The Premiere Frank
Capra Collection (American Madness/Mr. Smith Goes To Washington/It Happened One
Night/You Can't Take It With You/Mr. Deeds Goes To Town/Frank Capra's American
Dream documentary)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: B Films: B
For better and sometimes worse, the films of Frank
Capra became the stories of the American Dream and what that experience could
be, but it is always at the price of distraction and populism. Well respected by many a filmmaker and actor,
his influence is undeniable, but the work of the first “feel good” filmmaker of
the sound era (there were few in the silent era) has a strange history and even
good intentions seem to backfire at times.
Like John Ford, his career starts with optimistic films
about America, only to turn into other directions as reality and dreams not
realized begin to set in. While this
created more classics for Ford later on, Capra never recovered from WWII, the
realities it brought and his attempt to make several comebacks on more “feel
good” films did not work or work out.
Sony’s new Premiere Frank Capra Collection contains five of the
primary films form his peak at the studio that was his home for that peak.
He had a knack for finding talent, the right
combination of actors and a then smaller studio like Columbia needed all the
help and hits it could get. So began the
trek of the first director to ever have full reign at a movie studio:
American
Madness (1932) a sort of precursor to the financial politics of It’s A
Wonderful Life, Walter Huston is a bank president as The Great Depression
takes hold. Widely considered by many to
be his first film as the auteur we know him for being today, the film deals
with the fear of Americans during this time when bank were imploding and the
future was uncertain. Instead of
examining who in power was allowing everyone’s lives to be ruined and if
isolationist policies had anything to do with this, the story is eventually
about people voting against their own economic interests and acting like almost
all the catastrophe was “just something that happened” and that we should “just
make the best of a bad situation” no matter how ugly it got. In this, he managed to find a silver lining
and Capra was on his melodramatic way.
It
Happened One Night (1934) is one of the early screwball comedies as an
edgy reporter (Clark Gable) is in pursuit of a heiress (Claudette Colbert) on
the run, as the reporter assumes she will be a smarmy snob. Instead, she turns out to be a match for him
and a battle of the sexes begins. A
classic that puts the shaky view of America somewhat aside, it still becomes a
hit and falls into his special brand of melodrama dubbed “Capra-corn”.
Mr.
Deeds Goes To Town (1936) a huge inheritance may ruin the title
character (Gary Cooper) who never finds happiness, so he eventually makes a
crazy decision that like so much propaganda of the time, tells people that they
should vote against their own economic interest and be happy to be poor. Good movie, disturbing message.
You
Can't Take It With You (1938) is a film version of the
Kaufman/Hart play about a crazy eccentric family in a tale about money and
friendship. The argument of the play is
to live life as best you can with the most friends and great times you can
compile, while one of the characters just wants to compile a ton of money. The film argues that you have to choose one
over the other, but in real life, that is just another excuse to con someone
into being happy to be poor. Oddly, a
comparison to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) quickly shows all the
problems here.
Mr.
Smith Goes To Washington (1939) is the oft-imitated propaganda film about
a guy from a small town (Jimmy Stewart) taking on the political system in
Washington D.C. and the ugly corruption that is stopping America itself from
living up to its ambitions. Can he
win? Did we ever win? Particularly poignant as we entered WWII, the
film was a hit but there were those who knew it was just a dream like so many
of his films and others who bought into the myth. Points to Capra for the guts to portray
optimistic Stewart as naïve and as an easy target for believing in doing the
right thing. He finally got the Power
Elite’s goat!
Robert
Riskin was his main writer and his skills with dialogue and narrative were as
masterful as Capra’s was with comedy and melodrama. Little touches Capra put into his films gave
them a life many films of the time did not have, many of which have become
commonplace cinematic language since.
Like D.W. Griffith, his innovations have been absorbed by mainstream
cinema more so than most name directors, but there may be subtleties here yet
to be addressed in a post 9/11 America because some things might be too ugly to
deal with. This set might just be the
next step towards that debate.
The 1.33
X 1 black & white image looks good on all five films thanks to the
restoration efforts of Sony/Columbia. Joseph
Walker was Capra’s cameraman throughout and helped to create their unique look
and feel. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
throughout is very good for its age thanks to those same restoration
efforts. It is a shame so many early
Columbia films (like those of Paramount’s) are no seen enough because they made
some distinctive films long overdue to be rediscovered.
Extras
are many, including a fifth DVD featuring Frank Capra's American Dream, a Ron Howard-hosted/narrated documentary
about his life and films. It is
outstanding, but should only be seen after you watch the main five films, even
if you skip the other extras. Each film has a “Frank
Capra Jr. remembers…” featurette (the documentary disc has two of them, plus Jeanine
Bassinger’s The Frank Capra I Knew and Frank Capra: Collaboration) and
audio commentary track with Capra Jr. & Jeanine Bassinger. The box also comes with a high-quality
booklet on these films and his years at Columbia.
At the time, another director went on a
creative tear in response to Capra’s films.
He was Preston
Sturges. If nothing else shows the
limits and odd problems with Capra-corn, it is his films of the 1940s. But there are more Capra films to look at and
we intend to cover all of them that we can.
This set is worth a good look, no matter its issues or yours.
- Nicholas Sheffo
