Cognitivism

Cognitivism is the way in which our brains try to make sense of things and is how humans learn through experiences. In terms of film studies cognitivism is understanding a film relative to your personal life and past experiences.

Life is Beautiful

The beginning of "La vita es Bella" tricks all of my senses and everything that I know about film to believe it film is a lighthearted, feel good, romantic, comedy. However, as I already know that our Italian friend 'Guido' gets shot (with what I assume is an MP 40) in an alley by a Nazi, but the beginning of the film is crafted so that I'd expect another / more romantic and happy outcome.
If I hadn't seen the film before I doubt I would have predicted where it is going from the beginning, however there is a rather ambiguous beginning, with a slightly cryptic voice over, and the very cold and dark looking imagery at the start of the film could have been a hint.
There are many hints throughout the film that it is leading into a holocaust ending, based on what I've seen and based on the year the film is set in 1939, and that there is a segment from the film in which Guido impersonates a racist Roman inspector that is due to give a speech to children about Aryan race superiority.
So immediately the idea of Aryanism combined with 1939 and the Nazi salutes at the beginning of the film, they all point to the outcome of Nazism, WW2 and death camp.

Cognitive assumption

After the race superiority scene, my mind confirms that this is a film involving Nazism in a very key way because of several factors:

• The ambiguous Nazi salute at the beginning
• The year 1939
• Film is based in Europe
• 'Beautiful' in a film title usually suggests something bad will happen or that the film will be sad, e.g ('American Beauty' the protagonist dies, 'It's a Wonderful life' sad film)
• The beginning of the film includes a voiceover that suggests the film isn't entirely happy