It Happened One Night (1934)

USA, 105 minutes

Director: Frank Capra

Writers: Robert Riskin, Samual Hopkins Adams

Photography: Joseph Walker

Music: Howard Jackson

Editor: Gene Havlick

Cast: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns, Alan Hale, Ward Bond, Jameson Thomas, Arthur Hoyt, Frank Capra

Going on 90 years later, there is lots of trivia to discover about the sprightly It Happened One Night. Men’s undershirt sales reportedly fell after Clark Gable tears off his shirt in one scene and reveals a bare chest. The picture stands as an early marker of screwball comedy, arguably one of the most popular of all time as, among other things, It Happened One Night made a sweep at the Oscars that has only been matched since by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs. My favorite piece of trivia is that Looney Tunes animator Friz Freleng wrote that the movie influenced the creation of Bugs Bunny. In one scene Clark Gable is eating carrots and talking fast and Roscoe Karns as a minor character on a Greyhound bus has a habit of calling people “Doc.” It may not be much but it’s an honest influence.

I think it's interesting to note that It Happened One Night is considered pre-Code, released just four months before the Hays Code went into effect policing the content of movies. Yes, the picture is somewhat candid about sexuality—candid for 1934, let’s say—but I’m always more shocked by Clark Gable’s roguish brand, before and after the Code. Only James Cagney was a worse role model. Peter Warne (Gable) is a vaguely corrupt, hard-drinking newspaperman who can tell a woman to shut up and make it stick. Warne tells his future father-in-law that his daughter Ellie (Claudette Colbert) needs “a guy that’d take a sock at her once a day, whether it’s coming to her or not.” This, of course, seals the deal with Ellie’s father. He's all for Warne now. Next stop, Peter and Ellie with a baby carriage.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

USA, 129 minutes

Director: Frank Capra

Writers: Sidney Buchman, Lewis R. Foster, Myles Connolly

Photography: Joseph Walker

Music: Dimitri Tiomkin

Editors: Al Clark, Gene Havlick

Cast: James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Thomas Mitchell, Edward Arnold, Eugene Pallette, Harry Carey, Guy Kibbee, Beulah Bondi, H.B. Warner, Astrid Allwyn, Ruth Donnelly, Charles Lane, Porter Hall, William Demarest, Jack Carson

You don't need me to tell you what kind of crazy year this has been, and not even half over. But I want to mention that I looked at Mr. Smith Goes to Washington a few months ago during the impeachment and found it much more resonant than I expected. Remember the impeachment? It's hard to believe that even happened this year. Of course, as a movie directed by Frank Capra, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington has certain known quantities going in. The last 10 minutes will be a train wreck of happiness. The little guy will always get his say, and the girl too (usually all she's doing is cheering him on). People will generally regard Abraham Lincoln as real swell. And where, in John Ford tableaus, the pilgrims solemnly assemble for a verse of "Shall We Gather at the River," in Capra pictures it's going to be brass bands, patriotic marches, and "Auld Lang Syne." Set your expectations accordingly.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington just has too many solid elements going for it to be spoiled by animus toward Capra. They include the beautiful young James Stewart (though best seen in this period in The Shop Around the Corner), the sturdy Jean Arthur, who never strays far from her slightly wised-up Betty Boop girl-next-door salty leading lady persona but was made for these times of Depression and war (I love her), Claude Rains his typical consummate professional, and the usual impressive assemblage of character actors: Thomas Mitchell (drunk again), goose-voiced Eugene Pallette (I love him too), Harry Carey, Guy Kibbee, Beulah Bondi, etc. They don't call 1939 Hollywood's greatest year for nothin'.

Why We Fight (1942-1945)

Prelude to War (1942); The Nazis Strike (1943); Divide and Conquer (1943); The Battle of Britain (1943); The Battle of Russia (1943); The Battle of China (1944); War Comes to America (1945), USA, 422 minutes, documentary
Directors: Frank Capra, Anatole Litvak, Anthony Veiller
Writers: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Anthony Veiller, Robert Heller, Williband Hentschel, Adolf Hitler, Eric Knight, S.K. Lauren, Anatole Litvak, John Sanford, Confucius, Emma Lazarus
Photography: Robert J. Flaherty
Music: Dimitri Tiomkin, Hugo Friedhofer, Leigh Harline, Arthur Lange, Cyril J. Mockridge, Alfred Newman, David Raksin, Anthony Collins, Louis Gruenberg, John Leipold, Roy Webb, William Lava, Howard Jackson, Max Steiner
Editors: William Hornbeck, William A. Lyon
With: Walter Huston, Anthony Veiller, John Litel, Frieda Inescourt, Lloyd Nolan, Elliot Lewis, Harry von Zell

