Tag: HB Warner

Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

Capra’s brilliant comedy lays out his world version – and is extremely entertaining to boot

Director: Frank Capra

Cast: Gary Cooper (Longfellow Deeds), Jean Arthur (Babe Bennett), George Bancroft (McWade), Lionel Stander (Cornelius Cobb), Douglass Dumbrille (John Cedar), Raymond Walburn (Walter), HB Warner (Judge May), Ruth Donnelly (Mabel Dawson), Walter Catlett (Morrow), John Wray (Farmer)

If any film first set out what we think of today as ‘Capraesque’ it might well be Mr Deeds Goes to Town. This was the film where so many of the elements we associate Capra – the honest little guy and his small-town, homespun American values against the selfish, two-faced, disingenuousness of the elites – really came into focus. Mr Deeds Goes to Town develops these ideas with a crisp, sharp comic wit, with Capra’s reassuringly liberal-conservative message delivered to perfect, audience-winning effect. It led to the even-better Mr Smith Goes to Washington and the template for every film which celebrates the little guy asking ‘why’ things have to be done this way.

Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) is just your-average-Joe from small-town Mandrake Falls in Vermont who suddenly finds that he has inherited the unheard-of sum of $20million from a recently deceased uncle. His uncle’s assorted lawyers, led by suavely corrupt John Cedar (Douglass Drumbille) expect the naïve Deeds will happily allow them to continue riding the gravy train they’ve enjoyed for years. However, Deeds proves to have a mind of his own, refusing to kowtow to opportunists.

However, Deeds has an Achilles heel: he’s fallen hard for Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur), who he believes to be an out-of-work office girl but is in fact a star reporter, spinning the stories she picks up from their dates into articles about Deed that make him a laughing stock (the ‘Cinderella Man’). When Deeds discovers the truth – and is simultaneously threatened by Cedar with institutionalisation over his plans to give away his fortune to help the poor – he’s flung into a desperate court case to establish his sanity. Will a heart-broken Deeds defend himself?

Mr Deeds, with a sparkling script from Riskin, captures Capra’s idea of true American values. Deeds is a softly-spoken, unfailingly honest, no-nonsense type who won’t waste a minute on flattery and forlock-tugging and respects hard-work and plain, simple decency. He’s an independent spirit: be that playing the tuba, sliding down the banisters of his grand home, jumping on board fire trucks to help out or sweetly scribbling limericks, he’s as endearingly enthusiastic as he is lacking in patience for pretension.

He also proves an honest man is no fool, but a shrewd judge of character – expertly recognising a lawyer who turns up pushing for his uncle’s ‘common law wife’ to take a share of his fortune is an ambulance-chasing crook – and he’s no push-over or empty suit (made the chair of his uncle’s Opera board, he shocks the rest by actually proceeding to chair the meeting and make decisions). He’s the sort of humble-stock, common-roots, middle-class hero without any sense of snobbery or self-importance, just like his hero President Grant, judging people on their merits not their finery.

It is, in short, a near perfect role for Gary Cooper, at the absolute top-of-his game here: funny, charming and hugely endearing. Cooper can also convincingly back-up Deeds’ affability with a (literal) fist when pushed too far. Cooper is an expert at preventing an otherwise almost-too-good-to-be-true character from becoming grating or irritating. He’s also extremely touching when called upon – his giddy, bed-rolling phone call to Jean Arthur’s Babe is as sweet as his broken edge-of-tears sadness when he discovers she’s been lying to him (I can think of very few 30s actors who would have been comfortable looking as emotionally vulnerable as Cooper does here).

But Capra’s world view was always more complex though than we think. It’s easy to see Mr Deeds as arguing we should re-direct our efforts to helping the poor and needy, and the greed and hypocrisy of the rich (the sort of snobs who mock Deeds to his face at the dinner table). That might be closer to screenwriter Robert Riskin’s views: but actually, Capra’s vision has more of an Edwardian paternalism to it. He sees Deeds’s destiny – once he renounces the wild living of suddenly being loaded – not be a Tony Benn style-radical but the sort of paternalistic benefactor of the deserving poor you might see in a cosy Downton Abbey-style costume-drama.

Because the people Deeds ends up helping share his view of the world, as one where hard-work and having the right attitude should lead to rewards (with the implicit message, that if you can’t succeed then, it’s your fault). Deeds is tugged out of his slowly forming playboy lifestyle by John Wray’s desperate farmer. Wray is at the heart of a genuinely affecting sequence, determined to cause Deeds harm (believing stories of him frittering away money on eccentric trifles) and ending it in shameful tears, accepting Deeds unasked-for help. Like this man, those Deeds helps have lost farms and land due to the depression, screwed by the games of the financial elites.

But Mr Deeds Goes to Town never once tries to suggest there is anything fundamentally wrong with this system – only some of the people who have risen to the top. And even then, it’s their personal greed and inverted snobbery that’s their crime, not the fundamentally unbalanced financial system. The main strawman for elite’s financial frippery is the Opera house committee Deeds chairs for: he can’t see the point of taking a loss on an art institution, essentially arguing it should focus more on commerce to earn its way – the sort of art view that it’s only good if loads of people pay for it (on that basis Avengers Endgame is the greatest film ever made).

