NFR Project: 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’

Dir: Frank Capra

Scr: Sidney Buchman, Myles Connolly

Pho: Joseph Walker

Ed: Gene Havlick, Al Clark

Premiere: Oct. 17, 1939

130 min.

The director Frank Capra (1897-1991) is frequently disparaged as a terminal optimist. He’s a flag-waver, a vehement believer in truth, justice, and the American way. However, there’s a dark side to his popular and awarded “message” pictures, one that isn’t dispelled by their inevitable happy endings.

Capra got his start at the bottom, working all kinds of jobs and finally finding himself, through luck and bluff, contributing as a gag writer to Hal Roach’s silent Our Gang comedy shorts. Then he moved up to directing the comedian Harry Langdon in a series of successful silent films. Finally, he began to choose and create his own projects.

He struck paydirt with It Happened One Night, which won several Oscars, including Best Director for Capra. Two more of his films, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and You Can’t Take It With You, earned him Oscars as well. He was flying in industry esteem, then, when he picked his next project Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

No film executives wanted to film this picture, feeling that its discussion of political corruption would be a black eye for America, at home and abroad. A determined Capra pushed the project through.

It’s the story of naïve young Jefferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart in a career-defining role), a publisher and scoutmaster who’s chosen to fill a Senate seat vacated by death. Little does he know that the multimedia tycoon James Taylor (Edward Arnold, marvelously villainous) really runs things in his home state, with the help of “the Silver Knight, ” Senator Paine (Claude Rains), Smith’s late father’s friend, who’s in conspiracy with him. Together they plan to pass a bill that establishes a dam built on property they’ve bought up on the sly. Their immediate goal is to keep Smith busy and distracted, so he doesn’t ask any questions about the bill.

Smith is abused by the press as a stooge, a know-nothing. His cynical, wisecracking assistant Saunders (Jean Arthur) takes pity on him, and attempts to tell how politics really work in Washington. Smith comes up with a bill of his own – the creation of national boys’ camp, unfortunately situated right where Taylor and Paine want to set up their dam. Smith discovers the conspiracy, and attempts to denounce it, but he is interrupted by Paine, who accuses him of using his bill to line his own pockets.

Soon Smith is up on charges of graft, and Taylor and his media outlets suppress his side of the story and demonize him, even going far as to forge documents insinuating Smith’s guilt. As a last-ditch effort, Smith begins a filibuster on the Senate floor, with the bemused support of the president of the Senate (Harry Carey). Taloy and his machine keep blackening Smith’s name, even going to far as to firehouse marchers and injure children distributing newspapers containing the truth.

An exhausted Smith is confronted with stacks of telegrams and letters against, finally collapses. Suddenly, Paine dashes from the room and attempts to kill himself, then runs back onto the Senate floor and confesses everything. Smith is saved.

The movie follows the pattern of many Capra films. The idealistic hero is brought down to earth by the realities of an uncaring world. He is knocked down, but not out, when others, the common people, rally around him and bring about his redemption. These finishes are crowd-pleasers, but they strain to express their ecstatic vaunting of common sense and good will. Capra believes in the power of the people – but his unrealistic endings make his sentiments appear are merely wishful thinking.

Stewart was perfect for the role, and he is aided and abetted by some of Hollywood’s best character actors – Capra’s “regulars” such as Thomas Mitchell, Eugene Pallette, Beulah Bondi, Guy Kibbee, and H.B. Warner. They are regulars in Capra’s films over the years, and they too are well-matched with their parts. The direction is unobtrusive and low-key, save for the patriotic montages concocted by the master editor Slavko Vorkapich.

When the film was released, it caused a lot of controversy. Some thought the film denigrated democracy. In truth, Capra’s revelation of how power brokers have their way with the American political process is deeply subversive, and it’s not quite cancelled out by the film’s abrupt happy ending. Taylors and Paines still abound, and the film is particularly apt for viewing in our present time of governmental corruption and scandal.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Ninotchka.

NFR Project: 'Midnight' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Midnight’

Dir: Mitchell Leisen

Scr: Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder

Pho: Charles Lang

Ed: Doane Harrison

Premiere: March 24, 1939

94 min.

Midnight is an excellent and elegant screwball comedy, with much of the flavor of a classic French farce. It’s set in a Paris that seems equally divided between working-class cabbies and high-society figures. Its tale of love and money, and how the two don’t go hand in hand.

