Songs of Innocence and Experience:

Romance in the Cinema of Frank Capra

 Songs of Innocence and Experience:
Romance in the Cinema of Frank Capra

By

Magdalena Grabias
 Songs of Innocence and Experience:
Romance in the Cinema of Frank Capra,
by Magdalena Grabias

This book first published 2013

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2013 by Magdalena Grabias

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-4781-X, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4781-0

To my mum and dad, my sister, my nephew, my grandma
and Clive Nolan, my friend.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables .............................................................................................. ix

Acknowledgments ...................................................................................... xi

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1

Chapter One ................................................................................................ 5

Frank Capra: The Artist and his Films

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 35

Comedy and Romance in Literature and Film

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 65

From Innocence to Experience: Innocence

Chapter Four ............................................................................................ 105

From Innocence to Experience: Experience

Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 161

Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life

Conclusion ............................................................................................... 199

Bibliography ............................................................................................ 203

Selected Filmography ...............................................................................211

 LIST OF TABLES

Table 2-1 The Old Comedy vs. The New Comedy .................................... 39

Table 2-2 Comedy vs. Romance ........................................................... 44-45

Table 2-3 Screwball Comedy vs. Romantic Comedy ........................... 49-50

 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to Professor

Christopher Garbowski, the supervisor of my doctoral dissertation and a
spiritus movens of my academic research, for his incredible patience,
kindness, good will, long years of hard work on me and with me, and for
inspiring me with his vast knowledge and humanistic attitude.
I also wish to thank Professor Jerzy Kutnik and Professor Jacek Dąbaáa
for valuable pieces of advice, support and time devoted to me and my
book.
A thank you to Professor Jan Adamowski and my colleagues at the
Department of Cultural Studies of Maria Curie-Skáodowska University in
Lublin (UMCS) for support and the creative academic atmosphere.
Further thanks go to Ian Jones for his enthusiasm, his hard work on my
book and invaluable help in solving linguistic and stylistic issues.
A thank you to Ivan Kinsman and Krzysztof Kurkowski for technical
support.
A massive thank you (which I fail to express in words) goes to my
family: my lovely mum Wiesáawa Karczewska-Grabias for her warmth
and wisdom and teaching me to feel and love; my dad Professor Stanisáaw
Grabias for being a never-ending inspiration and for knowing the way
whenever I fail to see one; my beautiful sister Ewa Niestorowicz for being
my best friend ever and never failing in that; Tomasz Niestorowicz for
being always there for me; AdaĞ Niestorowicz for being the coolest little
guy on Earth; my grandma Maria Karczewska for being perfect (I know
you are watching over me from some better place now...); and Kasia for
her unconditional love and kind heart.
Last but not least, a big thank you to all those I love, my wonderful
friends who have been making my life worth living throughout the years
and who make me want to reach for the stars (in random order): Clive
Nolan, Christina Booth, Mike Booth, Ian Jones, Timo Groenendaal, Marijke
Groenendaal-van der Schaal, Claudio Momberg, Rachel Wilce, Nick
Barrett, Susanne Brauer, Victoria Bolley, Mark Westwood, Mrs. Margaret
Nolan, Fernando Gomez, Alan Reed, David Clifford, Scott Higham, Andy
Sears, Peter Gee, Nathalie Lebreux-Pointer, Mick Pointer, Paul Menel,
Chris Lewis, Maggi Lewis, Paul Manzi, Agnieszka ĝwita, Marcel Haster,
Barbara Haster, Graeme Bell, Simon Hill, Kylan Amos, Kim Carter,
xii Acknowledgments

Fabien Bienvenu, Noel Calcaterra, Arnfinn Isaksen, Morten L Clason, Stig

Andre Clason, Ian Hemingway, Neil Palfreyman, Bridget Palfreyman,
Patric Toms, Sian Roberts, Dominique Bordas, Tatiana Unzueta, Chris
Walkden, Iain Richardson, Damian Wilson, Soheila Clifford, Farideh
Clifford, Tasmara van Loon, Verity Smith, Tracy Hitchings, Alec Morris,
Wojciech JastrzĊbski, Agata Pawlos, Marcin Pawlos, Ewelina Tiemann,
Marcin Tiemann, Magdalena SkórzyĔska-Wach, Tomasz Wach, Michaá
Zając, Magdalena Bardzik, Mariusz Bardzik, Ewa Mazurek, Ewa
Leonowicz, Marcin Leonowicz, Anna ZieliĔska, Tomasz ĩurek, Monika
Chodkiewicz, Bogusáaw Nocek, Janek Kulka, Anna Kulka-Dolecka,
Grzegorz Dolecki, Katarzyna Kaja Zieja, the Rev. Andrzej Szpak,
Karolina Kmiecik-JusiĊga, Marek JusiĊga, Klara Skwarek, Andrzej
Skwarek, the Rev. Jan Mazur, Karolina Fórmanowska, Mareczek Wójcik,
Aneta Wójcik, Karolinka Wójcik, Andrzej Smyk, Maágorzata Anasiewicz-
Kuzioáa, Dorota ĝwita, Dariusz Mirosáaw, Natalia Kubacka, Agnieszka
ĝwiątnicka-KulpiĔska, Tomasz Thom KamiĔski, Artur Chachlowski,
Maágorzata Chachlowska, Katarzyna Chachlowska, Magdalena Kinsman,
Rafaá Rejowski, Sáawomir Artymiak, Jacek Karczewski, Katarzyna
ObszaĔska, dr Anna Pado, Ewa Oráowska, GraĪyna Krzyszczak, my
colleagues at CNiCJO, Pendragon, Arena, the Pendie OCD, all at the
Caamora Theatre Company; and Frank Capra–for wings...
 INTRODUCTION

Although of Italian origin, Frank Capra (1897–1991) is considered to

be one of the most quintessentially American directors of the golden era of
Hollywood. Capra’s biography proves that the ideals of the American
Dream can be more than just a set of worn-out historical clichés. In the
case of Capra, these ideals became the chance to escape poverty and the
way to achieve an education and realise his professional aspirations. For
Capra, the American Dream became a dream largely fulfilled in real life.
His faith and gratitude to the country which offered him the opportunity to
go from proverbial “rags to riches” were expressed by Capra in his films.
He created an idealistic hero, who, in the spirit of a modern Don Quixote,
in the name of common good, fights against a corrupt and unjust system
during the difficult period of the Great Depression and attempts to build
the New Deal in America.
At the time of their initial release, Capra's comedies, although
undeniably commercially successful, were not always treated seriously by
the critics. After several decades of detailed analyses and attempts to
interpret and evaluate Capra’s movies with regards to the changing tastes
and perceptions, the critics and film scholars have largely accepted the
importance and the artistic value of the director's works. In fact, the
number of awards1 as well as the continuous popularity of Capra’s films,
despite the passage of time, are clear proof of the filmmaker's genius and
confirm his position in the pantheon of the masters of cinematography.
The critical literature offers a broad range of subjects concerning Frank
Capra and his art. Among the most frequently discussed themes are
populism and American social issues presented in Capra’s films, as well as
the influence of Catholicism upon his filmic universe; the ethos of the
American Dream and glorification of small town values and the American

1
In his career Capra directed over 40 films. It is interesting to note that his It
Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington,
and It's A Wonderful Life perennially occupy top positions on the lists of the
American Film Institute. Furthermore, It Happened One Night, Mr. Smith Goes To
Washington, It's A Wonderful Life, as well as Capra's war documentary series Why
We Fight are to be found in the Library of Congress and on the list of the National
Film Registry.
2 Introduction

middle class. My book is a study of selected Capra comedies and their

analysis from the perspective of the theory of romance as initially
proposed by Northrop Frye in his seminal works Anatomy Of Criticism
(1957) and Secular Scripture: A Study Of The Structure Of Romance
(1976). In 1988, Lesley Brill wrote an important book on Alfred
Hitchcock, The Hitchcock Romance: Love and Irony in Hitchcock Films.2
He based his analysis on Frye’s concept of literary romance, which
overlaps with comedy, and applied it to the realm of the cinematic art of
Hitchcock. Therefore, Frye’s theory proves to still be current and also
adequate in the case of cinema. Moreover, Frye's theory became the
background for Francesca Aran Murphy's interpretation of the world of
comedy in her book The Comedy of Revelation. Paradise Lost and
Regained in Biblical Narrative (2000).3
Frye claims that “in romance the central theme […] is that of
maintaining the integrity of the innocent world against the assault of
experience.”4 The above quotation, as well as the title of my book, echo
William Blake's romantic reflections on the conflicting nature of
innocence and experience, expressed in his Songs Of Innocence And
Experience (1794).5 However, Frye’s understanding of the notion of
romance embraces broader aspects than the classic determinants defining
the epoch of Romanticism. Frye acknowledges that romance is far older
than Romanticism.
The methodology I have chosen to apply for the sake of my analysis of
Frank Capra’s films is closer to Brill's interpretation of Frye’s theory:

By romance I mean to indicate the relatively fabulous kind of narrative that

we associate with folklore and fairy tale and their literary and cinematic
offspring. In film, such narratives may be as clearly related to their mythic
and folkloric forebears as Cocteau's Beauty And The Beast or Murnau's
Nosferatu; they may be modernised fairy tales like The Gold Rush and Star
Wars; or may underlie such rationalized and relatively distant relations as
6
Grand Illusion or She Done Him Wrong.

2
Lesley Brill, The Hitchcock Romance: Love And Irony In Hitchcock Films
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
3
Francesca Aran Murphy, The Comedy Of Revelation. Paradise Lost And
Regained In Biblical Narrative (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000).
4
Northorop Frye, Anatomy Of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1957), 201.
5
Blake William, Songs Of Innocence And Experience: Shewing The Two Contrary
States Of The Human Soul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).
6
Brill, The Hitchcock Romance, 5.
 Songs of Innocence and Experience 3

The subject of romance, as defined by Frye, has been given little

attention in cinema-related critical literature. In my book I claim that
romance is a pivotal element of Capra’s movies and the one allowing for a
more thorough interpretation as well as appreciation of the uniqueness of
the director's style. Therefore, the arguments and discussion presented in
the subsequent chapters are intended to support the thesis that in the light
of Frye’s theory that Capra's films constitute romantic pieces of art.
For the sake of my book I have chosen to examine seven films which,
until the present day, remain Capra's most popular and the audience's most
beloved films. In my opinion, all of the selected motion pictures most
fully realise the Frye-related quasi-mythological formula (the subject of
which will be developed further in subsequent chapters), which to an
extent explains the continuous popularity of these particular films of the
director among his many others.
The films have been systematised according to the three comedy types:
paradisal, purgatorial and infernal, which Aran Murphy adapts from
Dante's Divine Comedy to buttress Frye’s concept of romance.7 Finally, I
have designated the films to two more general Blake-related categories of
“innocence” and “experience”, as such a division reflects the three levels
of Dantean comedic reality. The category of 'innocence' corresponds to
Murphy's paradisal level, while 'experience' includes the purgatorial and
infernal levels, since they can be readily dealt with together. I have
assumed that the above categorisation portrays the correlation between
paradise and childhood innocence and purity; purgatory with the process of
acquiring experience; and inferno encompasses psychological and
physical fatigue along with despair. This structure has enabled me to
present and analyse Capra’s filmic universe and the process of
development of his filmic vision. My main purpose, however, is to
indicate that the romantic elements can be found in all Capra’s films
chosen to be scrutinised in this book, irrespective of the category they
have been assigned to.
My book consists of five chapters. Chapter One is devoted to the
person of Frank Capra-his life and film making career. The first subsection
of the chapter is an attempt to place Capra and his career within the
frameworks of the social and political situation in America in the 1930s
and 1940s. In the second, I present an overview of critical literature
concerning Capra and his films. The critical approaches range across
virtually the entire range of film studies. In the final part of the chapter I
discuss the cinematic legacy of the director.

