Frank Capra Study

“And you know that you fight for the lost causes harder than for any others. Yes, you even die for them. Like a man we both knew, Mr. Paine. You think I'm licked. You all think I'm licked. Well, I'm not licked, and I'm gonna stay right here and fight for this lost cause even if this room gets filled with lies like these, and the Taylors and all their armies come marching into this place! Somebody'll listen to me!”

-Jefferson Smith, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

These lines, delivered as Senator Jefferson Smith was on his last legs after a heartbreaking filibuster, represent everything that is Frank Capra. It represents the ideal that if you keep trying you can make a difference, the ideal of never giving up, and the ideal that that the common man can rise above the elite. Jefferson Smith was not a superhero; George Bailey was not a man who suffers from a deep disturbing secret past, and somehow New York is spared from explosions or insidious plots when Longfellow Deeds is there. There are no sequels or prequels, no remakes, and no franchises. Yet, these were the movies that people were talking about all, the ones that usually made money and won Oscars. These movies are the ones we now consider classics. What makes these films so appealing to audiences is that they do not focus around larger than life figures and events; rather, they are stories of the common man, his struggle to do good against all odds. Capra, an extremely successful film maker who was anything but common loved these people. A native Sicilian who immigrated with his family to America in the early 1900s in search of a better life, Capra personally identified with his creations. He understood that eighty percent of this nation were the barkeeps, the bellhops, taxi drivers, construction workers, town clerks, plumbers, waiters and the like. His movies spoke to them directly, to their virtues, and to their desires, fears, and aspirations. Capra was a director during the Great Depression, when many people were uncertain about their futures, and he made movies accordingly; movies that were not afraid to depict the horrors they were facing but always looking toward the positive, with the underdog in the end triumphing over adversity. Knowing his audience and becoming the common man’s man has made him one of the most distinguished auteurs of all time.

Frank Capra was born in Italy in 1897 as Francesco Capra, the fifth of sixth children. On his sixth birthday, his family set sail for a better life in America, riding in the steerage class of the ship. In America, he started work at a young age, working mostly menial jobs whenever he could find one. During World War I, Capra was a private who spent the war in San Francisco instructing other privates. After the war Capra nearly died after being diagnosed with the Spanish flu. Upon his recovery, Capra had trouble finding steady employment. He eventually began to make a living as an extra in movies, starting with John Ford’s The Outcasts of Poker Flats, starring Harry Carey. From this beginning, Capra worked his way up in the Hollywood system and he began directing silent movies in the late 1920’s.

The 1930’s, while desperate and destitute for most Americans, proved to be the most successful decade of Capra’s life. His first success was Lady for a Day, for which Capra was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Director and established himself as a director of screwball comedies. The following year It Happened One Night was released and won the top five academy awards: Best Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture. Only two films since, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs have matched this achievement. His next film, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, was the beginning of his films about ordinary people. In the film, Longfellow Deeds, played by Gary Cooper, inherits millions, and eventually decides to redistribute the wealth amongst his community after being framed by greedy opportunists, seeking control of his money. This theme of an ordinary man with great power to make a difference who gets manipulated by corrupt bureaucrats is in several of his subsequent films, such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, You Can’t Take it With You, Meet John Doe. This theme resounded with the people of the time because they could identify with the characters and their problems.

During World War II, Capra was commissioned by the United States Military to film documentaries about the war. The documentaries, collectively entitled Why We Fight, were released over four years in American cinemas, and in 1943 he won an Oscar for Best Documentary. Also during the war, in 1944, he directed Arsenic and Old Lace, a return to the screwball comedy of his earlier films. After the war, Capra collaborated with Jimmy Stewart, an actor he had worked with in the thirties, and directed It’s a Wonderful Life. Although it initially received mixed reviews and a cool box office reception, the film is now considered a classic, and is viewed by families nationwide every Christmas. In 1948 Frank Capra directed his last classic, State of the Union, a film which echoed themes from his earlier films. After State of the Union, Capra films were not of the same caliber. He made remakes of some of his earlier films and filmed a few musicals, but failed to achieve his earlier success. Disillusioned, Capra retired from film after Pocket Full of Miracles in 1961, the same year his autobiography The Name Above the Title was released. In 1982 Capra was awarded a lifetime achievement award from the American Film Institute. Frank Capra died in his sleep in 1991 at the age of 94.