It’s part of a criticism of snobbery that the homely, common-man, Deeds can’t abide: captured in the idea that enjoying the plays and books ordinary people don’t want to read is somehow proof of an elitist coldness that doesnt value ordinary people. There’s an inverted Conservative snobbery here.

Now, don’t get me wrong: there’s still a decent world-view in Capra at valuing hard working people who want to help themselves. In the big city where life is a “crazy competition for nothing”, it’s refreshing to have someone who doesn’t care about societies ins and outs society, but does care that hungry farmers have a sandwich to eat. But it’s also a more conservative, and safe message than people remember.

Saying all that, Mr Deeds is a hugely entertaining film. The romance between Cooper and Jean Arthur (absolutely in her element as the screwball femme fatale with a heart-of-gold) expertly mixes genuine sweetness with spark. The film’s Act Five trial scene is perfectly executed, a brilliant parade of snobs and slander leading to an inevitable final reel rebuttal from Cooper that the actor knocks out of the park. (It works so well, the whole structure would be largely repeated in Mr Smith with the twist that here Deeds doesn’t speak at all) There are a host of superb performances: Stander is perfect as the cynical hack who finds himself surprised at his own conscience, perfectly balanced by Drumbrille as the suave lawyer who has no conscience at all.

All of these elements come together to sublime effect in a film that is rich, entertaining and genuinely sweet – with a possibly career-best performance from Cooper (Again, it’s refreshing to see an alpha-male actor so willing to be vulnerable). Capra’s direction is sublime: dynamic, witty and providing constant visual and emotional interest. Its politics are more conservative and simplistic than at first appears, but as a setting-out of Capra’s mission statement for warmer, kinder, small-town American values of simplicity, plainness, honesty and decency it entertainingly puts forward as brilliant a case as Deeds does.

Lost Horizon (1937)

Capra’s well-made Utopian dream lacks any of self-awareness of the flaws in its vision

Director: Frank Capra

Cast: Ronald Colman (Robert Conway), Jane Wyatt (Sondra), Edward Everett Horton (Alexander Lovett), John Howard (George Conway), Thomas Mitchell (Henry Barnard), Margo (Maria), Isabel Jewell (Gloria Stone), HB Warner (Chang), Sam Jaffe (High Lama)

Life can be such a never-ending rat race, the idea of chucking in that relentless pursuit of fortune and glory can be really tempting. Fortunately, it turns out there is a place you can do that: Shangri-La, a halcyon Utopian community buried deep in the Himalayas. There the mountains give it a gloriously perfect climate and preserves its residents youth for potentially hundreds of years. It’s a paradise for legendary diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman), one of a group of Westerners whose plane crashes near-by, all of them invited to make their lives there.

It’s easy to see why this appealed to Frank Capra – even if his real idea of Shangri-La was Small Town America – and he poured years (and millions of dollars) into this dream project (it also took years to make back the investment). Conway is part of a group of mostly British Westerners escaping revolution in China. In Shangri-La, he’s deeply drawn to the peaceful ideology outlined by their host Chang (HB Warner) and Shangri-La’s spiritual leader, the Great Lama (Sam Jaffe). Not to mention the charms of resident Sondra (Jane Wyatt). Problem is, his brother George (John Howard) is desperate to return home. What will Robert choose?

Lost Horizon has a lot to admire about it, in among the incredibly earnest force of its telling, devoid of any drop of cynicism or irony. This is like a 101 of what to expect from Capra? It’s a celebration of the glories of living a simple, pure life without ruthless ambition and realpolitik. It’s filmed on a highly impressive scale by Capra – the gargantuan sets certainly show where the money went. Striking sequences, like a seemingly never-ending torch-lit parade of the people of Shangri-La marching towards Chang’s opulent estate, are breathtaking.

It hosts a fine parade of actors: Colman is perfect as the debonair, world-weary Conway, Horton and Mitchell make their supporting comic double-act genuinely funny (Horton, in particular, litters the film with wonderful bits of comic business using everything from mirrors to jewellery boxes), HB Warner makes a series of infodump ideological sermons more engaging than they deserve and Isabel Jewell creates a great deal of charm in the blousy Gloria. Interestingly, perhaps the most compelling sequence of Lost Horizon occurs before they even arrive, as these characters feud and panic on a hijacked plane taking them in totally the wrong direction.

But there is often something a little too pure about Lost Horizon. Even as the film-making beautifully unspools, it’s hard not to notice that for a huge chunk of this long film very little really happens beyond slightly sanctimonious speechifying comparing ‘our’ civilisation with the peaceful life of Shangri-La. In fact, it’s easy (particularly in our more cynical age) to start feeling a bit twitchy. So earnestly perfect is everything there, with a simplistic and unchallenging view of kindness and brotherly love, it starts to feel like being continually slapped by a SparkNotes copy of Thomas More. Capra uses John Howard’s blowhard George, to put a counter-view – but fills him with such ambition and desire that we are of course never in danger of taking him seriously.