7
See Aran Murphy, The Comedy Of Revelation, 24.
4 Introduction

Chapter Two provides the theoretical background to the subject of

comedy and romance in literature and film. In the first subsection I present
the constituents of the literary Old and the New Comedy, which overlap
and largely correspond with Northrop Frye’s theory of romance, and
discuss Frye’s theory of romance in detail. The subsection is concluded
with a comparison of both genres. The subsequent part is devoted to
discussing Hollywood’s realisation of the two genres and what could be
termed their meta-relationship with the three types of film comedies critics
discuss in relation to Frank Capra, namely screwball comedy, romantic
comedy and populist comedy. The final part of the chapter is devoted to
the notion of audience and the theory of emotions, laughter and ethics.
Chapter Three is the first of three analytical parts of the dissertation. In
this chapter I formulate the thesis that Capra’s films are romances and
present the basis of my categorisation of the seven chosen movies. The
main body of the chapter is devoted to the category “innocence” and the
three films that represent it; namely Lady For A Day (1933), You Can't
Take It With You (1938) and It Happened One Night (1934). The primary
aim of this chapter is to indicate the presence of the romantic mode in all
three motion pictures as well as justify the thesis that, in the light of Frye’s
theory, the films are romantic ones.
Chapter Four is an analysis of three populist movies representing the
category of “experience”: Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936), Mr. Smith
Goes to Washington (1939) and Meet John Doe (1941). Following the
presented pattern, I search for the romantic elements within the films,
arguing that, despite the gloomy tone of this category, the above-
mentioned films still fit into the frameworks of Frye’s romance modified
by Aran Murphy.
I devote Chapter Five to perhaps Capra’s greatest masterpiece, It's A
Wonderful Life (1946). I claim that the film is multidimensional and that
all three Dantean levels of comedy–paradise, purgatory and inferno–can be
found in it, and consequently it combines both categories of “innocence”
and “experience”. As in the two previous chapters, my main aim is to
prove that the film is a romance and, moreover, represents the
quintessence of Capra’s romantic vision.
 CHAPTER ONE

FRANK CAPRA:
THE ARTIST AND HIS FILMS

The first chapter of my book will be devoted to Frank Capra, his life
and his works. My purpose is to place the artist into the framework of the
historical and social background within which he lived and created, and
also to present the most crucial elements of the director's biography.
Subsequently, I will devote the next part of the chapter to providing an
overview of critical literature which has discussed Capra and his films
throughout the years from the beginning of the director's cinematic career
up to the present day, as well as Capra’s position within the discipline of
film studies. I will demonstrate how the films used to be perceived by
critics, scholars and audiences in the past, and how the perception,
interpretation and understanding of the movies have changed together with
changing times and differing critical perspectives. Finally, I will attempt to
examine Capra’s legacy and the artist's influence upon the present-day
cinema.

Frank Capra's America in Literature and Film

America at the turn of the twentieth century, its inevitable social
changes brought about by World War I and later on by the years of the
Great Depression, followed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal,
has been widely described, discussed and documented by historians,
writers, film directors and documentarists. In literature it was a period
when many artists drew their attention to the theme of the artificiality of
class divisions and unfair social conditions, and hence in their works they
offered a spectrum of lifestyles of people representing both the upper and
lower classes. Stephen Crane described the life of a prostitute in his
Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets (1893). Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie
(1900) was a depiction of the life of a country girl who, in search of a
better life, went to Chicago and became a kept woman. On the other hand,
6 Chapter One

Edith Wharton devoted her 1920 novel The Age Of Innocence to

scrutinising and criticising the stiff conventionality of the upper class.
Thus, the literary works of that period frequently indicated the general
dissatisfaction of Americans with life, notwithstanding the social stratum
they belonged to. The post World War I period was a time marked by the
artists of the Lost Generation.1 Writers and poets like T. S. Eliot with his
The Waste Land (1922), F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby (1925),
Ernest Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises or Farewell To Arms (1929), or
John Dos Passos in his 1930s U. S. A. Trilogy among others, described the
post war society and the strong disillusionment of people after the war and
the prevailing feeling of failure and loss of youthful dreams and ideals.
The Great Depression years brought about another set of subjects and
social problems to be discussed in both literature and cinema. Following
the Wall Street Stock Market Crash on 29 October, 1929, millions of
people became unemployed, homeless and bereft of hope. The longest
economic crisis in the history of America instigated the mass migration of
people in search of jobs and the possibilities to establish a better life for
themselves and their families. This phenomenon was described with an
almost reportage-like style by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath
(1939). The author presents the story of a family of farmers, the Joads,
who, together with other families from Oklahoma and Texas, were driven
off their land in search of the Promised Land in California. The novel is a
painfully realistic account of the situation of many families in America
during the Great Depression. While preparing the book, Steinbeck
announced: “I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are
responsible for that [the Great Depression and its effects].”2 However,
despite the grimness of the subject, and contrary to Dos Passos’ grave
satire on America presented in his trilogy, Steinbeck's novel is not devoid
of positive and optimistic tinges. The Joads are part of the vast group of
the hungry and discontented yet, in spite of their tragic situation, they
manage to maintain the inherent goodness of common ordinary people.
In 1940, Grapes of Wrath was turned into an Oscar winning film by
John Ford. Today, the film is considered to be one of the most significant
movies documenting the Great Depression era. Nevertheless, the cinema
of the 1930s did not solely deal with the gloom of the social situation. The

1
The term Lost Generation was coined by Gertrude Stein and popularised by
Ernest Hemingway in his novel The Sun Also Rises (1926). The term refers to the
generation of people who served in World War I.
2
John Steinbeck quoted in Morris Dickstein’s “Steinbeck And The Great
Depression” in Harold Bloom (ed.) Blooms Modern Critical Views: John Steinbeck
(New York: Infobase Publishing, 2008), 152.
 Frank Capra: The Artist and his Films 7

American film industry experienced what many have claimed to be its

golden era and many new genres were experimented with. Gangster and
horror movies, thought to have reflected the sombre mood and pessimism
caused by the Depression, were popularised by stars like Bette Davis,
James Cagney and Boris Karloff. However, the audience also grew fond of
an utterly new and much lighter movie genre, the musical comedy. The
genre propagated a diverse message and in most cases aimed at uplifting
people's morale and conveying an optimism and faith in the prospective
improvement of the situation in the country and the regaining of prosperity
and social balance. In 1934, having watched the greatest child star of that
time, Shirley Temple, in one of her musical roles, President Roosevelt
remarked:

When the spirit of the people is lower than at any other time during the
Depression, it is a splendid thing, that, for just 15 cents, an American can
go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his
troubles.3

The gloom of the Great Depression was also reflected in the shift of
subject matter as well as the alteration of character development in the
classical genres of film comedy and drama. This tendency becomes
conspicuous especially in comparison to the 1920s depictions of the
frivolousness and carefree happiness of the upper class in comedies. In the
Depression-era movies their fortune is often reversed, and in numerous
films like Gregory La Cava's My Man Godfrey (1936) or Frank Capra’s It
Happened One Night (1934), among many others, the members of the high
society are forced to taste the experience of everyday toil and drudgery
common to the less privileged social strata.
The historical events of the beginning of twentieth century - World War
I, the optimistic and prosperous decade of the Jazz Age, the echo of
sorrows of people struggling against the hardships of the Great Depression
- all had an immense impact on Frank Capra and it is perhaps for that
reason the famous words of Ma Joad uttered in John Ford’s The Grapes Of
Wrath: “We're the people that live! We'll go on forever, because we're the
people”, seem to be the central message of the most memorable of the
director’s motion pictures.

3
Franklin D. Roosevelt quoted in Ilana Nash, American Sweethearts: Teenage
Girls In Twentieth-Century Popular Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2005), 119.
8 Chapter One

The “Most American” of American Directors

As I have already implied, the America of Frank Capra was many
different things historically, politically and socially. Born in 1897 to a
Catholic family in Sicily, Francesco Rosario Capra arrived in America in
1903.4 The Capras settled in Los Angeles and the country soon became a
real home for the six-year-old boy who, in time, was to become the
quintessence of an American citizen and the embodiment of American
ideals. Capra's life, as Janine Basinger suggests, can serve as “an example
of how America allows individuals from humble beginnings to invent
themselves, to be who they want to be, and to live by that mythology.”5
Young Frank began his working life in America as a newspaper boy
and in the course of the initial years on the new continent he tried to make
a living, among other things, as a door-to-door salesman, a waiter and a
wandering musician. From the very beginning, Capra sincerely believed in
the opportunities offered by America, and he quickly understood that the
only way to get out of poverty and to break out of the social status of an
Italian immigrant was to gain an education. Much against his family’s will,
who considered books and schooling a waste of time and money, Frank
achieved his aim, reaching as high as Throop College of Technology (later
the California Institute of Technology). He graduated with a bachelor’s
degree in chemical engineering in 1918, just in time to join the army in its
First World War operations where he spent his time teaching mathematics
to artillery officers in San Francisco. After the war, unable to find a job in
his profession, he was forced to seek odd jobs travelling throughout the
western states for the next three years. It was not until 1921 that he got his
first job in the film industry when, in search of easy money, Capra tricked
producer Walter Montague into believing that he had some experience in
Hollywood filmmaking and was instantly asked to help direct the short
film Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House (1922) based on Rudyard Kipling’s
poem. The film is Capra's first movie and even today surprises the critics
as more than a mediocre debut, especially for a young and inexperienced
director as Capra was at that time.
Capra’s real Hollywood career, however, commenced two years later

4
Frank Capra's short biography contained in this chapter is based primarily on:
Frank Capra, The Name Above The Title: An Autobiography (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1971), Charles Maland, Frank Capra (New York: Twayne
Publishers, 1995), Joseph McBride, Frank Capra. The Catastrophe Of Success
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993).
5
Jeanine Basinger, “Introduction” in Frank Capra, The Name Above The Title: An
Autobiography (New York: Da Capo Press, 1997), XIII.
 Frank Capra: The Artist and his Films 9

with a series of jobs, among others, as a developer and printer in a lab,

editor, prop man, and a gagman of the Hal Roach and Mark Sennet
studios. Those first steps in the realm of cinema eventually resulted in the
collaboration with a silent movie comedian, Harry Langdon, and the
directing of two Langdon features, The Strong Man (1926) and Long Pants
(1927). Both films were a huge success: they made Langdon one of the
biggest stars of that time and they also attracted a great deal of attention to
the young director. However, it is believed Langdon grew jealous of
Capra’s fast-growing popularity and got rid of him soon after the release of
their second feature. In the long run such a state of affairs turned out to be
for the better as that same year Capra was hired by Harry Cohn, the
President and Production Chief of Columbia Pictures. Here, Frank soon
became the leading director and ultimately helped to transform the small
film company into a major Hollywood studio.
During the eleven years at Columbia he directed such award winning
masterpieces of American cinema as It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds
Goes to Town (1936), You Can’t Take It With You (1938) and Mr. Smith
Goes to Washington (1939). It is in the period of his long-lasting
collaboration with New York playwright Robert Riskin and cameraman
Joseph Walker, among others, at Columbia that Capra developed and
established his unique comic style6 which, according to Robert Sklar,
“possessed the knack of providing mass entertainment in which
intellectuals could find both pleasure and significance.”7 After the
commercial success of some of his films at Columbia, Capra fought and
won the battle to gain control over every aspect of his movies' production.
“I wanted to make my own films,” Capra recalls “‘one man, one film’ was