One of Frank Capra’s most important themes is his love for the common man. Throughout his films he has background characters such as taxi drivers, police men, bell hops, waiters, maids, and portrayed them as three dimensional characters who are both funny and sincere. To accent his favorable view of the common man he often portrays the elite unfavorably. Capra made three specific films before World War II which each had the main character be an average Joe. Critics refer to these films as his Common Man Trilogy. The first, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, tells the story of Longfellow Deeds, a man who has been suffering through the Great Depression. When he acquires twenty million dollars, he plans on using it in ways to help the community, because he sees himself as no better than they are. He finds himself having to fight against the rich establishment, one that wants to have him declared insane. The second film in the trilogy, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, is the story of Jefferson Smith, a regular guy who is chosen to replace a deceased Senator because of how naïve and presumably manipulatable he is. In Congress, he writes up a bill to create camps for children in his home state, to better their childhoods. However, the land was already set aside for another bill that would make other Senators rich, and the other Senators become furious with him for trying to derail their bill. Jefferson Smith must fight against the government for what he believes in, as his mentor Senator Paine fights tooth and nail to delegitimize him. The third, and darkest, of the Common Man Trilogy is Meet John Doe. This film is the story of a failed baseball pitcher, John Willoughby, who is chosen to fill the role of John Doe. Doe is a man who is made up by the press who announces his plan to kill himself on Christmas Day due to his disgust in humanity. John Willoughby spreads messages of “Love thy Neighbour” and creates strong communities, but unknowingly becomes a political tool to launch the presidential campaign of the head of the newspaper that created him, W.B. Norton. All three of these films follow a very formulaic structure: a common man who, by chance, receives a large amount of influence, struggles to do the right thing while the powers that be do everything they can to control and eventually destroy him.

To go along with the common man, Capra’s films always employed strong female characters. Jean Arthur often played females in Capra’s films, such as the aide who convinces Jefferson Smith to filibuster the senate, the love interest of Tony Kirby in You Can’t Take it With You, and Babe, the woman who tricks Longfellow Deeds before falling in love with him. In Lost Horizon, Sondra Bizet has the plane crash in Shangri La so that Robert Conway can come and become the next leader. Capra’s biggest critical success had a woman as the main character. In It Happened One Night, Peter Warne (Clarke Gable) spends the entire film aiding Ellen Andrews (Claudette Colbert) as she travels cross country, running away from her father to her husband. In State of the Union, Grant Matthews, played by Spencer Tracy, has two strong female characters to deal with; his wife, played by Katherine Hepburn, who has to witness her husband turn corrupt while she tries desperately to prevent it, and his mistress, portrayed by Angela Lansbury, who pulls the strings of his political campaign. What sets Capra aside from other contemporary directors is that the men always relied heavily on the women. Many other directors did not often give women large parts in movies, and, if they did, they were of lower status or merely the main man’s love interest.

While the heroes in the films are the common man and his lady, the villains are often bureaucrats, politicians, and the press. In the common man trilogy, Cornelius Cobb, a newspaper man, and John Cedar, a lawyer, attempt to control Mr. Deeds’ fortune, Jefferson Smith is pitted against the elder Senator Joseph Paine, and John Willoughby is a puppet of newspaper mogul D.B. Norton. In each of these movies, powerful men end up losing to the common man’s crusade, but in You Can’t Take it With You, the evil bank president Anthony P. Kirby decides to join the other side when he realizes that his money will not make him happy. The distaste for those in power stems from Capra’s own distaste for the politics of the 1930’s and 40’s. Capra was a Republican who voted against Roosevelt four times and even made a movie about a Republican candidate who runs for president in 1948 against Harry Truman called State of the Union. This film’s bad guys are also the corrupt elite. This time they are manifested in party bosses who dictate the candidate, Grant Matthew’s, platform.

