Cinema: Happy End

In the good old ricky-tick days when movie directors wore riding breeches, a favorite cinematic sight gag was to reverse the film, which suddenly sent the actors waddling backwards through doors that closed behind them, putting their hats on instead of taking them off, and shoveling food out of their mouths instead of in. The kids, of course, like to do the same with home movies. Now from Czechoslovakia comes a whole movie that runs from end to beginning.

There is a wry philosophical idea behind Happy End: since everything in life normally goes from bad to worse, reversing the action...

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