6
Capra’s style has been named Capraesque by the critics and in critical literature
the term operates in reference to the director’s originality and uniqueness. There
has been a discussion among some of the critics concerning Capra's actual input in
what is considered to be Capraesque stylistics. Joseph McBride in his book
presents a very radical opinion which denies Capra's right to be called an auteur by
indicating the tremendous role of Capra's colleagues and giving credit especially to
Robert Riskin. Most of other critics are not that radical and, while they do
acknowledge Riskin's role in establishing Capra's characteristic style, they still
consider Capra to be the driving force of Capraesque. See: Sam B. Girgus,
Hollywood Renaissance: The Cinema Of Democracy In The Era Of Ford, Capra,
And Kazan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 63; McBride, Frank
Capra, 252; Pat McGilligan, “Introduction” in Six Screenplays By Robert Riskin,
(ed.) Pat McGiligan (Berkley, University Of California Press, 1997), XXIII.
7
Robert Sklar, Movie Made America: A Cultural History Of American Movies
(New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 198.
10 Chapter One

for me a fetish.”8 The fulfilment of this ambition was reflected in the

placing of the director's name above the title of his features and, what is
more significant, it found realization in the movies themselves, regardless
of whether they belonged to the genre of romantic, screwball, or his
populist comedies.
Frank Capra, as Charles Maland points out, was an auteur long before
the auteur theory was proclaimed by Truffaut in his essay “La Politique
des Auteurs” published in Cahiers du Cinema in January 1954.9 In fact,
auteurism was based on an assumption which Capra had already been
exercising in his movies for more than two decades. The theory claimed
that one person should be the driving force of filmmaking and, hence, the
films of a particular director should be examined and interpreted according
to the recurring stylistic and thematic patterns.10 And Capra’s works
certainly fulfil this criterion.
In the early thirties, Hollywood was eagerly experimenting with sound
and discovering new possibilities that the innovation offered to
cinematography. Capra was soon using it for the sake of introducing verbal
humour and fast witty dialogues into his films, which, together with silent
era visual gags, are considered to be one of his trademarks and a technique
which he skilfully practiced even in his later films. This combination
enabled Capra to define and develop the genre of screwball comedy,
which, as it is frequently suggested, started with It Happened One Night.11
The use of chiaroscuro, operating with light, incorporating music and
singing, as well as reaction shots, dream sequences and flashbacks became
Capra’s ways of transmitting social ideas, the signs of the tightening of
human bonds, and the means to express feelings and illustrate the
characters' emotional states.
After the enormous success of It Happened One Night which–as the
first film–swept the Oscars in five main categories in 1935, Capra went
through a period of self doubt and emotional breakdown. He spent a few
months in a hospital and the whole experience led him to choose to

8
Frank Capra in Richard Schickel, The Men Who Made The Movies: Interviews
With Frank Capra, George Cukor, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Vincente
Minnelli, King Vidor, Raul Walsh, And William A. Wellman (New York: Atheneum,
1975), 67.
9
Maland, Frank Capra, 19.
10
See Maland, Frank Capra, 176.
11
See Leland A. Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra: An Approach To Film
Comedy (New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1975), 153. The issue of It
Happened One Night and the genre debate around the film will be discussed in the
third chapter.
 Frank Capra: The Artist and his Films 11

differentiate the thematic issues of his movies, which eventually resulted

in his decision to direct populist comedies within which, apart from
entertaining his audience, the director could also “say something.”12
Although the motif of a hero struggling for his ideals in an unfamiliar
and unfriendly territory can be traced back to Capra’s Langdon features, it
is in his populist movies that the Caprasque hero gained his most
recognizable traits. Capra’s Deeds and Smiths are usually small town
dwellers and apparently plain common men. However, in the course of the
action, they turn out to be uncommon and prove to be “the hope of the
world.”13 They are romantic idealists willing to stand up and fight for what
they believe in and defend their values against the cynical corrupt
environment. As Richard Schickel states, Capra’s heroes “became
archetypes which reflected back to us our best qualities – common sense,
down-to-earthness, idealism, patriotism, fidelity to family values.”14 They
are imaginative heroes of unusual will and moral strength who, like Capra
himself, are thrust upon “the roller coaster experience”15 of personal
struggles experienced during trying historical events.
The Capra family emigrated to America at the very beginning of the
twentieth century and consequently found themselves in the vortex of
social change and the country's rapid transformation. As a young adult,
Frank lived through the times of World War I, the joy and cultural
liberation of the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age, the miseries of the
Great Depression, and subsequently the atrocities of World War II.
Throughout the years life accorded him both joyful and tragic experiences.
He received an education, managed to find a job in filmmaking and
became successful beyond all expectations at a professional level; he was
married twice and it was during the second, long-standing marriage that
his children were born. However, he also suffered a great deal. The death
of his parents and a son, divorce, emotional breakdown and the period of
self-doubt after the success of It Happened One Night have influenced and
shaped Capra’s mature perception of life. Consequently, all these personal
rises and falls are reflected in his heroes, and it is probably due to the
diversity of their character traits, as well as their profound genuineness,
that they seem so humane and credible to the viewer and allow the

12
Capra, The Name Above The Title, 185.
13
Capra in American Film Institute interviews with Frank Capra, “Frank Capra:
One Man–One Film” in Frank Capra. The Man And His Films, (ed.) Richard
Glatzer and John Raeburn (Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1975),
19.
14
Schickel, The Men Who Made The Movies, 57.
15
Maland, Frank Capra, 23.
12 Chapter One

audience to identify with them so deeply.

Even though more than seventy years have passed since some of
Capra's early movies, the director is still considered to be one of the most
fervent advocates of the idea of the American Dream. His firm belief in
upward social mobility is illustrated in his films on numerous occasions,
especially in his populist movies. The theme was named by the critics “the
Cinderella motif” and many a time was criticised as naïve and excessively
corny. In the end, the term “Capracorn”16 was coined to describe the Capra
style in general. However, who, if not an Italian immigrant whose life is
the most tangible proof that the American Dream can at times be fulfilled
in reality, had the right to propagate the ideals, to glorify America, and to
express his gratitude to the country that had provided him with the
opportunity to complete his aims and aspirations successfully? Moreover,
despite the fact that Capra’s filmic universe was frequently described as
romantic, pastoral, Disney-like,17 or he was accused of dealing in pure
fantasy, his social vision was largely based on his own experience and in
most cases, his films, against all appearances, developed subjects well
known to Capra himself and common to the immigrant middle class
minorities in general. William S. Pechter notices that

[Capra's] comic genius is fundamentally a realistic one. […] He seems

obsessed with certain American social myths, but he observes that society
itself as a realist.18

Capra is an interpreter of an American experience.19 It is within the

framework of the comedy genre in his Columbia era that he ingeniously
succeeded in portraying America and commenting on the political and
social situation during the Great Depression, the New Deal and at the
threshold of the war. Even though, frequently, the central focus of his films
is elsewhere, movies like American Madness, It Happened One Night, or
the populist trilogy: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington, and Meet John Doe (1941) all include significant images and
shots which do not allow the viewer to forget about the social and political
situation within which the plot of the story unfolds. On their way to

16
The term, its source and connotations are discussed, among others, in Stephen
Handzo “Under Capracorn” in Frank Capra. The Man And His Films, (ed.) Glatzer
and Raeburn, 164-176.
17
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 50, Sklar, Movie-Made America, 209.
18
William S. Pechter American Madness in Frank Capra. The Man And His Films,
(ed.) Glatzer and Raeburn, 183-184.
19
See Maland, Frank Capra, 186.
 Frank Capra: The Artist and his Films 13

achieving their goals, the characters of the 1930s films are put on the road
and become a part of the experience of social mobility. The upper class
heroine in It Happened One Night travels by public night bus in the
company of working class members and, together with them, is forced to
suffer hunger, to sleep in a motel and share with them all sorts of
inconveniences so far unknown to her. American Madness depicts the
iconic shots of bank runs after the Wall Street Crash; and in the Deeds-
Smith-Doe trilogy are depicted people living in Hooversvilles, standing in
bread lines, or roaming across the country in search of land, jobs and
dignity.
Together with Hollywood directors like John Ford, Frank Capra
became to the cinema what contemporary writers like Steinbeck,
Hemingway or William Faulkner were to literature – the documentarist of
his times and the voice of the populace. The critic Sam Girgus claims that
“Capra is today remembered, […] like Ford, for the influence of his
creative genius and social vision of his own and later generations of
filmmakers and viewers.”20 Apart from presenting contemporary American
issues, the films also provide an alternative perspective and depict Capra's
vision of the country in which the ideals of the American Dream find their
fulfilment. As Ford states, “Frank Capra is an inspiration to those who
believe in the American Dream.”21 At the end of the movies, Capra’s
heroes are victorious, and the climactic moments constitute the affirmation
of life and the praise of democracy and humanistic values like family,
morality, human dignity, friendship and simple kindness, which are
considered intrinsic to American culture. “There were real human issues at
stake in his movies,”22 the director John Milius notices. Moreover, Girgus
proclaims Capra to be the “avatar of the democratic impulse in cinema.”23
Both of these features, together with Capra's ability to refer to the most
profound human experiences, explain why audiences find his films so
tremendously appealing.
Capra’s attitude towards the audience reflects the assumption of
Classical Hollywood that a movie should absorb the attention of the
audience as much as possible.24 Capra shared the belief that the audience
is always right. “People’s instincts are good, never bad. They are right as

20
Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance, 57.
21
John Ford, Foreword to Frank Capra's The Name Above The Title (1971).
22
John Milius in Frank Capra's American Dream, dir. Kenneth Bowser, Columbia
Tristar Television, 1997.
23
Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance, 58.
24
See Maland, Frank Capra, 177.
14 Chapter One

the soil, right as rain”,25 he remarked on one occasion. Therefore, over the
years he managed to create a bond between himself and his audience and
he placed a great deal of trust in his viewers. He chose his audience to be
the first and the decisive judge of his works. In order to check whether a
film had a chance of being received positively, he was among the first to
organise closed previews for a certain group of viewers to test their
reactions. The results of these sessions were recorded and it allowed the
director to make the necessary alterations to the film before its official
release.26 After a short time the practice of closed previews became a
standard in Hollywood. It is interesting to note, that in the case of Capra, it
was also the way of exercising his democratic ideology. It was to the
people's will that he entrusted the decision about the ultimate shape of
some of his films. In his autobiography, Capra reminisces that, for a
filmmaker, there are few things better than seeing his audience enjoying
the film:

For two hours you've got 'em. Hitler can't keep 'em that long. You
eventually reach even more people than Roosevelt does on the radio.
Imagine what Shakespeare would have given for an audience like that!27

The above quotation reflects the respect and concern of the director for
his audience, and also constitutes an accurate commentary on the power of
cinema. Capra's belief in his audience’s opinion seems to have been
appropriate, as the warm reception of most of his films, as well as the
commercial success of his Columbia productions, prove that the sentiment
was, and largely still remains, mutual in the case of several films.
Capra treated his actors with equal affection and respect as his
audience. “I treated them all as stars,”28 Capra says, as was confirmed by
the actors themselves on more than one occasion. And such an attitude was
true in the case of all the actors he worked with, notwithstanding the fact
whether they appeared in the film for ten minutes or ten seconds. In one of

25
Capra quoted in Geoffrey T. Hellman “Thinker In Hollywood” in Frank Capra.
The Man And His Films, (ed.) Glatzer and Raeburn, 5.
26
Charles Wolfe devotes his article to the phenomenon of Capra's relationship with
his audience and solving the matter of the problematic ending to Meet John Doe,
which will be discussed further on in the book. See Charles Wolfe “Meet John
Doe: Authors, Audiences, And Endings” in Meet John Doe: Frank Capra,
Director, (ed.) Charles Wolfe (New Brunshwick & London: Rutgers University
Press, 1989), 3-29.
27
Capra quoted in Hellman “Thinker In Hollywood”, 13.
28
Capra interviewed by Richard Glatzer in Frank Capra Interviews, (ed.) Leland
Poague (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), 120.
 Frank Capra: The Artist and his Films 15

his interviews, Capra stated:

If the so-called ‘bit people’ are believable and can involve the audience in a
sense of reality, the audience forgets they're looking at a film. They think
they're looking at something in real life. The bit people have a great chore
because they're helping to make that background real. If the audience
believes in the small people, they'll believe in the stars.29

Similarly, as in the case of his audience, he had confidence and faith in

his actors. Stars like Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, James
Stewart, Jean Arthur and others had the opportunity to co-create the role
they played and thus add something unique to the characters they
impersonated. “I gave each of the actors a personality, a sense of being, a
sense of existence – no matter how small their part, even if it was a walk-
on. […] I didn't want them to ape me,”30 Capra claimed. Hence, the
predominant style in Capra’s movies is what Raymond Carney claimed to
be a transcendental acting style, which he explained as allowing the actors
to “speak the language of desire.” According to Carney:

It has a more emotional interiority than the other kind of acting. It attempts
to put the viewer in touch with private states of feeling that almost defy
verbal or social expression. It is in these respects more mysterious and
more imaginatively stimulating than the other sort of acting.31

As a result, both the audience watching the films and the actors playing
the parts found, and still do find, the characters believable and convincing.
Capra directed his last picture for Columbia in 1939 and subsequently
left for Warner Brothers where he made two more movies, Meet John Doe
(1941) and Arsenic And Old Lace (1944). During World War II Capra was
assigned to the army’s Morale Branch (later called Special Services),
where, in 1942, he was commissioned by General George C. Marshall to
direct the seven-part series of war documentaries aimed at raising the
morale of American soldiers and eventually called Why We Fight. In a
way the series became an answer to Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph Of the
Will (1935), an orchestrated praise of Hitler's policy and Nazism. “She
[Leni Riefenstahl] scared the hell out of me. The first time I saw that
picture I said, ‘We're dead, we’re gone, we can’t win this war,’” Capra

29
Capra in Poague, Frank Capra Interviews, 120.
30
Capra in Poague, Frank Capra Iterviews, 120.
31
Ray Carney, American Vision. The Films Of Frank Capra (Hanover, N.H.:
University Press of New England, 1986), 235.
16 Chapter One

commented.32 The film showed clearly how powerful a weapon the use of
national symbols is, and it provided Capra with the idea of using some of
the enemy propaganda footage for the sake of highlighting the enormity of
the danger and explaining the necessity of American military forces to
fight, as well as the reasons for it.
Although the Why We Fight series was Capra’s first documentary
project, it is constantly being appraised as valuable and skilfully directed
propaganda material. Some of the critics claim that, even within the series,
the Capraesque-style and sensitivity can still be found. The films highlight
the positive aspects of the common American lifestyle, virtues of common
people, pride in American culture, as well as freedom and liberty in
general.33 As such, they convey Capra’s belief in democratic values,
affirmation of life in a free country, and present a social vision similar to
the one we can find in most of the director’s populist movies.
The war years also left their mark on Hollywood. The old studio
system was no longer as strong as in its pre-war period and those who
decided to return to their former occupations after the war were frequently
searching for alternative ways of finding employment. After four years of
military service, Capra resolved not to return to any of the film studios he
had been formerly involved with. Instead, he and three other leading
Hollywood directors, Sam Briskin, William Wyler, and George Stevens,
chose to try their luck with their own independent production company.
Thus, in 1945, Liberty Films was formed. It was for Liberty Films that
Capra made his most famous masterpiece, It’s A Wonderful Life (1946),
which will be discussed in detail in a further section of this book, and State
Of The Union (1948). As the critics judged, these were the director's two
last meaningful productions. Capra continued filmmaking for the next
thirteen years during which time he directed four features and a series of
scientific programmes for television. None of these, however, turned out to
be as successful as their predecessors, and Capra’s 1961 Pocketful of
Miracles, a remake of his own Lady For A Day, became the director’s
swansong. Twenty years later in 1982 the American Film Institute
honoured Capra with a Life Achievement Award.
Nevertheless, neither Pocketful Of Miracles nor his television
productions became the last time the world heard about Frank Capra. In
1971 the director published his autobiography The Name Above The Title,
a heart-warming account of his life, but also an exciting history of the
golden years of Hollywood and its ways. The book was immediately

32
Capra in Schickel, The Men Who Made The Movies, 82.
33
See Maland, Frank Capra, 128.
 Frank Capra: The Artist and his Films 17

highly acclaimed by both the critics and the readers and it commenced a
new era for Capra. The early seventies became the time of Capra film
revivals. A generation of young people discovered in them the values and
charm that had been largely absent from cinema for decades. Frank Capra
became a celebrity again and enjoyed tremendously touring the country
and lecturing young students in universities across America.
Capra died in his sleep at his California home in 1991. Today, he still is
considered to be the epitome of American culture and the most eager
warrior fighting for the American Dream's values and ideals. John Raeburn
claimed that Capra was “the most insistently American of all directors.
[…] He was most obsessively concerned with scrutinizing American
myths and American states of consciousness.”34 It is clear that Capra
worshiped his adopted country, to which he gave proof on numerous
occasions in his films, his autobiography, interviews and lectures. In his
speech during the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award
celebration, Capra conveyed his gratitude once more declaring: “For
America, just for living here, I kiss the ground.” Capra was aware of his
obligation to pay back the debt he owned to America for the opportunities
it had offered to him and his family. At the same 1982 AFI event in
reference to Frank Capra, George Stevens Jr. recalled the fragment of
William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize address concerning the duty of an artist:

It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him
of the courage and honor, and hope and pride and compassion and pity and
sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not
merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help
him endure and prevail.35

These words seem to accurately describe the art of Frank Capra.

Currently, just like in the past, in the hearts of his audience Capra remains
“the lighthouse in a foggy world,”36 bringing a spark of hope and
optimism to what frequently seems like a dull and grim quotidian reality.

34
John Raeburn, “Introduction” in Frank Capra. The Man And His Films, VIII.
35
William Faulkner's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech. Online on January 16, 2013
at: http://fiction.eserver.org/criticism/faulkner-nobel.html.
36
Capra used these words twice in his movies: first in Meet John Doe and later on
in the first of his Why We Fight series Prelude To War in relation to all the political
leaders in the service of democratic ideas and liberty. See Maland, Frank Capra,
117.
18 Chapter One

In the Eyes of the Critics and through the Prism

of Cultural Studies
The understanding of Capra’'s works has, to a large extent, been
shaped by the critics and scholars who have been examining the films for
their meaning and artistic value over the years, which have reflected the
different concerns of film studies as they have evolved. Hence, in this part
of the chapter, I will provide an overview of the critical ideas concerning
the director and his movies, as well as Capra’s place within the framework
of cultural studies.
Looking at the vast number of critical works and articles concerning
Frank Capra and his films that have been published since the beginning of
his career, a clear dividing line between two trends of interpretation is
conspicuous. Namely, between the criticisms from the 1930s on up to the
seminal publication of Raymond Carney’s American Vision: The Films of
Frank Capra in 1986, the first fully auteurist approach, and those which
appeared after it. In the preface to the 1996 edition of American Vision,
Carney notices that most of Capra’s critics up till then had read, translated
and interpreted Capra's visions into a “series of sociological
generalisations”37 which, in the case of Capra, would be “using the films
to discuss social conditions during the Depression, power relations
between men and women, or other aspects or pre- or post-war American
society.”38 Within these frames of reference, the critics were arguing how
to appraise and treat Capra’s movies. On the negative side, the director
was accused of being a populist (in the negative sense of the term), too
naïve and too popular to be treated seriously. As early as the 1940s
Richard Griffith called Capra’s films “fantasies of good will,” as they
proclaimed the naïve belief that “the kindness of heart is in itself enough
to banish injustice and cruelty from the world.”39 Capra scholar Leland
Poague claims that in his articles Griffith goes as far as to imply that
“Capra is naïve at best, politically pernicious at worst, and intellectually
bankrupt in any case.”40
The second group of critics admits the alleged naivety of Capra’s
movies, but does not perceive it as a negative trait. Lewis Jacobs believes
that their “naivety” is the reason for their popularity and the source of
entertainment and appeal to the audience. Poague claims, contrary to

37
Carney, American Vision, XIV.
38
Carney, American Vision, XIV.
39
Richard Griffith “It's A Wonderful Life And Post-War Realism” in Frank Capra.
The Man And His Films, Glatzer and Raeburn (ed.), 162.
40
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 17.
 Frank Capra: The Artist and his Films 19

Griffith, that Capra is not about politics at all, and he looks for literary
qualities and artistic values in the director's works. He also praises Capra's
optimism and enthusiasm and believes them to be qualities capable of
melting the hearts of the most cynical realists.41 Surprisingly, as a
confirmed pessimist, Graham Greene was won over by Capra’s optimism
and complements this group too. In his 1936 review of Mr. Deeds Goes To
Town, discussing the theme of happy endings, the critic makes the
comparison of Mr. Deeds and Fritz Lang's Fury (1936). “Lang’s happy
ending was imposed on him, we did not believe in it; Capra’s is natural
and unforced,” he states.42 Two years later Greene continues the subject in
reference to You Can't Take It With You:

We may groan and blush as he [Capra] cuts his way remorselessly through
all finer values to the fallible human heart, but infallibly he makes his
appeal – by that great soft organ with its unreliable goodness and easy
melancholy and baseless optimism. The cinema, a popular craft, can hardly
be expected to do more.43

