, then I
apologise, but you really should have seen the film by now.)
--
Piers Cawley
www.iterative-software.com