Along with the common man, the strong female lead, and the corrupt bureaucrat, Capra’s films usually included older unpredictable eccentric characters that possess anarchaic tendencies. Lionel Barrymore, playing the character of Grandpa in You Can’t Take it With You, is the epitome of this. Grandpa had been a hardworking man until one day, as he was on the elevator riding up to his office, he decided work was not any fun. From then on he decided only to do what he enjoyed doing. He attends local graduation ceremonies, plays the harmonica, throws darts, and goes to the zoo for personal enjoyment. His entire family has to some extent adopted his philosophy, after seeing how happy it has made him. He has a granddaughter who dances all day to her husband’s glockenspiel music; a daughter who writes books only because the delivery man accidently delivered a typewriter to their house; a son in law who creates fireworks in the basement, and various townsfolk live with him because they could not resist his charming eccentricities. Besides Lionel Barrymore’s Grandpa, the aunts of Mortimer Brewster are eccentrics in Arsenic and Old Lace. On a regular basis, they invite pitiful old men over for lunch, and lace their wine with arsenic and cyanide. They refer to this work as charity. When their guests die, they tell Mortimer’s brother, who is convinced he is Teddy Roosevelt, that these men are victims of yellow fever and have him bury the bodies in the basement. Unlike Grandpa’s family, Mortimer Brewster wishes he was not related to his and dislikes their eccentricities. In Meet John Doe, John Willoughby is traveling with an elder man who he refers to as “The Colonel”. “The Colonel” is an old eccentric who plays the ocarina and distrusts the notion of John Doe, and wants no part in it. He warns Willoughby of people he refers to as “heelots”, people who are corrupted by wealth, and informs Willoughby that they are both better off penniless.

Since Capra’s films are very character based and the plots often revolve around character development, he often uses a character’s family to generate plot points. Mortimer Brewster, as previously stated, has two eccentric aunts that he has to convince not to give old men arsenic. He also has a brother who suffers from psychological issues and is convinced he is Teddy Roosevelt, and shouts “Charge!!” whenever he runs up and down the stairs. In the course of the film, his other brother, a murderer, shows up to the house, bearing a strong resemblance to Boris Karloff. He announces that he plans on killing Mortimer. Mortimer is on the edge of a breakdown with all of the stress he’s been under since returning home, and worries that he might go insane like the rest of his family. “Insanity runs in my family!” he tells his fiancé, “practically gallops!” At the end of the film however, his aunts inform him that his real father was a sea cook, and he is not indeed a Brewster. Another character who suffers from family issues, but in a very different way is George Bailey. In It’s a Wonderful Life George Bailey is on track to move out of Bedford Falls, go to college, and see the world when his father suffers from a stroke. The evil Mr. Potter, also portrayed by Lionel Barrymore, gives George an ultimatum: either stay in Bedford Falls and run the Building and Loan company, or allow home loans for the working poor to expire. George Bailey, being the upstanding citizen he is, stays to support the working poor, giving his younger brother all of his college money with the understanding that once his brother returns from college he will take George’s place and George will be able to see the world. Unfortunately for him, once his brother returns home he brings with him a wife and a once in a lifetime opportunity to work for her rich father and lead a very successful life. He is willing to honor his agreement with George, who selflessly decides to stay put for his brother’s sake. Later, George has to make another sacrifice after his company is robbed and he and his bride have to use their honeymoon money to repay the stolen money before Mr. Potter can take advantage of the situation. Whereas Mortimer is scared of his family, George loves his very much and sacrifices his own happiness for them. Jimmy Stewart, who plays George Bailey, and Lionel Barrymore, who plays Mr. Potter, both appear together in You Can’t Take it With You. Whereas Lionel Barrymore’s character is eccentric and lives with an eccentric family, Jimmy Stewart, as Tony Kirby, is the vice-president of a bank and comes from a very posh upper class family. He falls in love with Alice Sycamore, who is Grandpa’s granddaughter. When the two families meet it is awkward and Tony’s mother is embarrassed to be seen associating with the eccentric and socially inferior family. Alice and Tony are deeply in love, but decide they will not marry unless their parents can agree to it. Although it happens in different ways, families are very important to Mortimer, George, Alice and Tony, and are what pushes to plot forward.