In his seminal The Comic Mind, Gerald Mast seems to share Greene’s
view and, although he notices “a striking naiveté in [Capra's character's]
handling of complex political, social, and moral issues,”44 he proclaims
Capra “the supreme master of the comedy of sentiment, moralising, and
idealisation.”45 Furthermore, he states that “the Capra comedies are among
the most valuable sociological documents in the history of the American
cinema.”46
In the 1970s Capra was rediscovered by television and the medium
made it possible for Capra’'s movies, together with the works of other
directors of the golden era of Hollywood, to reach an audience larger than
ever before. This coincided with the publication of his autobiography,
which drew Capra’s works to the attention of a brand new generation of
viewers and, as I have already mentioned, allowed the director to stand in
the limelight once more. Thirty years after World War II, Capra and his
films were reevaluated by the critics and they gained an utterly fresh
perspective from which they were approached and interpreted. The new

41
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 19.
42
Graham Greene ‘A Director Of Genius: Four Reviews’ in (ed.) Glatzer and
Raeburn, Frank Capra. The Man And His Films, 111.
43
Greene “A Director Of Genius”, 115.
44
Gerald Mast, The Comic Mind: Comedy And The Movies (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1979), 259.
45
Mast, The Comic Mind, 259.
46
Mast, The Comic Mind, 259.
20 Chapter One

group of critics–including, among others, William Pechter, Andrew

Bergman, and Stephen Handzo–looked for another level in Capra’s works
and they claimed (in accordance with Capra’s original intentions) that the
essence of his films was in their message. Bergman saw an artistic
visionary in Capra and he perceived his films as an attempt to introduce
the fairy tale-like American myth based on the unity of love, decency and
neighbourly kindness, into reality.47 The critics of the 1970s began to
defend Capra and suggest that the films were something more than “a
figment of simple Pollyanna platitudes.”48 They noticed a penetrating
picture of the times and an observant critique of society and social
problems, as well as the complexity of the multilevel structure of Capra’s
movies. Examining the dark nature of Capra’s films became fashionable
and it was more and more frequently suggested that Capra’s world
reflected the picture of contemporary times as seen through the eyes of an
experienced man trying to cope with important everyday issues in a
desperate struggle to salvage some innocence and decency within the
realm of social, political and financial corruption. Looking at Capra’s
works from such a perspective suggested that Capraesque sweetness and
corniness were a superficial element of the director's art, and refuted the
allegation of triviality of his subjects.
It was Handzo who explicitly verbalised the thesis that Capra’s concern
is not with politics but rather with individuals. In fact, it is conspicuous
even in his populist movies. According to both Handzo and Poague “Capra
is primarily a poet of the personal and the moral, not the social and the
political,”49 and such an understanding of Capra’s works is probably the
closest to Carney's auteuristic approach. For Carney, “Capra’s films
document a variety of mid-twentieth-century ideological positions.”50
They are presented through creating and developing an individual, and
ultimately allowing him to find his way of self-expression. Thus, the main
focus of Capra’s films is the individual. Carney stresses Capra’s
Emersonian faith “in the power of the human imagination [and spirit] to
transform existing social forms and structures.”51 Such an approach leads
us to look further for the deconstructionist tendencies in Capra’s works.
Whereas a great number of critics assume that most obviously Capra’s

47
See Andrew Bergman “Frank Capra And Screwball Comedy” in (ed.) Glatzer
and Raeburn, Frank Capra. The Man And His Films, 68-81; Poague, The Cinema
of Frank Capra, 22.
48
Bosley Crowther quoted in Maland, Frank Capra, 131.
49
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 23.
50
Carney, American Vision, XIV.
51
Canrey, American Vision, 26.
 Frank Capra: The Artist and his Films 21

main concern is community and its values in the traditional meaning of the
term, Carney states it is individualism. Along this line of thinking, Capra
can be perceived as a natural deconstructionist in Jacques Derrida's
understanding of the notion, and many of Capra’s films can be read as
deconstructing community values by means of stressing individualism and
the individual's ability to “reform social structures.”52
Carney claims that a vast number of critics up to that point, by means
of stating generalisations about Capra’s movies, had badly influenced the
prevailing interpretation of his films. Furthermore, he blames American
critics and the discipline of cultural studies in general for the “loss” of the
individual. “There are no individuals in cultural studies,” he says. “The
system swallows up its members. There is no space left in which
individuals can move freely.”53 Hence, Capra’s films are more often than
not judged and interpreted only partially and from a narrow perspective.
Carney points out:

The critics translate the characters, actions, words, and images into a series
of abstract meanings, moving from sensory experiences to symbolic
significances, from perceptions to conceptions, from the physical to
metaphysical, from the visible to invisible, from the realm of the known to
that of a secret.54

Whereas the uniqueness of Capra, according to the critic, lies in his

ability to create and present the grandeur of individual personality,
identity, and consciousness and its power to escape controlling
institutional and cultural structures and to find a way of self-expression.55
American Vision is a study of Capra’s individualism and auteurism. Carney
proposes to view the movies from the perspective of art and discusses their
artistic values, thus making a strong case for Capra as an important and
serious artist.
By the 1980s and 1990s few critics questioned Capra’s position in the
pantheon of great Hollywood directors.56 And John Raeburn’s statement

52
Carney, American Vision, 27.
53
Carney, American Vision, XV.
54
Carney, American Vision, XII.
55
See Carney, American Vision, XVI.
56
The exception was Capra's biography Frank Capra. The Catastrophe of Success
by Joseph McBride published two years after Frank Capra's death. McBride tries to
reveal Capra as an utter egoist and a self-promoter and to deny the director the title
of the auteur. The book is, however, primarily a biographical account of Capra’s
life and not the critical appraisal of the filmmaker's works. See McBride, Frank
Capra.
22 Chapter One

claiming Capra’s place among the most “American” of all American

directors, mostly ceased to be doubted or controversial. Most of the critics
were in accordance that Capra’s films were communicating something
vital. The articles and criticisms offered studies of various subjects and
issues and proposed a number of ways of approaching Capra’s works.
Charles Wolfe discussed Capra’s fascination with the media and its
function in shaping the reality presented in his films. Richard Maltby
claimed that Capra’s most famous comedy, It Happened One Night, was a
response to the grim situation of the Great Depression, thus adding another
dimension to the film that used to be treated as not much more than an
entertaining light comedy at the time of its release. Charles Maland
focused on the theme of despair and the circumstances that drove the
protagonists into it.57 Sam Girgus and Wes Gehring discussed the subjects
of democracy and the populist (in a positive sense) nature of Capra’s
films.58 Gehring announced Capra to be “the archetypal author of the
populist film comedy.”59
Leland Poague’s Another Frank Capra, the most philosophical
criticism concerning Capra according to Carney, offered a “proto-feminist”
reading of the director’s movies.60 In his book, Poague attempts to prove
that Capra is a modernist, which, in the eyes of the critic, is conspicuous,
among others, in the director's identification with his female characters.
Another Frank Capra exposes a previously uncharted perspective on
Capra's films and proposes quite a new reading of the works through the
light of feminist psychology and trends.
Eric Smoodin devoted his book to the study of the relationship
between Capra and his audience, providing an interesting documentation
of the development of film culture and audience studies. “It is undoubtedly
true,” Smoodin quotes after Margaret Ferrand Thorp, “that no art has ever
been so shaped and influenced by its audience as the art of cinema.”61
Hence, Smoodin aims at examining this relationship between the director
and his viewers in order to identify and define it in terms of the mutual

57
See “Introduction” to Frank Capra: Authorship And The Studio System, Robert
Sklar and Vito Zagarrio (ed.), (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 5-7.
58
See Wes D. Gehring, Populism And The Capra Legacy (Westport: Greenwood
Press, 1995); Sam B. Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance.
59
Gehring, Populism And The Capra Legacy, 2.
60
See Leland Poague, Another Frank Capra (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994).
61
Margaret Ferrand Thorp quoted in Eric Smoodin, Regarding Frank Capra:
Audience, Celebrity, And American Film Studies (Durham: Duke University Press,
2005), 4.
 Frank Capra: The Artist and his Films 23

correlation and its influence upon both, the ultimate cinematic product and
the group of the audience that would watch it.62
In his “It Is (Not) A Wonderful Life: For A Counter-reading Of Frank
Capra”, Vito Zagarrio argued against Capra's corniness and delivered
proofs indicating that, despite appearances, Capra's filmic universe was
filled with unhappy endings, personal and social conflicts and
catastrophes, and recurring suicidal motifs. Therefore, according to
Zagarrio and others after him, Capra’s movies portrayed both an American
Dream and an American Nightmare to an equal extent.63
A similar view is supported by Charles Maland in his article ‘Capra
And The Abyss,’ in which he argues against Griffith's “fantasy of
goodwill” statement. Maland points out that a large number of critics tend
to observe only the happy endings of the films and in the process fail to
acknowledge the nature of the dramatic conflicts leading to the happy
climax.64 In his article, on the basis of the three discussed movies,
American Madness, Mr Deeds, and Mr. Smith, Maland argues that the
main heroes in all three of them are forced to struggle with despair at
crucial moments. However, the reasons lie deeper than on a personal or
romantic level. Maland formulates and argues a thesis that the conflicts
and anxieties leading Capra heroes to the abyss

are rooted in a fundamental tension in American middle-class ideology,

grounded in the American past, […] and particularly wrenching during the
Depression era. […] The tension, a key in helping to understand the
abysses in and the appeal of Capra's films during the Depression era,
concerns the conflict between private [self] interest and the public
[common] good.65

Hence, the clue is in one of Capra’s most frequent motives, namely the
relationship between the notions of capitalism and democracy and their
power to influence the characters and the society. “In the moments of
abyss [...],” Maland concludes, “we witness some of the most disturbing of
our collective American nightmares.”66

62
See Smoodin, Regarding Frank Capra, 2.
63
See Vito Zagarrio, “It Is (Not) A Wonderful Life: For A Counter-reading Of
Frank Capra” in Frank Capra: Authorship And The Studio System, 64-93; Charles
Maland “Capra And The Abyss: Self-interest Versus The Common Good In
Depression America” in Frank Capra: Authorship And The Studio System, (ed.)
Sklar and Zagarrio, 95-128.
64
Maland, “Capra And The Abyss”, 96-97.
65
Maland, “Capra And The Abyss”, 116.
66
Maland, “Capra And The Abyss”, 124.
24 Chapter One

In his book Hollywood Renaissance: The Cinema of Democracy in the

Era of Ford, Capra, and Kazan, Sam Girgus provides us with an insight
into the reinvigoration and renewal of American culture through the work
of the directors. He explains this in relation to F.O. Mathiessen’s
understanding of American Renaissance in literature. Matthiessen’s theory
concerned the period of American national literary history between 1850-
55 that, in the critic's opinion, marked America's “coming to its first
maturity and offering its rightful heritage in the whole expanse of art and
culture.”67 In his work he focuses on the subject of “the continuing
renewal of American culture.”68 Girgus transfers these determinants into
his vision and perception of the realm of Hollywood. He acknowledges the
mid-nineteenth century writers like Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau,
Whitman and Melville and their impact on the renewal of the culture of
democracy, and points out that a similar phenomenon can be observed in
Hollywood. Interestingly, the directors who Girgus enumerates as the
representatives of the Hollywood Renaissance-John Ford, Frank Capra,
Elia Kazan, Fred Zinnemann, William Wyler and Billy Wider-are either
immigrants or rebels. Yet, Capra and Ford, in Girgus’ words: “are the key
to the dialogue and debate over the meaning of America.”69 Moreover, he
claims that their films “can readily be placed in the context of the writings
and arguments of some of [the] most influential democratic thinkers.”70
Thus, Capra, among others, is once more viewed as a modernist and
perceived as a speaker of democratic society.
Richard. A. Blake presents a somewhat contradictory view to the above
mentioned one. In his book Screening America: Reflections On Five
Classic Films he claims directly:

Capra has often been mistakenly pegged as a New Deal Democrat. He

mistrusts government intervention in human affairs and tolerates it only
when the individual, representing the common man, is able to purge the
institutions of professional bureaucrats and profiteers and control the
structures with old fashioned common sense. Solutions to problems in
Capra's films never come from organizations; they come from individuals,
even when they unite as an informal collective, the people, as in It's A
Wonderful Life or Meet John Doe.71

67
F.O. Matthiessen quoted in Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance, 1.
68
Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance, 2.
69
Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance, 7.
70
Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance, 7.
71
Richard A. Blake, Screening America: Reflections On Five Classic Films (New
Jersey: Paulist Press, 1991), 108.
 Frank Capra: The Artist and his Films 25

Thus, Blake, in Carney fashion, stresses the importance of the

individual, but combines it with their role in the community. This in turn
can be linked to notions like social, ethnic and Catholic minorities, which
are also quite frequently discussed in connection to Capra and his movies.
Christopher Garbowski, in his study of small communities and
neighbourhood values in America, mentions It's A Wonderful Life in the
context of the concept of “social capital”. The term refers to “social
networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from
them.”72 In the eyes of the author, the community of Capra’s Bedford Falls
is a perfect example of the phenomenon and he cites Francis Fukuyama's
observation of It's A Wonderful Life that mutual support and altruistic acts
make the people better citizens and the whole community more humane.
Garbowski points out that the theme of small community and
neighbourhood has often been attributed to Capra’s ethnic and religious
background.73 Similarly, Lee Lordeaux argues that the ending of It's A
Wonderful Life shows that George Bailey has learned “to fully appreciate
the Italian familial identity–in social ethics, in sacrificial mediation and in
the film’s communal celebration.”74 Lordeaux’s interpretation seems a bit
far-fetched, however. Capra, Italian born and certainly aware of the ethnic
issues and presenting it on several occasions in his movies, felt American
and in his films was mostly dealing with the ethos of the American Dream.
Nevertheless, the concept of Capra’s community presented by Lordeaux
reflects to a large extent what Garbowski claims to be a realisation of
social capital.
The religious aspect of Capra’s movies has also been analysed by a
number of critics. Although Capra in his autobiography refers to religion
and even openly talks about his conversion back to Catholicism, and even
though this fact often seemed to provide an excuse for the critics to
interpret his movies in religious terms and to call characters like John Doe
Christ-figures, Blake argues that Capra “seems to be drawing on popular
mythology rather than theology.”75 In support of this thesis he recalls the
character of Clarence, the angel from It's A Wonderful Life, who,
according to Blake, is more a fairy-tale character than a religious one.
Further on he recalls four of Capra’s allegedly Christ-heroes - Doe, Smith,

72
Robert Putnam quoted in Christopher Garbowski, Pursuits Of Happiness. The
American Dream Civil Society Religion And Popular Culture (Lublin: Maria
Curie-Skáodowska University Press, 2008), 107.
73
See Garbowski, Pursuits Of Happiness, 106.
74
Lee Lordeaux, Italian And Irish Filmmakers In America: Ford, Capra, Coppola,
And Scorsese (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 158.
75
Blake, Screening America, 108.
26 Chapter One

Deeds and Bailey - and interprets their actions as moral and altruistic.
However, Blake states that the choice between virtue and evil is not an
exclusively Christian doctrine and to cast the characters in the role of
Christ-figures limits Capra's message too narrowly.76 To support his view,
Blake discusses the case of another Hollywood director, Woody Allen, and
argues similarly that the fact that the director is Jewish does not
automatically imply that his films present the Jewish experience
exclusively. As an artist, the critic states, “Woody Allen explores the
universal human condition.”77 And the same seems to apply in the case of
Capra.
An additional scholar, Joe Saltzman, devoted his studies to another
interesting aspect of Capra's movies, namely the recurring images of
journalism and journalists. In his book he claims that Capra movie
journalists of the 1930s and 1940s “resemble their counterparts in
contemporary television and media.”78 Hence, his book constitutes a
thorough examination of Capra’s male and female characters linked to the
profession, the editors, and the publishers and media tycoons. The author
presents and scrutinises the heroes one by one and indicates how they
created and shaped the image of people involved in the media in twentieth
century popular culture. Having sketched and examined the number of
journalistic types occurring in the movies, Saltzman claims that, although
the patterns have undergone some subtle alterations throughout the years,
the essentials remain the same. The picture of people of the press and of
the media in general are equally negative or at least suspicious in today's
movies as they were back in Capra times. “The Capra journalist villain is
alive and well into the twenty-first century,”79 Saltzman notes, and he
argues the point by providing examples of numerous Hollywood post-
Capra films. Nevertheless, the author acknowledges the fact that, despite
Capra's general mistrust towards the profession, in some of the films the
director also displayed some affection for journalists, like Peter Warne in
It Happened One Night or Babe Bennett in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town.
These are, however, the types who in the course of the movie undergo a
transformation, reject cynicism, and “repent their sins.”80 Other media
representatives are those who, against the ethics of the profession, betray
the public trust and act against democracy. According to Saltzman,

76
Blake, Screening America, 110.
77
Blake, Screening America, 100.
78
Joe Saltzman, Frank Capra And The Image Of The Journalist In American Film
(Los Angeles: The Norman Lear Center USC, 2002), 143.
79
Saltzman, Frank Capra And The Image Of The Journalist, 145.
80
Saltzman, Frank Capra And The Image Of The Journalist, 144.
 Frank Capra: The Artist and his Films 27

“whether it is a journalist or a politician who does the dirty deed, it is so

despicable that it lingers and festers in the memory, gradually
overwhelming any heroic act.”81 And, in Saltzman’s opinion, this is the
reason why Capra's characters like Jim Taylor in Mr. Deeds, or D.B.
Norton in Meet John Doe seem “as real today as they did when they were
created. Their goals and tactics are familiar to everyone, and real-life
parallels in modern media abound.”82 Thus, once more, Capra’s movies
are proved to be timeless.
It is interesting to note that Capra has recently attracted the attention of
Polish cultural studies and film scholars as well, and in 2006 alone the
films of the director were discussed in three publications. GraĪyna
Stachówna acquainted Polish readers with the character of the idealistic
Senator Jefferson Smith.83 Krzysztof Ociepa offered a generally
informative picture of Capra’s career and focused on the populist trilogy,
which he interpreted from the historical and sociological point of view.
Ociepa claims that Capra’s films are the sign of a building of a new
American identity consisting of all the hitherto existing myths, but also
complemented by the experiences of lower class members and immigrant
communities.84 The third and perhaps the most analytical critical work in
Polish is ElĪbieta Ostrowska-Chmura’s chapter in Mistrzowie kina
amerykaĔskiego (American Film Masters) which the author devotes to
theories in the spirit of Carney and Zagarrio, studying the motif of
searching for the lost identity and the theme of American dreams and
nightmares.85
Irrespective of the subject of the studies, most of the above-mentioned
critical works are based on the conviction that Capra is not merely a
director of his films, but an auteur as well, and that an individual and the
power of creative individual performance constitute the core of his
movies.

81
Saltzman, Frank Capra And The Image Of The Journalist, 146.
82
Saltzman, Frank Capra And The Image Of The Journalist, 146.
83
See GraĪyna Stachówna, Wáadcy wyobraĨni. Sáawni bohaterowie filmowi
(Kraków: Znak, 2006), 298-302.
84
See Krzysztof Ociepa, „Ameryka New Dealu w stylu caprasque: Pan z
milionami, Mr. Smith jedzie do Waszyngtonu i Obywatel John Doe Franka Capry”
in Kino amerykaĔskie: Dzieáa, (ed.) ElĪbieta Durys and Konrad Klejsa (Kraków:
Wydawnictwo Rabid, 2006), 9-45.
85
See ElĪbieta Ostrowska-Chmura „Frank Capra–amerykaĔskie marzenia i
koszmary” in Mistrzowie kina amerykaĔskiego: klasycy, (ed.) àukasz Plesnar and
Rafaá Syska (Kraków: Rabid, 2006), 181-207.
28 Chapter One

The aspect of cultural studies concerning Capra would be incomplete

without mentioning the broad and fashionable subject of popular culture as
well as the closely connected notion of optimism. Therefore, it is
interesting to look at Frank Capra from the perspective of the latest trends
and ways of interpreting the pop culture phenomenon. As I have already
mentioned, in the past, Capra was frequently criticised for being too corny
and too optimistic to be treated seriously. However, in her article ‘A
Defence Of Popular Culture’, Mary P. Nichols claims that popular culture
may be “popular, but not simple. [...] Popular audiences demand hope, not
because they refuse to face reality, but because their diverse experiences
teach the complexities of reality.”86 Hence, the aim of pop culture is to
provide relief to ordinary life. Nichols concludes the article as follows:

Popular culture is popular because it resonates with life. At its worst it

resonates with the lowest, most vulgar, or most trivial aspects of life, but at
its best, it appeals to life's complexity, its nobility, and its wisdom. If we
fail to distinguish these different aspects of popular culture we are as guilty
of simpleminded prejudice as those who would abandon the classics
because they are old. The vitality of the classics is based on their reflection
on human experience, an experience continually revealed to us if we are
wise enough to look for it.87

The above view can also be applied to Capra’s works and, as such, it
constitutes the defence of the director and the rebuttal of one of the oldest
arguments against Capra. The original intention of the term Capracorn
was to emphasise the alleged triviality of the artist’s films and to diminish
the uniqueness of his directorial style. However, Capracorn was nothing
other than a synonym for “feel-good movies”, and these in turn are
nowadays considered to be the vital part of one of the most influential
cultural trends of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries, namely pop
culture.
Stephen Brown goes so far as to claim that “elements like feel good,
optimism and hope have some correspondence to theological terms such as
glory, the Kingdom of God and Eschatology.”88 In his article, he argues the
presence of all of them in Capra’s films. With Capra, Brown argues,

86
Mary P. Nichols, “A Defense Of Popular Culture” Academic Questions, vol. 13,
no. 1 (Winter 1999-2000), 76.
87
Nichols, “A Defence Of Popular Culture”, 78.
88
Stephen Brown, “Optimism, Hope, And Feelgood Movies: The Capra
Connection” in Explorations In Theology And Film. Movies And Meaning, (ed.)
Clive Marsh and Gaye Ortiz, (Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), 219.
 Frank Capra: The Artist and his Films 29

they [the films] seem to suggest that life is not a totally meaningless and
random existence if looked at from the point of view of the end. In that
context, feeling good, optimistic and hopeful can continue to have an
intellectual respectability among filmmakers.89

