On Sun, Sep 23, 2001 at 08:15:00AM +0100, Piers Cawley wrote:
> "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.)
Yeah, I meant to mention that too, but burned out. :-) More to the
point, though, he doesn't go away. Again, he's still there to attempt
to carry out further evil.
Gosh, I guess Small Town America(tm) is just a slimepit...
dha, so glad he lives in The Big City(tm)...
--
David H. Adler - <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.panix.com/~dha/
"I go where I will and I do what I can" - Henry Fool