Graham Greene wrote of the film “nothing reveals men’s characters more than their Utopias” before observing the design of Shangri-La resembled nothing more or less than a luxurious Beverly Hills Estate. Rarely has a truer word been spoken: this mountainous paradise, with its carefully designed gardens, well-stocked libraries, grand ballrooms and lush woodland perfect for riding feels like a slice of affluent middle-class Western civilisation in the middle Tibet. It makes for an interesting window into the film today.

Because it’s hard not to see Shangri-La as less of a land of beautiful contentment, and more as a sort of colonialist wet dream. Scratch the surface and it’s a very hierarchical community. Literally at the top of the hill, living in upper-class harmony surrounded by art, books, comfy armchairs and fine dining are the elite (all bar one of them Westerners). At the bottom, in their huts, live the Tibetan natives happily continuing their traditional way of life, happy to live and work (unlike the Chinese revolutionaries who Conway and co flee in the film’s opening) in the shadow of their betters. A smarter film than Lost Horizon might have pointed out the irony that Shangi-La is just a colony where the natives haven’t yet embraced political self-determination – but I’m not sure if such an idea occurred to Capra.

As soon as this crossed my mind, I couldn’t help picking holes in the calamitous internal logic of the film. Shangri-La’s only contact with the outside world is via a group of Tibetan sherpas who trek up and down the mountain once a month bringing supplies from the outside world – presumably its them who have trooped up thousands of books (including the complete works of Robert Conway!), hundreds of mediocre paintings and roomfuls of rococo furniture. The kindly inhabitants of Shangi-La’s palace never considered overseeing the construction of basic plumbing and power generation for the natives living in the valley below them (though they somehow recruited contractors to supply those things to their house on the hill).

In fact, the whole of Shangri-La’s world is set up on maintaining a strict two-tier system that keeps people content by making sure they never think for themselves. (What passes for education, is a series of patronising missionary-style sing-alongs). Even more chilling, the Grand Lama (a softly spoken Sam Jaffe, under mountains of make-up) has dreams of Shangri-La rebuilding global civilisation after its inevitable destruction, the whole world adopting his simplistic ideology. He means well, but I couldn’t help be reminded of Dr Strangelove orgasmically rising from his chair at the thought of creating a fascist Utopia of sexual bliss under an Earth poisoned by nuclear radiation.

None of these ideas enter into Lost Horizon’s simplistic world-view. It sticks with saying what the world needs is to be crafted into a sort of country estate, a sort of Tibetan Downton Abbey, with everyone happy with their assigned place in the chain. Lost Horizon gets as close as it can to any form of social criticism when Conway bemoans 90 ‘whites’ were saved from that opening Chinese revolution while thousands of natives were left to die. But aside from that, is exactly what it says on the tin: there are no flaws in Shangi-La.

And maybe I’m being impossibly cynical. Lost Horizon is a lovely film to bathe in for a while – after all Capra, at his peak, couldn’t make a clanger if he tried. But there is a more complex story on the edges here. If Lost Horizon had showed us more of Conway’s Gulliver-Like return to civilisation, lost in a series of spinning newspaper headlines, it could have given us more of that. But Capra is no Thomas More or Jonathan Swift. The satirical and suppressive elements under a hierarchical Utopia are alien to his mindset. Lost Horizon is a reassuring promise founded on shaky ground indeed.

All That Money Can Buy (1941)

The Devil sure knows how to tempt a man in this beautifully filmed morality tale

Director: William Dieterle

Cast: Walter Huston (Mr Scratch), Edward Arnold (Daniel Webster), James Craig (Jabez Stone), Anne Shirley (Mary Stone), Jane Darwell (Ma Stone), Simone Simon (Belle), Gene Lockhart (Squire Slossum), John Qualen (Miser Stevens), HB Warner (Judge Hawthorne)

Sometimes life can be a real struggle. With debts, failed crops and animals getting sick, what’s a guy to do? That’s the problem New Hampshire farmer Jabez Stone (James Craig) has in 1840. What he wouldn’t give to find a bundle of buried gold that could solve all his problems. Fortunately, charming old rogue Mr Scratch (Walter Huston) knows exactly where to find one – all he wants in return is for Jabez to sign away his soul seven years from now (signed in blood of course). Jabez gets fortune, prestige, the son he always wanted – but when ‘Mr Scratch’ comes to collect, can Jabez’s friend, famed orator, lawyer and congressmen Daniel Webster (Edward Arnold) save his soul?

