Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939)

James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Jefferson Smith: James Stewart
Clarissa Saunders: Jean Arthur
Sen. Joseph Paine: Claude Rains
Jim Taylor: Edward Arnold
Gov. Hopper: Guy Kibbee
Diz Moore: Thomas Mitchell
Chick McGann: Eugene Pallette
Ma Smith: Beulah Bondi
Senate Majority Leader: H.B. Warner
President of the Senate: Harry Carey
Susan Paine: Astrid Allwyn
Mrs. Hopper: Ruth Donnelly
Sen. MacPherson: Grant Mitchell
Sen. Monroe: Porter Hall
Himself: H.V. Kaltenborn
Nosey: Charles Lane
Bill Griffith: William Demarest
Sweeney Farrell: Jack Carson

Director: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Sidney Buchman
Based on a story by Lewis R. Foster
Cinematography: Joseph Walker
Art direction: Lionel Banks
Film editing: Al Clark, Gene Havlick
Music: Dimitri Tiomkin

Perhaps only James Stewart (or Gary Cooper, who turned down the role of Jefferson Smith) could have made Frank Capra's preposterous, sentimental, flag-wavingly patriotic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington into what many people still regard as a beloved classic. But now that we've spent some time being governed by probably the most corrupt man ever to hold the White House, a president elected on populist promises to "drain the swamp" in Washington but who instead has spent his time wallowing in it and stocking it with still more alligators, maybe we can take a harsher look at the Capra film's politics. The people who elected Donald Trump seem to have thought they were voting for Jefferson Smith but instead elected the movie's Jim Taylor (played deliciously by that fattest of character actor fat cats, Edward Arnold). David Thomson, among others, has cogently observed that the film celebrates Jefferson Smith's bull-headed integrity, but that democracy necessarily involves the kind of compromises that Claude Rains's Senator Paine has made, and which have made him a popular and successful politician. True, he's under the thumb of the viciously corrupt Jim Taylor, who is even a manipulator of "fake news," but Thomson questions whether the people of Smith's state wouldn't have benefited more from the dam Taylor wants to put on Willett Creek, presumably one that would supply power and other benefits to the state, than from Smith's piddly boys' camp, which would benefit at best a few hundred boys. (No girls need apply?) Smith's dramatic filibuster also seems to be holding up a bill that would provide funding for some essential services. As it happens, I rewatched Mr. Smith on the night after the Senate reached an impasse on funding the entire federal government, and there could hardly be a better example of political stubbornness undermining the public good. Which is only to say that the merits of Capra's film -- and there are some -- transcend its simple-minded fable. Among its merits, it's beautifully acted, not only by Stewart, Rains, and Arnold, but also by Jean Arthur, that most underrated of 1930s leading ladies, and Thomas Mitchell, who appeared in no fewer than three of the films nominated for the best picture Oscar for 1939 -- this one, Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming), and Stagecoach (John Ford) -- and won the supporting actor award for Stagecoach. And just run down the rest of the cast list, which seems to be a roster of every great character actor in the movies of that day, all of them performing with great energy. Capra's mise-en-scène is sometimes stagy, but Lionel Banks's great re-creation of the Senate chamber gives Capra a fine stage on which to work.

Holiday (George Cukor, 1938)

Cary Grant, Edward Everett Horton, and Jean Dixon in Holiday

Linda Seton: Katharine Hepburn
Johnny Case: Cary Grant
Julia Seton: Doris Nolan
Ned Seton: Lew Ayres
Nick Potter: Edward Everett Horton
Susan Potter: Jean Dixon
Edward Seton: Henry Kolker
Seton Cram: Henry Daniell
Laura Cram: Binnie Barnes

Director: George Cukor
Screenplay: Donald Ogden Stewart, Sidney Buchman
Based on a play by Philip Barry
Cinematography: Franz Planer
Art direction: Stephen Goosson
Film editing: Al Clark, Otto Meyer
Music: Sidney Cutner

Of the four films Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn made together, I think George Cukor's Holiday may be my favorite. Their first, Sylvia Scarlett (Cukor, 1935), is just, well, weird. The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, 1940) has maybe a touch too much MGM gloss for my tastes, and James Stewart has a better role than Grant does. Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938) is a greater movie than Holiday and one of the funniest films ever made, but as a showcase for the talents and the chemistry of Grant and Hepburn it falls short because they're mostly called on for one note: zaniness. But Holiday allows them to show off almost everything they could do. It allows Grant to be suave and ardent and acrobatic and sexy. It lets Hepburn be intense and vulnerable and glamorous and noble. And it gives them one of the best supporting casts ever assembled to play off of. As films like his David Copperfield (1935) and The Women (1939) show, Cukor was a master at directing ensembles of colorful players. Here he directs the usually bland Lew Ayres in a heartbreaking performance as Ned Seton, the trapped, alcoholic younger brother of Linda and Julia. He makes Doris Nolan's Julia first a credible match for Grant's Johnny Case and then eases her transition into a chip off the old ice block: the die-hard capitalist tycoon paterfamilias played by Henry Kolker. Johnny's background is illuminated by his friendship with the witty, professorial Potters as that of the Setons is by the snide, snobbish Crams. Of course, all of these relationships are built into the film by its source, a play by Philip Barry adapted by Donald Ogden Stewart and Sidney Buchman, but it's Cukor's skill at keeping them in balance that allows the film to stay away from sentimentality or getting bogged down in satire of the rich. There's a bit of the latter -- and of the leftist views that would later get Stewart blacklisted -- when Seton calls Johnny's desire to take time off from making money "un-American," to which Linda replies, "Well, then, he is, and he won't go to heaven when he dies, because apparently he can't believe that a life devoted to piling up money is all it's cracked up to be." Holiday has a little more satiric bite than the other Barry-Stewart-Cukor-Grant-Hepburn collaboration, The Philadelphia Story, but this is Depression-era political commentary with a light touch. Best of all, Holiday is one of the greatest members of a much-abused genre, the romantic comedy.