Behind the magnetic common man, the strong female lead, the corrupt bureaucrats, the eccentric older characters, and the families are the communities that play a much smaller role on screen but are of vast importance to the films. Collectively, the community is made up of the common man and women. The prime example is the film Lost Horizon, where a group of Englishmen escaping from China crash and land in Shangri La, which turns out to be a perfect community completely isolated from the world. The community is the centerpiece for this utopia, however most of the time in Capra’s films it plays more of a supporting role. In both It’s a Wonderful Life and You Can’t Take it with You, the community pays off the family’s debt because the community loves them so much. In Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, the community gathers to see Longfellow Deeds as he takes a train into New York City. In Meet John Doe, communities take on a larger scale as communities across America come together to form John Doe clubs. In all of these films, the community is supporting the main characters; however, in State of the Union, community plays a different role. Grant Matthews had left his town to run for president, and begins giving campaign speeches in the passing towns. When he gives the speech in his hometown, his community gives him a very cool response. At first he writes it off as just bad luck, but eventually he realizes that they have seen through his façade and understand just how fake politics have made him. Although they are not supporting him, they are important because they help him realize his hypocrisy.

Another stylistic element of Capra’s films is that he often employs the use of monologues in his films. Monologues are an easy way for Capra’s characters to explain their philosophies and criticisms while being both loud and passionate. The most well known is Jefferson Smith’s filibuster in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the end of which can be read at the top of this essay. The monologue is by far the longest one in all of Capra’s films, extending, in the film at least, for hours. Another rather poignant monologue is when Grandpa calls Mr. Kirby an idiot in You Can’t Take it With You. Mr. Kirby, complaining loudly that he him and his wife are surrounded by “scum in the gutter”, angers the usually amiable Grandpa, who begins to rant at him. “You’re an idiot Mr. Kirby, a stupid idiot! Scum are we?” Grandpa begins. This is the only time throughout the entire film Grandpa loses his temper, as he angrily informs Mr. Kirby that he is worse than everyone in the prison, and that his money will only make him miserable and friendless, calling him a failure and telling him the world will be better off once he is dead. Immediately following the speech Grandpa rescinds his insults and apologizes profusely, but for one short moment we can really see how he views not only Mr. Kirby, but every rich man whose life revolves around money. In both of these films, the monologue is used in a very serious situation, but Capra also used monologues in more lighthearted ways as well. In the film Meet John Doe, as John Willoughby is about to run away from the whole John Doe idea, he meets the head of a local John Doe club. The man, named Bert Hanson, delivers a long monologue about the success of the John Doe club, and how the entire neighborhood has become close because of it and they have begun to spread the message of “Love thy Neighbor.” John Willoughby is so moved by this speech that he decides to continue the John Doe campaign. In It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey is walking in the moonlight with his future wife Mary. Looking up at the moon, he asks her, if he could give her anything, what would she want? “What is it you want Mary? You want the moon? Just say the word I’ll swing a lasso around and pull it down for you” George Bailey promises, and continues, until he begins to realize that he’s rambling. This monologue is perhaps Capra’s most cornball, but it helps establish Bailey’s deep love for Mary early on in the movie.