All That Money Can Buy is a richly atmospheric piece of film-making from William Dieterle, adapted from Stephen Vincent Benet’s short story and full of gorgeously filmed light-and-shadow with a haunting score by Bernard Herrmann. (The story was originally titled The Devil and Daniel Webster, also the film’s original title before RKO changed it to avoid confusion with their more successful Jean Arthur comedy The Devil and Miss Jones.) It’s a neat morality tale, full of dark delight at the devilish ingenuity of Mr Scratch, with lots of dark enjoyment at seeing a weak-but-decent man corrupted into being exactly the type of greedy, cheating cad to whom he was deeply in debt to from the beginning.

It’s nominally about James Craig’s Jabez Stone, but Jabez is a shallow, easily manipulated passenger in his own life, pushed and pulled towards and away from sin depending on who he’s talking to. Stone’s fall is swift: moments after meeting Scratch, he’s digging hungrily into a meal while his wife and mother say grace, hugging his newfound bag of gold. As his wealth goes, he drifts from his pure wife (Anne Shirley, effective in a dull part) becoming easy prey for demonic (literally) temptress Belle (a wonderfully seductive Simone Simon). By the time the seven years are up, he’s skipping church for illicit card games and crushing the farms of his neighbours to fund his dreamhouse-on-a-hill.

Stone is really the Macguffin here. The real focus is the big-name rivals: The Devil and Daniel Webster. It’s implied these two have fought a long-running battle for years: our introduction to Webster sees him scribbling literally in the shadow of Mr Scratch, who whispers to him tempting offers of high office. Later Webster is unflustered when Scratch suddenly appears to place a coat on his shoulders, treating him as familiar rival. You could argue Scratch is only prowling the streets of New Hampshire because he’s looking for a way to nail the soul of his real target, Daniel Webster.

As Mr Scratch, the film has a delightful (Oscar-nominated) performance from Walter Huston. With his scruffy clothes and twirling his cane, Scratch pops up everywhere with Huston’s devilish smile. It’s a masterclass in insinuating, playful malevolence, with Huston playing this larger-than-life character in a surprisingly low-key way that nevertheless sees him overflowing with delight at his own wickedness. Huston has the trick of making Scratch sound like someone trying to sound sincere, while never leaving us in doubt that everything he says is a trap or lie, only showing his arrogance and cruelty when victory is in his grasp. It’s a fabulous performance, charismatic and wicked.

Edward Arnold makes Daniel Webster both a grand man of principle and a consummate politician, proud of his reputation and all the more open to temptation for it. He also has the absolute assurance of a man used to getting his own way, and the arrogance of seeing himself as an equal to the Devil rather than a target. These two form the ends of a push-me-pull-me rivalry.

The rivalry culminates in its famous ‘courtroom’ scene, as Webster – a little the worse for drink –argues for Jabez’s soul in front of a ghostly court of American sinners from the bowels of hell (lead among them Benedict Arnold). Its shot in atmospheric smoke, with the double exposure creating a ghostly effect for jury and judge. It’s another excellent touch in a film full of inventive use of effects and camerawork, Dieterle at the height of his German influences. The artificial New Hampshire scenery is shot with a sun-kissed beauty that bears Murnau’s mark. Striking lighting and smoke-play abounds in Joseph H August’s camerawork, not least Belle’s introduction backlit with an extraordinarily bright fire. Early scenes of Stone’s misfortune interrupted by a brief frames of a photo-negative Scratch laughing, quite the chillingly surrealist effect.

Politically, All That Money Can Buy backs away from any overt criticism of Webster’s support for the Missouri Compromise (this key piece of slavery protection legislation is so key to Webster’s view of American strength he’s even named a horse after it). But it’s quite brave for 1941 in allowing the Devil legitimate criticism of America’s ‘original sins’ saying he was there driving on the seizing of the land from the Native Americans and up on deck on the first slave ship from the Congo. (Especially as Webster can’t defend these actions). It’s also interesting that the film praises collectivism for the farmers over rugged individualism, a conclusion it’s hard to imagine being praised a few years later.

All That Money Can Buy is also filled with impressive practical effects, not least Scatch’s impossible catching of an axe thrown towards him, bursting it into frame. Both Scratch and Bell reduce papers to flaming ashes with a flick of the wrist. Horribly woozy soft-focus camera work accompanies Jabez’s nightmare visions of the damned. It’s tightly and skilfully edited, superbly paced, with montages used effectively for transitions (a field of corn growing is particularly striking) and wildly unnerving sequences, like Scratch’s fast-paced barn-dance with its whirligig of movement and repeated shots. It’s all brilliantly scored by Herrmann, from the pastoral beats of New Hampshire to the discordant sounds (some created from telephone wires) that accompany Scratch.

