Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Review
Frank_Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was the director's final film for Columbia Pictures, the studio where he'd made his name in the 1930s with an enviable array of comedies and topical dramas. It also marked a turning point in Capra's vision of the world, from nervous optimism to a darker, more pessimistic tone. Beginning with American_Madness in 1932, such Capra films as Lady for a Day, It_Happened_One_Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and You_Can't_Take_It_With_You had trumpeted their belief in the decency of the common man. In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, however, the decent common man is surrounded by the most venal, petty, and thuggish group of yahoos ever to pass as decent society in a Capra movie. Everyone in the film -- except for Jefferson Smith and his tiny cadre of believers -- is either in the pay of the political machine run by Edward_Arnold's James Taylor or complicit in Taylor's corruption through their silence, and they all sit by as innocent people, including children, are brutalized and intimidated, rights are violated, and the government is brought to a halt. The film's story of innocence and righteousness triumphant over corruption frames a chilling picture of an ineffectual and venal government fronting for gangsters. Coming at a time when the American public was growing weary (and wary) of the New Deal, then in its seventh year, it may have caught the public's mood just right. The world was indeed becoming a darker place -- as the movie acknowledges by the presence of representatives of various European dictatorships in the Senate gallery as Smith's struggle on the Senate floor continues. The movie was so potent in its time that it cemented the image of James_Stewart, then a good working dramatic actor who'd portrayed a range of roles, into the quintessential good-natured hero, the archetypal common man. That image made him a star, but also straightjacketed him to some degree. Stewart did some of his most interesting work in later years when he escaped from that image, as in Winchester_'73, The_Far_Country, Rope, and Vertigo. Bruce Eder, Rovi
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