At the moment, it's not hard to understand the monumental task of the United States and the democratic nations in 1942 converting the Greatest Generation into the original Antifa. It took some prodding. As we are currently living through a period of nearly perfect amnesia about fascism it's instructive to see, as documented in this series of instructional films, that Madison Square Garden could be filled in the late 1930s with Nuremberg-style rallies for American Nazis, swastikas blazing and thuggish beat-downs for anyone raising objections to the usual toxic swill. Sad (and obvious) to say, the only difference in today's "Lock her up" "Send her back" rallies is that they are shot in color, and they're not yet so brazen with the swastikas (though they think it's funny to say "Hail Trump").

But a monumental task was met with a monumental propaganda film project, appropriately preserved now in stained, scratched, and iffy prints, cheaply available in libraries, on YouTube, cable-TV channels, Amazon Prime, DVD, even VHS (though no longer cheap in that format). Why We Fight set out to be our Triumph of the Will. Even today it remains as stirring, entertaining, and inspiring as a seven-hour seven-part movie can be. Sometimes, as in the studious prologue of the first episode, Prelude to War, it can be dull with didactic explanation. We're still a little bored with Manchuria going down in 1931 and Shanghai and Nanking in 1937, even with the Japanese altogether (other than Pearl Harbor and the A-bombs). These anonymous filmmakers expertly manage our expectations. They know it's German Nazis we want and it is German Nazis we will get. They just make us sit through some instruction first. As they put it, at the end of every episode, with words it is good to remember now (their italics, but my emphasis too): "The victory of the democracies can only be complete with the utter defeat of the war machines of Germany and Japan."

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

#25: It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946)

This one kind of sneaked up on me. I don't recall it as ever being much of a holiday staple in my family when I was growing up, and by the time I had started to figure out how much I like Capra movies—Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and especially Meet John Doe did most of the heavy lifting there—I was still suspicious of the Christmas and angels theme. I saw bits and pieces of it over the years, enough to convince myself that it was worth continuing to avoid.

Then, somehow, I ended up watching a TV broadcast from beginning to end at some point in the late '80s. I was surprised by how dark it is, even the photography, which verges on noir in some sequences. It's not just that it's a story about a man who has decided suicide is his best option. It's that it's a portrait so dead-on believable that it's almost painful to watch, telling a story in excruciating detail of lifelong frustration and disappointment. George Bailey keeps seeing his (relatively modest) dreams so systematically denied that his interior life shrivels to the point where, in one of his darkest moments of despair, he can cry out to his wife, "Why do we have to have all these kids?"

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

USA, 130 minutes
Director: Frank Capra
Writers: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra, Jo Swerling, Philip Van Doren Stern, Michael Wilson
Photography: Joseph F. Biroc, Joseph Walker, Victor Milner
Music: Dimitri Tiomkin
Editor: William Hornbeck
Cast: James Stewart, Henry Travers, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Beulah Bondi, Frank Faylen, Ward Bond, Gloria Grahame, H.B. Warner, Frank Albertson, Samuel S. Hinds, Mary Treen, Sheldon Leonard

Since coming to terms with how much I like and admire and value the cornball object known as It's a Wonderful Life, I have maintained that it's because the picture is essentially fearless, and not just "for its times," about going right at human depravity. For every saccharine declaration that, "Every time you hear a bell ring, it means that some angel's just got his wings," there's someone mean and surly like Sheldon Leonard standing there saying, "Hey, look, mister, we serve hard drinks in here for men who want to get drunk fast, and we don't need any characters around to give the joint atmosphere." It's almost like the call and response in gospel music, these extremes between whitest whites and blackest blacks, and it's one of the best things I know, short of The Wizard of Oz and Blue Velvet, at sharpening such contrasts and making you feel them viscerally.

I came to it late, finally catching a TV broadcast from beginning to end at some point in the late '80s. I was surprised by how dark it is, even the photography, which verges on pure noir in some sequences, and Universal-style horror in others. It's not just that it's a story about a man who has decided suicide is his best option (nor that it's unafraid to use the word "suicide" plain). The fact is it's just good all through, with a screenplay that expertly juggles its many extremities, and top-notch performances. It boldly rears back and lets loose a story in excruciating detail of lifelong frustration and disappointment, the story of George Bailey (played brilliantly by James Stewart in one of his greatest performances), who keeps seeing his dream denied of escaping the small upstate New York town in which he was born and has lived all his life, that dream so systematically denied that his interior life shrivels to the point where, in a moment of uncalculated despair, he can cry out to his wife, "You call this a happy family? Why do we have to have all these kids?"