What is most distinct about Capra’s style of film is that the hero is always triumphant, whether it is against corruption, confusion, or an insincere part of themselves, within the last five minutes of the film. It is not untypical for Capra to wait until the last sixty seconds for the protagonist to succeed, leaving the audience worried whether or not they will. In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Jimmy Stewart’s character Jefferson Smith faints on the Senate floor with only two minutes left in the movie. His filibuster has failed, his relief parade has been shut down by bureaucratic forces, and it seems as if all hope is lost. However, Senator Joseph Paine, the Senator that Smith has struggled against the entire movie, in the last minute is overcome by guilt at the sight of Jefferson Smith’s unconscious body and admits to being corrupt; Jean Arthur is seen celebrating, Harry Carey is attempting to keep order, and the credits roll, with Jefferson Smith being carried out of the senate. This is the clearest example, but there are several others. Meet John Doe puts a much darker twist on the last minute triumph. John Willoughby, having been proclaimed a phony by the media who had created his entire persona, decides to kill himself by jumping off the roof of city hall on Christmas Eve, just as the newspapers had promised earlier in the film. He is going to do it because he is fed up with the lies that have created the mess he finds himself in, and he no longer believes in humanity. On the rooftop he meets the newspaper moguls who brought him to this point, and they threaten him, saying that if he jumps, his body will be recovered by their men, and his death will never be reported. Determined, Willoughby announces that he has already sent his suicide letter to a rival newspaper, and that nobody can stop him. While on the ledge, a moment from destruction, his fan base, the John Doe club, plead for him to come off the ledge and proclaim their support for him despite the newspapers claims. Willoughby is persuaded; he climbs off the ledge, joins his people and shouts “There you are Norton! The people! Try to lick that!” With these movies, and the others, Capra is creating a mood that will keep the audience nervous throughout the film, rooting for the underdog protagonist to beat the odds, which will eventually happen, but only after a return from certain defeat. To a small extent, this theme is in all of his classics, which is why it is listed last, to tie them all together. Mortimer Brewster discovers that he is not actually related to his insane family at the end of Arsenic and Old Lace. Robert Conway finally returns to Shangri-La after spending months searching for it in Lost Horizon. Ellen Andrews runs away from her wedding to marry Peter Warne instead in It Happened One Night. Alice Sycamore and Tony Kirby end up together after she had run away, and Mr. Kirby sells Grandpa back his house after buying it up so he can turn the entire neighborhood into a factory within the final five minutes of You Can’t Take it With You. Grant Matthews, after forcing his wife to give a speech about what an honest man he is, finally realizes how corrupt politics have made him and in the ending monologue of the film withdraws his candidacy for the presidency. All of these examples exemplify Capra’s theme of the last minute triumph, but the most memorable is the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life, when George Bailey’s neighbors come and cover his debt to Mr. Potter so that Bedford Falls will not become Pottersville.

A sign of an auteur is their continuous work with a handful of people. This makes their movies flow together as they have similar styles not only in directing, but in writing and acting. Frank Capra’s most important collaborator was his screenwriter Robert Riskin. This collaboration produced some of Capra’s greatest movies, such as Lady for a Day, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Lost Horizon, It Happened One Night, Meet John Doe, as well as some of Capra’s later and less successful films. As opposed to the majority of films Capra did without Riskin, his stories (with the exception of Lost Horizon) were not adaptations from plays or other stories. As opposed to Capra, Riskin was a liberal, which is why there are clear liberal themes in the movies that he worked on. Since Capra’s films revolve around the idea of the common man who is amiable enough to draw the audience, Jimmy Stewart was a frequent collaborator, and appeared in the films Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, You Can’t Take it With You, and It’s a Wonderful Life. Jefferson Smith, Tony Kirby, and George Bailey are all characters with the best of intentions who overcome great struggles, all with Stewarts quirky sense of humor and calm nasally voice. Similar to Stewart is Gary Cooper, who plays John Willoughby and Longfellow Deeds in Meet John Doe and Mr. Deeds goes to Town respectively. Jean Arthur, a beautiful young woman during the 1930’s who was relatively inexperienced before meeting Capra, played the role of the strong female character in several of Capra’s films, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can’t Take it With You, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Whereas these three actors portrayed very similar characters in each film, the elderly Lionel Barrymore gave two very different performances as the lovable eccentric Grandpa and the old and bitter Mr. Potter. Academy Award winning cinematographer Joseph Walker did the cinematography for twenty of Capra’s films.

During Frank Capra’s career, he was awarded six Oscars, three for best director, two for best picture, and one for best documentary. He was nominated for fifteen total. His films won several more Oscars, including best actor, best actress, screenplay, supporting actor, editing, sound recording, and cinematography. As well as being commercial successes, Capra’s films also proved to be financial successes as well. His audience appreciated his films style because they found the themes identifiable. Today, while most critics regard his films as classics, a minority have criticized them for being overly sentimental and void of substance. They have also criticized the fact that other than being pro common man, they fail to hold a consistent message, sometimes being pro left, sometimes being pro right.