All That Money Can Buy concludes with a stand-out speech from Webster that perhaps settles matters a little too easily – and brushes away any of the film’s mild criticism of America’s past with a relentlessly upbeat patriotic message. But the journey there – and the performances from a superb Huston and excellent Arnold – is masterfully assembled by a crack production team working under a director at the height of his powers. A flop at the time, few films deserve rediscovery more.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

James Stewart discovers he has lived a good life in It’s a Wonderful Life

Director: Frank Capra

Cast: James Stewart (George Bailey), Donna Reed (Mary Hatch), Lionel Barrymore (Henry F Potter), Thomas Mitchell (Uncle Billy Bailey), Henry Travers (Clarence Odbody), Beulah Bondi (Ma Bailey), Frank Faylen (Ernie Bishop), Ward Bond (Bert), Gloria Grahame (Violet Bick), HB Warner (Mr Gower), Frank Albertson (Sam Wainwright), Todd Karns (Harry Bailey), Samuel S Hinds (Pa Bailey)

For many people it’s as much a part of Christmas as mince pies and Santa. Any list of the greatest Christmas films of all time – in fact any list of the most beloved films of all time – isn’t complete without It’s a Wonderful Life. Capra’s emotional, heart-warming, seasonal tale encourages us to take a breath and look at the riches in our life, to look past the surface frustrations and disappointments. It seems to have something to say to everyone. There’s a reason why it has been a staple of Christmas for decades.

The small town of Bedford Falls is a place George Bailey (James Stewart) has always dreamed of leaving for a life of adventure. However, circumstances always meant he has stayed in the town, running the family savings and loans business. He’s made a success of the business, raised a family with his wife Mary (Donna Reed – extremely good in an unshowy role), helped half the town into decent affordable homes, and changed his whole community for the better. So why is George standing on a bridge on Christmas Eve, contemplating throwing himself into the river? And will his guardian angel Clarence (Henry Travers) persuade him there are things worth living for?

Capra’s film is very easy to see as a wallow in sentimentality. Certainly, the film is in love with its image of small-town America, here a nirvana of folksy lightness where everyone knows everybody’s name. In reality, America as a whole, even at the time, probably had more in common with Potter’s grasping capitalism or the nightmare vision Clarence conjures of a neon-lit Potterville of loose morals and vice. But the film would never have worked if it was just sickly sentimental – or if it had been a cynical satire for that matter. Instead it works because it is overwhelmingly human, empathy dripping from every pore. It invests us deeply in this whole community and succeeds in making the viewer relate to them at every step.

This is partly because Capra has such a masterful skill for how the little touches can make a story come to life. The loose banister cap that Bailey keeps dislodging in his home. The drawing Donna has made of George’s offer to lasso the moon. The film is full of small moments of character, that create the over-whelming richness of a whole life. It’s also a story full of charm and genuine feeling for its characters, that understands the pain little griefs and small tragedies have.

Perhaps that’s also one of the reasons for the love people have for it. Because, let’s not forget, this is a film set on the darkest day of its lead character’s life, when he considers ending it all. One of the things I find the most touching about the film is that it never stigmatises depression, guilt or feelings of inadequacy. If someone as universally loved as George can look at his own life as a disappointment, and that this feeling is treated as both reasonable but also mistaken in the best way, it reassures as all not only that we shouldn’t feel guilty for feeling this but hopefully that we are as mistaken as George is. Failure is all in the perception – and It’s a Wonderful Life reminds us that perception is often unreliable when we turn it on ourselves.

Capra’s film relies strongly on our bond with George – so the casting of James Stewart in the role plays off perfectly. Stewart is quite simply superb, completely human and deeply moving. Capra provides Stewart with several striking set-piece speeches (all of which he delivers with aplomb). The entire film is essentially a riff on Stewart’s charm and likeability – but also his everyday quality, the sense that when we watch him we are looking at someone like us. Stewart makes Bailey honest, decent and kind. You can immediately see why people like him. His principles and sense of justice drive him every day to do the right thing – and what makes him such a deeply relatable character is that this so often flies in the face of his own desires and interests.

What Capra also understands – and taps into so well here – is the darkness in Stewart. Because someone so like us is surely as likely to suffer from depression and disappointment as the rest of us. You can never forget this is a man who has dreamed his whole life of leaving this town, of making it as an architect, of forging a broader life for himself. He never wanted to be the pillar of the community and family man he becomes. There is disappointment in Bailey at every turn, however much he treats the world around him with warmth. This isn’t what he wanted. No matter if it has won him love and respect from all around him.

And who hasn’t ever felt that? But we know that deep down – even if he doesn’t always realise it – Bailey is happy with his lot. That if he didn’t care deeply about town, friends and family he would have left years ago. We know he’s a good man: that later he will deeply regret berating his poor befuddled Uncle Billy (a gloriously cuddly Thomas Mitchell) for losing $8k and losing his temper at his wife and children on Christmas Eve. There is a pain for us to see such a good man, a loving man, who we feel we understand, angrily ask his wife why they had so many children. Everyone has lashed out like George – and everyone has, at some time, looked at where their life is and felt “I could have been more than this”. Far fewer people have taken the time to look at all the good alone in their lives and what a good mark they have made on the world.