Claudette Colbert plays Eve Peabody, a down-on-her-luck American showgirl who arrives in the City of Light on a train, possessing nothing but the gold lamé dress on her back. She is quickly taken up by a friendly cab driver, Tibor Czerny (Don Ameche), who gallantly drives her around town to look for a job.

Unable to accept his help any further, she escapes him and makes her way into a society soiree. Desperate, she fakes belonging to this upper-crust group until she is noticed by an aging toff, Georges (John Barrymore). Georges notices that Eve draws the attention of Jacques (Francis Lederer), who is currently in the middle of an affair with his wife (Mary Astor). Georges schemes, and sets up Eve as a wealthy baroness, asking her to seduce Jacques as a way of getting him away from Georges’ wife.

Meanwhile, Tibor searches for her relentlessly, enlisting the aid of an army of cabbies to find her and report back to him. He finds that she has gone to Georges’ country estate for the weekend. Renting evening wear, he turns up at the chateau and declares himself to be Eve’s husband, “Baron” Czerny. Now all the characters are wrapped up in the throes of mistaken identity and conflicting affections.

The script is the creation of that stupendous screenwriting team, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder (this film is only the second of their 16 collaborations). The script went through the usual round of studio-dictated rewrites – surprisingly, the rewrite request came around to Brackett and Wilder as well. They simply retyped the manuscript and sent it in, and were highly praised for their inventive rewrite.

The farcical photoplay in inhabited by comedic experts – Colbert and Ameche are top-notch, and Barrymore steals every scene he’s in. Eve Peabody is a modern Cinderella, but all the money in the world can’t sway her heart – she loves Tibor and can’t be without him. Mitchell Leisen does a smooth, professional job of directing. It’s not a film that leaps out at you, as do many of the more significant films of that year, but it is lovingly crafted and wittily wise.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

NFR Project: 'The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair' (1939)

  

The Middletons examining the Time Capsule, to be opened in 6939.

NFR Project: ‘The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair’

Dir: Robert R. Snody

Scr: Reed Drummond, G.R. Hunter, Robert R. Snody

Pho: William Steiner

Ed: Sol S. Feuerman

Released 1939

54:39

It’s corporate propaganda, and as such it’s not too bad.

This is an hour-long infomercial presented by Westinghouse, which wants to show you how cool everything is with electricity, which naturally they sell.

You see, it’s the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and a big feature of the event was indeed the Westinghouse pavilion, where the family, fresh from out of town, (Ma, Pa, Grandma, the young lady Babs, and her little brother Bud) learns about how cool electricity is and how it will create a Golden Age for all of us. Thanks to the exposition provided by good old Jim Treadway who’s from back home. Oh, and he works for Westinghouse.

The heart of the drama is the romantic triangle among Babs, and the slimy art teacher-boyfriend of Babs, the evil Nicholas Makaroff, who makes paintings – abstract ones! Horreur terrible! And scoffs at everything, calling it a CAPITALIST conspiracy. In the lingo of the day, he’s a drip. Contrast him with the third leg of our triangle, good old Jim. Much more suitable, and informed. He’s a regular guy, a textbook heterosexual suitable for mating with Babs.

Nicholas scoffs. Then it turns out Nicholas is a fraud, and a cheap one at that! He is soon exposed through a Clever Ruse, and dashes away. Babs sidles up to manly Jim. Cue the electric sparks lighting up the nighttime sky.

Yes, it’s thin soup. But the narrative simply propels us into viewing Westinghouse’s concept of the future, which is filled with handy electric gadgets. There’s an electric dishwasher! There’s television, for crying out loud (the development of which was squelched by WWII). There’s even a robot who makes a dirty innuendo and smokes a cigarette! He’s like a robot Lenny Bruce..

The acting is indifferent good. The name performer in the film is Marjorie Lord as Babs. Marjorie later played Danny’s Thomas’ second wife, after Jean Hagen, in TV’s Make Room for Daddy.

As the film progresses everyone stresses their acceptance of and enthusiasm for just about everything Westinghouse wants to sell them. It’s hard to conceive of under what circumstances this film was shown. To patrons at the Fair? To the general public? To customers? Anyway, it’s an adequately filmed promotional tool. It expresses a fervid belief in the saving grace of an oncoming technological age. World War II delayed the techno-explosion that sprang to life in the postwar era.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Midnight.