It's A Wonderful Life.

LITERATURE; CRITICISM; MOTION pictures; BATISTA y Zaldivar, Fulgencio, 1901-1973; CULTURAL industries; REALISM in motion pictures; LITERARY realism

It was Havana in the fifties, under the dictator Fulgencio Batista, so it was not the best of times. But it was a good time and place for a kid to become a moviegoer. The first criticism of the arts that seriously engaged the author, even before his teens, was the movie criticism that was appearing in Carteles. Film in the fifties seemed to many an art in decline, if not downright fall. Classic Hollywood was dying, French cinema had mostly succumbed to academicism and the neorealism that had vitalized Italian cinema in the postwar years was passing away tool.