But that’s the genius of the film. Taking its cue from Dicken’s Christmas Carol (I’d also say Lionel Barrymore’s brilliantly hissable Potter is clearly a version of Bleak House’s vile moneylender Smallweed), effectively Clarence is the Ghost of Christmas Present, showing George what the world would have been like without him. Sure some of this is overblown – Potterville for goodness sake! – but the impact is those personal stories. The brother drowned as a child. The pharmacist imprisoned for manslaughter. The affordable homes never built. The family that never even existed. The mix of science fiction and classic morality tale helps us all to reflect – so many of us have people all around who care for us, whose lives would have not been as rich as they are without us, however much we may disappoint ourselves at times.

That’s perhaps behind the love for the film. It’s about hope, while never closing its eyes to despair. It recognises that sometimes we are not happy – and it tells us that that’s okay, so long as we don’t lose hope. It encourages us to take a look at ourselves in the round and to appreciate the whole picture, not just a part of it. You can call that sentimentality if you want – but at Christmas time this message of hope and love is sometimes exactly what you need.

Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

James Stewart campaigns for truth and justice in Capra’s classic Mr Smith Goes to Washington

Director: Frank Capra

Cast: James Stewart (Jefferson Smith), Jean Arthur (Clarissa Saunders), Claude Rains (Senator Joseph Harrison Paine), Edward Arnold (Jim Taylor), Guy Kibbee (Governor Hubert “Happy” Hopper”), Thomas Mitchell (“Diz” Moore), Eugene Pallette (Chick McGinn), Beulah Bondi (Ma Smith), H.B. Warner (Senate Majority Leader), Harry Carey (President of the Senate), Astrid Allwyn (Susan Paine)

Capra’s film are known, above everything, for their fundamental optimism about life, friendship and the American Way. Few films cemented that opinion more than Mr Smith Goes to Washington, the quintessential “one man in the right place can make a difference” movie. And where else would that one man need to be, but Washington? Where laws are framed and ideals come to die. It’s our hope that those at the heart of the political system are there for the good of the people. Of course, even Capra knew most of them were there to line their pockets and do their best for powerful business interests. So who can blame Capra for a little fantasy where naïve, innocent but morally decent Jefferson Smith decides enough is enough?

In an unnamed mid-Western State (the story the film is based on named it as Montana), the junior senator unexpectantly dies. The Governor (Guy Kibbee) needs a new man. Should he go for a reformer or the latest stooge put forward by political power broker in the State Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold). A tricky choice, so he splits the difference by appointing Boy Rangers leader Jefferson Smith (James Stewart) – because he’s wholesome and clean but also naïve enough to manipulate. Jeff heads to Washington, under the wing of Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Rains) – but Paine is in the pocket of Taylor.

Taylor and his cronies want an appropriation bill forced through that includes a clause to build a dam in their state. The dam will be built on land secretly bought up by Taylor and others, making them a fortune from public money. When Jeff announces in the Senate a bill to host a national boy’s summer camp on that same land, it throws a spanner in the works. Despite threats and bribes, Jeff refuses to go along with the shady deal over the dam, so they set out to destroy his reputation. With the help of his secretary Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur), Jeff mounts an epic filibuster in the Senate to clear his name, stop the dam and reveal the political corruption in his state.

Capra’s film is earnest, well-meaning and at times even a little bit sanctimonious and preachy – but it gets away with it because it’s also so energetic, honest and fun. It’s strange watching it today to think that the Senate at the time responded so poorly to it. Leading public figures either denounced it’s view of government and even tried to have it banned. Ironically of course, it probably inspired more people to get involved in Government than any other movie.

That was bad news for the corrupt political machines that ran so many parts of America at the time. Capra’s film is remarkably open-eyed about how these machines worked. Powerful business interests at the centre, with a raft of politicians in their pay – from Governors and senators on down. Jim Taylor – very well played with a swaggering, crude, bullying tone by Edward Arnold – only has to snap his fingers to get things done. During the film he mobilises the press, the police, the fire service and an army of heavies to enforce his will in the state and suppress free speech. The Governor (a neatly tremulous Guy Kibbee) is so firmly in his pocket, he can barely tie his shoe-laces without Taylor directing it. Senator Paine is patrician, dignified and has every inch of respectability – but he is soaking in filth up his neck from contact with Taylor.

It’s this system the film has a quiet anger about. Whatever happened to having “a little bit of plain, ordinary kindness – and a little lookin’ out for the other fella too”? Capra’s sprightly film also makes clear that we both don’t look too closely at how our government is really run and are very quick to hoover up any story we get from our political masters and accept it as gospel. An honest, decent man in the middle of all this is as unlikely a sight as you can imagine.

But that’s what these people get with Jefferson Smith – and discover someone who should be easy to manipulate, but doesn’t understand the rules of the game he’s playing. Instead Jeff thinks they are all there to help other people, not to themselves. Now you can argue, as some critics have, that law-making is the art of compromise – and that once the dam is under way, the benefits it will produce to Jeff’s home State (in terms of employment and energy) will be huge. So why shouldn’t Jeff bow down and move his boys camp in order to let the Bill go through?

