It’s that time of year when we start watching favorite Christmas movies, and for many, the list begins with Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. When we think of Capra’s films, it’s easy to break into a smile, for he was “the great constructor of happy endings,” as biographer Vito Zaggiro has written.
But Zaggiro doesn’t stop there. In the very same sentence””in his article titled “It’s (Not) A Wonderful Life: For a Counter-Reading of Frank Capra,” Zaggiro notes that the director’s films also often “represented enormous social contradictions and conflict that clash with the surface message of his films….”