Last summer the American Film Institute (AFI) released “100 Years .100 Cheers,” a list of the top 100 inspirational American films of the last century. Number one was Frank Capra’s 1946 Christmas classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” with Jimmy Stewart as the everyman hero, George Bailey. But, according to sophomore Melanie Pringle, AFI is dead wrong, a thesis she defended at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) held at the Dominican University of California.

According to Pringle, “It’s a Wonderful Life” isn’t as saccharine-sweet as everyone thinks. Instead, it is about one man’s struggle and eventual failure to live up to the American Dream in a postwar world.

“George Bailey isn’t a hero. He doesn’t live up to his human potential,” Pringle said. “He doesn’t solve any of the problems in the film. It is basically about how populism failed Bailey and Capra and how World War II failed everyone. But there was

Steven Spielberg saying it was a 4-hanky movie – he cried every time. All these big film greats were talking about it, and they just weren’t getting it.”

Pringle developed her thesis into a 16-page essay for Dana Professor of English Jeff Jeske’s Historical Perspectives course “American Film and Culture, 1929-1946” in the spring semester of 2006.

“That’s my era. If I wasn’t alive then, I should have been,” Pringle said. “On a superficial level, the clothes, the movies, the stars, they resonate with me more than today’s pop culture. On another level, there is an innocence and optimism to (the era) that I love. There is this idealism where things are still possible – where life is still about what it can be, not what it is.”

This idealism is exposed to the harsh light of reality in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The film’s conclusion leaves evil unpunished and unrepentant and a protagonist, who does not live out his dreams, implying that imagination cannot overcome brute circumstance.

“Capra demonstrates the complete failure of (the film’s idealized small town) world,” Pringle writes. “He can only save it artificially using the divine intervention of angels and miracles, something which audiences would recognize as strictly a Hollywood reality.”

When Pringle saw the CBS special on “100 Years … 100 Cheers,” she jokingly e-mailed Jeske. AFI’s definition of inspirational film, “Movies that inspire with characters of vision and conviction . (Characters) who are ultimately triumphant – both filling audiences with hope and empowering them with the spirit of human potential,” didn’t synch with her analysis of the film.

“I always felt the paper was publishable,” Jeske said. “When she e-mailed me with the news of the recent AFI ranking, that was too delicious to ignore.”

Jeske suggested she revise her essay and submit it to NCUR. Over the last school year, Pringle reworked her paper and submitted it to the NCUR judges.

“I had to pare (my essay) down from 16 pages to six. That was the hardest part,” Pringle said of preparing for the oral presentation.

Pringle delivered the talk on April 20 and will submit the longer version for inclusion in the conference’s Proceedings.