Well the point is that Jeff isn’t opposed to the dam – he’s opposed to the corrupt profiteering that will spring out of it, and the way the cesspool of Washington (amongst all those fine monuments he so adoringly looks at) doesn’t care. This is a filibuster campaign to put honesty and decency back into American politics – and what’s not to like about that? It’s a film that firmly believes that one good man in the right place (that’s both Jeff and the President of the Senate, who tacitly encourages him) can change the day and save the country from itself.

There was of course no one better for such a job than Jimmy Stewart (and surely it’s this film that made him “Jimmy” to one and all). Capra had James Stewart in mind from the start – and it’s a perfect role for him, an iconic performance that stands as surely one of his greatest roles. Stewart has the skill to make Jeff endearing but not saccharine, naïve but not frustrating, innocent but not a rube, gentle but determined. Despite its corniness (and some of the film is very corny) you relate to his reverence for Lincoln’s memorial and the Capital. Stewart’s homespun charm is perfect, but it’s matched with the steel he could give characters. There is an adamant quality to his filibuster, his refusal to back down and go along with injustice. The final quarter of the film that deals with the filibuster is quite superb stuff, Stewart delivering some very-well written speeches with commitment, passion and bravura. It’s no understatement to say the film would work half as well as it does without him.

But then the entire film is also a feast of great acting, all sparked by a superb script from Sidney Buchman which mixes razor-sharp dialogue with wonderful speeches. Jean Arthur (who actually gets top billing) is very good as a cynical Washington insider who rediscovers her ideals – and finds her heart melting – under Jeff’s honest influence. Claude Rains gives one of his finest performances as the patrician Paine, a man who tries to close his eyes to his own corruption, but swallows down his own guilt and shame every day. Harry Carey gets a twinkly cameo as an amused and supportive President of the Senate. (Both actors were nominated for the Oscar, but lost to Thomas Mitchell for Stagecoach who also appears here in a fun turn as the drunken but principled reporter Diz).

Capra keeps the pace up perfectly, and his direction handles both smaller scale scenes of romance and idealism, with the larger scale fireworks of the Senate (a superb set, that looks so convincing it’s amazing to think it was built on a sound stage). His biggest trick here is to create a film that, in many ways, is a political lecture, but never makes it feel like one. Instead it delivers it’s messages on truth, justice and the American way with such lightness – but yet such pure decency – that it all works. It helps a great deal that the film doesn’t shy away from the corruption and – apart from a final turn that saves the day – resists melodrama and contrivance. Charming, funny but also thoughtful and committed, Mr Smith Goes to Washington is one of Capra’s very best.

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

William Holden falls under Gloria Swanson’s spell in Billy Wilder’s superb Hollywood satire Sunset Boulevard

Director: Billy Wilder

Cast: William Holden (Joe Gillis), Gloria Swanson (Norma Desmond), Erich von Stroheim (Max von Mayerling), Nancy Olson (Betty Schaefer), Jack Webb (Artie Green), Fred Clark (Sheldrake), Robert Emmett O’Connor (Jonesy), Lloyd Gough (Morino); as themselves: Cecil B. DeMille, Hedda Hopper, Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson, HB Warner

Imagine if Charles Dickens had been born a hundred years later. He would surely have headed to Hollywood – and if he had, surely would have written something like Sunset Boulevard. Because who is Joe Gillis but another shallow Pip, dreaming of fortune and wasting his brains, who turns up at Satis House but stays on to become Miss Havisham’s live-in lover? Sure Wilder is more cynical and bitter than Dickens, but I guess even optimist Dickens killed off Little Nell so maybe he too would have had Joe Gillis end (and start) the film face-down in a swimming pool with three bullets in his back?

The cops arrive to find Joe (William Holden) exactly like that, while we hear Joe’s acidic commentary outlining exactly how this state of affairs came about. Joe is a screenwriter in Hollywood (he’s in the second tier of a second tier profession in the movies) who can’t get his latest script made for love nor money. Dodging the debt collectors set on reclaiming his car, he pulls into the drive of a mysterious house. It’s the home of Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a forgotten silent film star who now lives out her days in her mansion, dreaming of her past glories and planning for a return to stardom that will never come, tended to by her loyal butler Max (Erich von Stroheim). Joe is roped in first to rewrite the (terrible) script she has been working on for her comeback, and then to become her live-in lover. But can such a situation survive Hollywood’s cold heart and Joe’s own self-loathing and desires to restart his screenwriting career in partnership with ambitious young studio script reader Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson)?

Billy Wilder’s poison-pen love letter to Hollywood skewers the coldness at its heart. It does this with a triumphant mix of the grotesque and the heartfelt, the surreal and the coldly realistic, an insider’s guide to the world behind the magic of film-making and a story about those shut out of that very world. Hollywood is a shallow, bitter town where you’re either top of the bill or no-one at all. Would people from any other profession write such a bitter denunciation of their job that is also laced with affection and love? Maybe it has something to do with this being a unique profession which you have to love to enter, but once there you work with people who see it as a business.

