It's a wonderful life (1946)

I wanted an All-American experience and I got it: I went to see It's a wonderful life a few days before Christmas. This Capra classic was even more sentimental than I expected - I had only seen fragments of the film. It is in every sense a film that tries to please the audience by inducing a sense of warmth and hope - everything will be all right in the end; being good and hard-working, rather than running off to live the big city life, will pay off sooner ... or later. There is not much tension to speak of in the film. The changes that occur in the plot are ones that the audience are hit in the head with. I did not find the movie heart-warming, rather I felt it to be insecure in its preaching of goodness and miracles. It is telling that in the midst of steep depression and suicidal tendencies, the turning point for the main characters is an external voice that convinces him that HE matters, HE has worked so hard, look what the world would be without HIM. A film about goodness - yes, but more a film about indulging in one's own inner feeling of "being good". Or maybe I am too depraved and cold-blooded to appreciate this kind of movie. If one wants to say something nice about the film it might be that it has a peculiar anti-capitalist leaning, depicting as it does the lack of sense for the human world inherent in the rules of money-making. But the capitalist is, of course, reduced to the evil man who is driven by senseless greed.