Capra’s optimism and the feel-good factor of his movies can be further
vindicated by the recently developed and cultivated (by Martin Seligman)
theory of positive psychology, aiming at establishing and implementing a
set of positive “virtues” into everyday life in order to provide an individual
with everyday happiness. Positive psychology emphasizes traits

that promote happiness as well as well-being, as well as character strengths

such as optimism, kindness, resilience, persistence and gratitude. These
positive characteristics, sometimes called 'character strengths' or even 'ego
strengths' […] will be recognised […] as names for what used to be called
'the virtues'.90

Therefore, in the light of positive psychology, the above-mentioned

virtues are necessary for the sake of building a good character and
becoming a good person on many levels. Character strengths, as Paul Vitz
states, are the main components making up the virtues. For instance, he
explains, “the virtue of humanity involves the character strengths of love
(e.g., valuing close relations with others), kindness (e.g., generosity and
nurturance), and social intelligence (e.g., emotional intelligence and
sensitivity).”91 In their book Character Strengths And Virtues: A Handbook
And Classification, the psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin
Seligman enumerate a list of six core virtues which, according to Vitz, can
be all linked to more general terms:

wisdom and knowledge is very close to the traditional virtue of prudence;

humanity is close to charity; courage, justice and temperance have not
changed their names; and their sixth virtue, transcendence, is not far from
hope.92

Thus, the above psychological theory provides yet one more argument
in favour of Capra and Capraesque characters. The heroes of his films -
Longfellow Deeds, Jefferson Smith, George Bailey and many others -
seem to have ruled their lives according to the “virtues” long before they

89
Brown, ‘Optimism, Hope, And Feel-good Movies’, 232.
90
Paul C.Vitz, ‘Psychology In Recovery’, First Things, No. 151 (2005): 19.
91
Vitz, “Psychology In Recovery”, 20.
92
Vitz, “Psychology In Recovery”, 20.
30 Chapter One

were classified and named by Peterson and Seligman. The infamous

Capracorn was all about optimism, hope and aiming to achieve one's
dreams and happiness here in this life. Today, after many decades, both
Capra audiences and critics tend to agree that there is much more to Capra
than meets the eye at the first casual view of his films. The Capra world is
always a multidimensional one. As Brown accurately points out, “many
directors successfully maintain a credible hope amidst human suffering.
Few can do it with such a light a touch as Capra.”93

The Capra Legacy

The name of Frank Capra today brings to mind Hollywood-related
keywords like screwball, romantic, and populist comedy, feel-good
movies, or the Capra touch and the Capra tradition. It has already been
several years since cinema critics and cultural studies scholars of the end
of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century started to
pose the question of whether, and to what extent, Capra's influence can be
found in present-day cinema. Are the films in the Capra tradition still
being made today? Attempts to provide the answer to the above question
have been made in numerous publications.
Wes D. Gehring in his book Populism And The Capra Legacy focuses
on the subject of populism and Capra’s populist movies. The author
enumerates and examines several post-Capra movies such as The Electric
Horseman (1979), Field Of Dreams (1989), and Dave (1993) amongst
others, and argues that the elements of the Capra touch is present in each
of them. This trilogy, as Gehring treats the above set of films, “represents
mainstream extensions of the Capra tradition.”94 He further applies the
populist “touchstone” to the trilogy in order to identify Capra’s style in it.
The Electric Horseman, in the eyes of the critic, “is an updated look at a
less idealised populist hero.”95 More elements can be easily found in the
plot: the hero is a country boy who, like the Capraesque Smith, Deeds, and
Doe, is uprooted from his natural environment and forced to perform an
unfamiliar public role. Similarly, as in the Capra world before, the city
becomes the symbol of evil. Field Of Dreams constitutes a mix of
Capraesque populism and feel-good fantasy due to, among others,
emphasizing the values of family and tradition as the factors which
identify the individual. As well as conveying the traditional dichotomy

93
Brown, “Optimism, Hope, and Feelgood Movies”, 228.
94
Gehring, Populism And The Capra Legacy, 54.
95
Gehring, Populism And The Capra Legacy, 29.
 Frank Capra: The Artist and his Films 31

between good and evil, Gehring claims that the film is “a baseball version
of Capra's populist fantasy It's A Wonderful Life.”96 Dave, on the other
hand, is a reflection of the political populism of Mr. Smith Goes To
Washington.
The Capra legacy is also alive in the currently tremendously popular
genre of romantic comedies. While a number of them are being produced
every year, and many of them continue to reach the status of box office
hits, the basic formula has been surprisingly stable for decades. Romantic
comedies are still based on the feel-good element and the assumption that
love can face anything and is capable of conquering any obstacle, as well
as on Capra's belief that “good fortune comes to one who has been unfairly
treated.”97 To prove the point it is enough to recall such titles as Pretty
Woman (1990) or the more recent example of Maid In Manhattan (2002),
which are both modern versions of Capra's favourite Cinderella motif in
his Lady For A Day vein (1933). “We are meant to be optimistic,”98 Brown
states in relation to the subject of feel-good movies. Nothing is beyond
reach if we allow love to be the guiding force of our lives. Cinderella can
marry a prince, even if the prince is a millionaire and Cinderella, as in
Pretty Woman, is a prostitute (Julia Roberts), or a hotel maid (Jennifer
Lopez), as in Maid In Manhattan.
The screwball comedy genre has not been forgotten in the second half
of the twentieth century either. Peter Bogdanovich’s film What's Up, Doc?
(1972) is comprised of the essential screwball elements like its
unconventional screwball heroine (Barbra Streisand), mistaken identities,
a crime, police chase, fast dialogues, visual humour, and even (since it is
Streisand in the main role) the performing of a song. Bogdanovich’s film
is a direct homage to the classic screwball genre. In his book Romantic vs.
Screwball Comedy Gehring suggests the title of another comedy, which in
his opinion is even closer to the Capra tradition than What's Up, Doc?,
namely Runaway Bride (1999). And indeed it is not difficult to notice
thematic parallels between Runaway Bride and Capra's It Happened One
Night (1934). As in the previous case, all the pivotal elements are here: the
screwball heroine: a runaway bride (Julia Roberts); the hero (Richard
Gere), a reporter who, like Capra’s Peter Warne (Clark Gable) before him,
searches for the journalistic scoop and the Capraesque American small
town. Moreover, according to Gehring, as in the case of It Happened One
Night, although Runaway Bride starts out as a screwball comedy and is
built on numerous screwball paradigms, as the plot unfolds it dovetails

96
Gehring, Populism And The Capra Legacy, 15.
97
Brown, “Optimism, Hope, And Feelgood Movies”, 224.
98
Brown, “Optimism, Hope, And Feelgood Movies”, 224.
32 Chapter One

into other genres like romantic comedy and melodrama.99

Most recently, conspicuous screwball elements can be traced in the
smash hit trilogy Meet The Parents (2000), Meet The Fockers (2004), and
Little Fockers (2010). Interestingly, however, the formula seems to have
undergone slight alterations in this case. In the above modern version of
screwballs, the hero pattern has been changed and the traditional zany
features are assigned to the parents of the main couple. Therefore, what we
witness here is the reversal of the roles. All that the romantic couple wants
is to have a “normal” life together. To achieve this goal, however, they
have to fight the obstacle in the shape of their eccentric parents, who seem
to be determined to change the life of their “boring” children and make
them live it according to their rules. Funnily enough, the parents, played
by Streisand, DeNiro, and Hoffman, are a generation with roots in the
golden era of screwball comedies. Streisand, of course, as I have already
mentioned had played a similar role before. Such a reversal, we can argue,
is not entirely a novelty. It echoes the motif present in Capra’s Arsenic And
Old Lace (1944), in which a young protagonist (Cary Grant) is desperately
trying to put a stop to the criminal affairs of his zany elderly aunts
(Josephine Hull and Jean Adair).
There are many Capraesque themes, motifs and character types to be
encountered in Hollywood cinema today. Saltzman enumerates and
examines various examples of media related types,100 but there are others,
such as, for instance, cold-blooded, greedy tycoons, or the “Cinderella
man” hero. Moreover, in 2002 the remake of Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes To
Town was released under the title Mr. Deeds and featured the box-office
Hollywood stars Adam Sandler and Winona Ryder. The plot is shifted to
contemporary times, and some slang expressions are applied to satisfy the
needs and expectations of a modern young viewer, but a great deal of the
scenes are an exact copy of Capra’s masterpiece.
Coincidentally, in the same year, one more homage was paid to Capra
by the famous American popular culture team of Jim Henson, shortly after
Henson’s death. The plot of It's A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie
(2002) takes place on Christmas Eve and presents Kermit the Frog faced
with a heartbreaking task of informing his friends that the legendary
Muppet Theatre is being shut down due to its financial ruin. The viewer is
offered a retrospective summary of the events and Kermit’s desperate
struggles to save the theatre from a fraudulent and villainous banker (Joan
Cusack), after the angel (David Arquette) intervenes on behalf of Kermit

99
See Gehring, Romantic vs. Screwball Comedy. Charting The Difference
(Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 159.
100
See Saltzman, Frank Capra And The Image Of The Journalist.
 Frank Capra: The Artist and his Films 33

to the Almighty (Whoopi Goldberg), who decides to examine the facts

which led the poor amphibian to utter despair. At a certain point Kermit
proclaims George Bailey's famous words that everything and everyone
would be better off without him. Obviously, as in the case of It's A
Wonderful Life, things end up well for Kermit and his theatre and the next
generation of young viewers is being brought up on Capra legacy.
Above all, the Capraesque hope, optimism and an affirmation of life
can be spotted in more than one modern movie. “There is unashamed hope
in The Fisher King [1991], as in It's A Wonderful Life,”101 Brown claims.
The title hero of Forrest Gump (1994) states on several occasions: “Life's
a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get.” Yet,
according to Brown, the statement does not necessarily suggest the
randomness and chaos of life. Brown assures us that, in fact, it is quite the
opposite:

Forrest again and again finds himself thrust into the centre of America's
historic moments. […] We see him meeting Presidents, rock stars, bringing
influence to bear on some of them. Like Capra's hero [George Bailey], his
life touches so many other lives. Forrest's encounters suggest that there is
no such thing as accidents. 102

Thus, Capra’s message that life really can be wonderful, and that
"anything is possible through the promise of a second chance,"103 lives on
and is still up-to-date in the second decade of the twenty-first century.
The enduring popularity of Capra’s films among the critics and the
audience alike suggests that the director indeed succeeded in making
movies that reach the hearts and change the lives of his audience. In the
time of Capra’s revival, the director John Cassavetes pronounced the
words that were soon to become one of the most frequently repeated
quotes in the context of Frank Capra and his role in portraying America
and propagating the American myth. “Maybe there really wasn't an
America, maybe it was only Frank Capra,” Cassavetes claimed.104
Opinions like this constitute a clear indication of how the perception of
Capra’s works and the director as an artist have changed and evolved
throughout the years, and prove that a number of Capra’s films resist the
passage of time and changing cultural trends.
In the following chapters I am going to refer to a number of critical

101
Brown, “Optimism, Hope, And Feelgood Movies”, 230.
102
Brown, “Optimism, Hope, And Feelgood Movies”, 231.
103
Gehring, Populism And The Capra Legacy, 113.
104
John Cassavetes quoted in Preface to Maland, Frank Capra.
34 Chapter One

works and various, often contradictory, opinions concerning Frank Capra

and his artistic legacy. My aim, however, is not to prove that Capra was an
important director since this fact, I believe, has already been confirmed
and acknowledged. In my book I will attempt to interpret the Capra
universe respecting both the social and populist reading of his works, as
well as Carney’s and post-Carney theses claiming that an individual and
his struggles against an oppressive reality to be the essence of Capra’s
films. Therefore, I will endeavour to indicate that Capra’s films are
multidimensional on many levels, as they comprise a mixture of
“Capracorn” fairytale-like optimism and the dark nightmarish visions of
reality. I perceive Capra’s world as a romantic universe in which dreams
intertwine with the fear of unfulfillment and of a loss of innocence in the
process of gaining experience. Hence, I propose to examine the chosen
Capra’s movies on three levels (paradise, purgatory and inferno) as
proposed by Francesca Aran Murphy in her Dante-based interpretation of
the comic universe.
 CHAPTER TWO

COMEDY AND ROMANCE

IN LITERATURE AND FILM

Before I begin a detailed analysis of the romantic reality in the chosen

movies of Frank Capra, I would like to focus on the theoretical
background of the genres of comedy and romance in literature and film.
Therefore, this chapter will be devoted to literary comedy and romance
and their evolution through the ages. In the second part of the chapter I
will present a Hollywood realisation of both genres and discuss three types
of film comedies connected to Capra, i.e. romantic comedy, screwball
comedy and populist comedy. The chapter will be concluded with a short
presentation of the theories of emotions, audience, laughter, and morals as
concepts closely related to the general subject of comedy and romance.