The smell of desperation is there from the start, with Joe peddling his dreadful sounding baseball movie The Base Is Loaded to a polite but uninterested producer. Dropping a host of names and accepting any number of changes to the story (including changing it into an all-female sporting musical), Joe might once have had a talent but, as he says, “that was last year, this year I need money”. William Holden was a late choice for Joe, but he is perfect in the part, capturing the air of the self-loathing cynic, a man bright enough to understand he’s shallow, a hack and desperate for any touch of the fame and fortune Hollywood can bring him.

Just like Pip, Joe is a young man who feels he is entitled to a life he scarcely seems to be qualified for. No wonder he settles into a life as Norma Desmond’s gigolo – it may well damage his sense of masculine pride to be an emasculated house-boy, but my God the suits are nice. And what talent does Joe even really have anyway? The script he is peddling barely seems to have any merit at all, and his extensive polish of Norma’s vehicle is still so alarmingly bad it never even gets the slightest consideration from Cecil B. DeMille. But Joe can’t let it go because he’s like a moth drawn towards those bright Hollywood lights.

And those bright Hollywood lights have consumed forever Norma Desmond. Wilder pulled Gloria Swanson out of an enforced semi-retirement to play the silent screen siren, whose career her own so closely parallels. It’s easy to remember Norma as a sort of Psycho-ish grotesque, a demented Miss Havisham living in her own crazy patchwork world of memory and delusion. Swanson certainly channels brilliantly the expression and body language of silent cinema into the part, and Desmond’s use of the sort of exaggerated gestures from that era in everyday life hammers home how her life hasn’t moved on from her glory days.

But that would be to overlook the immense skill in Swanson’s performance. Norma may be sad, desperate, probably more than a little unhinged – a larger than life Miss Havisham to whom the “the pictures got small”, but she’s also a real person. Swanson makes it clear she genuinely loves Joe, she’s generous when she wants to be, devoted in her own way and immensely fragile. She takes a delighted pleasure in entertaining – a sequence of her reliving her glory days for Joe’s amusement (he couldn’t give a toss, making it all the more painful), capped with a charmingly delightful Chaplin impersonation shows a Norma who loves entertaining, loves putting a smile on people’s faces. Sure she’s obsessed with fame and desperate to reclaim it, but she’s also deep-down a real person.

But then that’s part also of Wilder’s romantic look at cinema. He can totally understand the bitter, destructive “business” part of it, but he still loves the show. His insiderish film is full of loving tributes to old Hollywood. Norma sits and watches real film footage of the real Gloria Swanson. The visit to Paramount Studios delights not only with its “backstage pass” feel, but also in the excitement with which the ageing extras and stage hands greet Norma. Norma’s weekly card games are staffed with genuine silent movie stars like Buster Keaton. Cecil B DeMille even pops up as himself (on the set of his film Samson and Delilah), kindly trying to guide Norma out of the studio even as he lacks the guts to tell her that her dream of a comeback is stillborn.

So how can you not feel sorry for Norma, who is clearly locked up in her haunted house on the outskirts of town, a million miles from reality, surrounded by endless reminders of her past glories. It’s so all-encompassing it traps Joe as well – at one point Wilder shows him trying to storm out, only for his pocket watch to literally get caught on the door. This place of dreams is staffed by the butler Max, a beautifully judged performance of Germanic chill mixed with doe-eyed devotion from Erich von Stroheim, also playing a dark version of himself as Norma’s pioneering former director (and husband) now reduced to protective butler. The entire house is a mausoleum without any escape.

The only character who seems truly positive is Nancy Olson’s wonderfully sweet Betty Schaefer, passionate about crafting a career for herself in the cinema. But even she is ruthlessly ambitious, a woman quite happy to consider jilting her fiancée for Joe’s attentions and has her eye on the price of success. She may have the talent, but she’s also got the sharpness.

Billy Wilder’s film brilliantly explores all these divides and contradictions in Hollywood and its history. Because what is Hollywood but a town that pays lip service to the past, but only has eyes for the future? Particularly with women. Female stars have a short shelf life and then they are dispatched. Poor Norma is still glamourous, still clearly has star quality – but as far as Hollywood is concerned she may as well be a million years old. No wonder Joe, used to these attitudes, is so ashamed to be kept by her – a woman he constantly refers to as a middle-aged friend.

The dialogue, as you would expect from Brackett and Wilder, is superb from top to bottom with zingers and well-constructed dialogue exchanges so well placed they will survive for as long as there are movies. The film is beautifully shot by John F Seitz – part gothic horror, part dark romance, part neo-realist. Its pacing is perfect, its four act construction perfectly put together. All four of the principals (all Oscar nominated, none winning) are pitch perfect, sketching out characters that feel real and mixed with tragedy and loss as much as they are larger-than-life otherworldliness.

It’s the mixture of the freak show and the heart, in the massive Havishamesque estate, that marks this out as Hollywood does Dickens. The astute understanding of central characters, with enough depth to understand their shallowness, the grotesques that revolve around them but still have their humanity, it’s all there. Wilder mixes it with his own Hollywood emotions and his dry wit and cynicism to create a damn near perfect movie.