I’m afraid Mr. Capra began to leave this world at some point during the production of “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” his best picture. Among those who admired him from the start I know only Alistair Cooke who called the turn when “Deeds” came out. Writing in England, Cooke confessed to “an uneasy feeling he’s on his way out. He’s started to make movies about themes instead of people.” When “Lost Horizon” appeared, I thought our Mr. Capra was only out to lunch, but Cooke had it. “You Can Take It with You” in the following year(1938) made it pretty evident that Capra had forgotten about people for good. He had found out about thought and was going up into the clouds to think some. From now on, his continued boxoffice triumph and the air up there being what they are, he is a sure thing to stay, banking checks, reading Variety and occasionally getting overcast and raining on us. Well, he was a great guy.
“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” is the story of how a leader of Boy Rangers was sent to the Senate by the state political machine because be was popular, honest and dumb. Washington is a shrine to him. So as be gawps around lost for a whole day, throw in thousands of feet of what can only be called a montagasm, buildings, monuments, statues, immortal catch-phrases in stone. But before we go any farther, what’s the payoff? It is that this priceless boy scout grew up as the son of a small-town editor so staunchly against the interests that they shot him for it under the boy’s nose; after which he read American history so widely and fiercely that he knew the Constitution and the cherry tree by heart.
The story goes farther, of course, more than two hours’ worth. The boy thinks he falls in love, and then falls in love without thinking so. From these personal relations he learns that he has been a chump. He starts a filibuster (the honest-man-in-court scene Capra has found so successful he won’t be without it) in which he says some fine things for liberty and the better world. And it is so harrowing on all concerned that just after he passes out his colleague shoots himself, and the American way is straight again.