Comedy
A better understanding of comedy demands taking at least a basic look
at the history of the genre. In The Cinema of Frank Capra, Leland A.
Poague stresses the existence of two main types of comedy that, by
necessity, need to be taken into consideration, namely: “clown–oriented
comedy of the Aristophanic and Chaplinsque kind (from the cinematic
point of view), and plot-oriented comedy of the Shakespearean or
Jonsonian kind.”1 In short, what I am initially going to discuss are the
general features of the two kinds of literary comedies, the similarities and,
subsequently, the differences between them.
A great deal of research on the subject of comedy has been done
throughout the years of the genre’s tremendous popularity. For the sake of
my thesis one of the most fundamental studies is the anthropological
examination started by Francis Cornford in The Origins of Attic Comedy

1
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 25.
36 Chapter Two

(1914).2 The analysis deals with many significant elements of comedy

elaborated on the basis of the works of Aristophanes (448–388 BC), the
poet of the Peloponnesian War, who is now considered to be the founder of
what we call the Old Comedy. Cornford persuasively indicates and
systematises comic forms and conventions. As Poague notices, “Cornford
demonstrates that in the case of Aristophanes comic conventions provide
both the structural bones and the emotional lifeblood of the dramatic
comedy.”3 On the subject of the source of the European comedy, he agrees
with Aristotle’s thesis that the core of the genre lies in a fertility ritual and
is connected to a tradition of phallic songs which were a part of Dionysian
festivals.4
In the next part of his thesis, Cornford lists the six formal elements of
an Aristophanic play. These are: the prologue (the introduction of the
problem); the parados (marking the entrance of the chorus); the agon (a
debate between the protagonist (the hero) and the antagonist (the villain);
the prabasis (choral interlude when the leader often addresses the audience
and abuses them); the episodes of the sacrifice and feasting; and finally the
komos and marriage of the protagonist and his bride (the ritual reward).5
As Cornford further marks, “this canonical plot-formula preserves the
stereotyped action of a ritual or folk drama, older than the literary comedy,
and of a pattern well known to us from other sources”.6 Again, folk
tradition is closely connected to the above-mentioned fertility rites.
Bearing this relation in mind Cornford recalls several such traditional
fertility rituals’ types: to begin with the expulsion of Death/bringing in of
Life.
The above-mentioned rite is the symbolic expulsion of an actor from
the community. The expelled person becomes the scapegoat or a Christ–
like figure suffering for the sins of the whole community. The bringing in
of life, being a reversal of the previous process, is the complement of the
whole ritual. It symbolizes fertility, harvest, and becomes a symbol of the
“green world” which, looking further, is the opposition of sterility and a
sterile world.
The second fertility ritual, according to Cornford, is the struggle of
Summer and Winter, which both become personified in order to indicate
the difference between fertility and sterility, as well. They follow each

2
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 25.
3
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 26.
4
See Arystoteles, Poetyka (Wrocáaw: Zakáad Narodowy im. OssoliĔskich, 1989),
13.
5
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 26-27.
6
Francis Cornford quoted in Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 27.
 Comedy and Romance in Literature and Film 37

other in the course of the cycle of time. The similar type is the motif of
struggle of the Young and the Old Kings. What is often remarked, the
conflict may be interpreted as the Oedipal conflict between the father and
the son. Usually the winner gets the kingdom, as well as the hand of a
princes or queen, which eventually leads to the ritual marriage.
The next ritual type is the Death and Resurrection motif, which stresses
both the Aristophanic agon and the episodes of sacrifice and feasting. The
pattern involves the hero being slain, and whose triumph can only be
brought about by his resurrection. This motif once more echoes the pattern
of a scapegoat and Christ-like figure.
Subsequently, we arrive at the final Aristophanic plot element: the
ritual marriage deriving from the marriage of Heaven and Earth. This is
the element which has virtually never ceased to appear in the European
comic tradition.
Continuing the discussion of the history of comedy, it is necessary to
mention the theory of Northrop Frye, which basically follows the same
lines as the explorations of Francis Cornford but with a difference of
stress. Whereas Cornford dealt with the Old Comedy of Aristophanes,
Frye deals with the New Comedy of Menander to Shakespeare. In his
essay devoted to comic fictional modes, Fry presents the following pattern
of forming the comic world:

New Comedy normally presents an erotic intrigue between a young man

and a young woman which is blocked by some kind of opposition, usually
parental, and resolved by a twist in the plot which is the comic plot of
Aristotle’s “discovery” […]. At the beginning of the play the forces
thwarting the hero are in control of the play’s society, but after a discovery
in which the hero becomes wealthy or the heroine respectable, a new
society crystallizes on the stage around the hero and his bride. The action
of the comedy thus moves towards the incorporation of the hero into the
society he naturally fits.7

Similarly to Cornford, Fry then presents his interpretation in the light

of existing ritualistic elements. He enumerates three of the most evident
ones: the agon, sacrifice and feasting, along with marriage and komos.
While marriage and komos remain relatively close to the Aristophanic
elements, the agon has certainly undergone some modifications. If we
look at Shakespeare’s plays we will find that the Aristophanic debate
between the hero and the villain acquires the shape of the rhetorical
defeat of evil principles preceded by the recognition or discovery of the

7
Frye, Anatomy Of Criticism, 44.
38 Chapter Two

source of evil. In the New Comedy, “anticomic sterility is not personified

as a single figure, but becomes a shared social ‘humour’.”8
Some changes are also observable in the case of the sacrifice and
feasting element. Frye argues that they remain, in fact, more faithful to its
ritual tradition than in Aristophanic works. Both in Shakespeare and in
Aristophanes there are protagonists who undergo a sort of rejuvenation
through death and resurrection rituals; however, the aim of such character
building is different. While in Aristophanes such a transformation mainly
serves a satirical purpose, in Shakespeare it is not a transformation as
such, but rather a confusion of identity leading the main protagonist to the
final discovery and social renewal which is preceded by the course of
many misfortunes deriving from the ordinary flow of the comic action.
Next to the idea of ritual, Fry argues, the term of myth should be
mentioned. Myths accompany rituals, and those components combined
together serve to express the comic wish for fertility.9 There is, however,
an important difference between them to be noted. While the ritual tends
to affect the world by mimetic power, which indeed can cause a real
change in the universe, myths are the stories about the changes evolving
in the universe, thus they primarily serve a descriptive function. The
conclusion of this comparison is that both ritual and myth present the
same story and share the same plot. What is important for the subject of
comedy, however, is a resulting idea that when we can no longer observe
belief in ritual, or we can clearly observe the gap between ritual and
myth, we deal with a piece of writing about ritual and myth, and not ritual
and myth themselves. This interpretation inevitably leads to an
understanding of the fact that comedy is not a fertility ritual but it is
rather about fertility rituals. It is a work of art deriving from the main
structures and themes of ritualistic conventions. Upon further reflection it
can be suggested that, through depicting a constant struggle between
fertility and sterility, comedy serves as the mean of presenting various
possibilities of how to maintain fertility in life.10
A very concise summary of the components of comedy has been
provided by T. G. A. Nelson in his Introduction to Comedy.11 The author
indicates the basic structural elements of the Old Comedy and the New
Comedy modes, which may be illustrated by means of the following
chart:

8
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 29.
9
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 30.
10
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 31.
11
T. G. A. Nelson, Comedy. An Introduction To Comedy In Literature, Drama, And
Cinema (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
 Comedy and Romance in Literature and Film 39

The Old Comedy The New Comedy

(Aristophanic Comedy) (Menander To Shakespeare)
x recurring formal features–the x a scripted form of drama
agon or dispute between x the plot in which a young man
contesting parties and woman succeed in
x skeletal plot overcoming obstacles to their
x exuberant tone marriage
x fantastic and farcical incidents, x comic servants and rogues
slanging matches, cheerful x interludes and improvisations
obscenities, uninhibited political x verbal and visual humour
satire x interest in the family and the
x interest in the community individual

Table 2-1

In his reflection upon this structure, Nelson states that comedy as such
consists of two conflicting elements, namely: laughter and the general
“movement of the story towards an ending characterized by harmony,
festivity, and celebration.”12
A similar attempt to define the term of comedy has been made, among
others, by Francesca Aran Murphy,13 who discusses the nature of the
comic plot. She recalls the theory of Northrop Frye stating that the very
nature of the comic plot is to follow an upward movement in the form of
a U.

In its downward graph–the first stroke of the U–the plot moves away from
a good situation and toward conflict and suffering. In its upward graph, the
second stroke, the plot turns toward happiness and communal festivity.
[…] In a dramatic action, each unfolding event drives the next, and is
contained in it. In tragic drama, a coalition of fate and hubris are
mobilizing the events. In comic drama, each scene is propelled forward by
desire and by grace. At the summit of Frye’s U stands the recovery of
community: the good city is what we desire most.14

The above quotation presents the most basic rules of the comic world.
First of all, it reiterates the Aristotelian thesis, altered somewhat by
Northrop Fry, stating that at the heart of the comic plot lie the
conventions of the fertility ritual. While the necessity of fertility as

12
Nelson, Comedy, 22.
13
See Francesca Aran Murphy, The Comedy Of Revelation.
14
Murphy, The Comedy Of Revelation, 4.
40 Chapter Two

opposed to sterility is probably the main element of comedy, there are

other components of comic convention to be traced here as well. The
ultimate target of the comic plot named in the quote, the “recovery of
community”, recalls the already mentioned “marriage and comos” term.
The community obviously has to undergo “resurrection” in order to
recover. Certainly there is a wide variety of subjects the “resurrection”
can refer to. It can be a victorious resurrection after an unhappy love, the
conflict caused by the confusion of identities and social renewal after the
happy reversal of the action, etc. Regardless, what is to be expected at the
end of the comedy is the emergence of the desired “good city.”
This very point brings us to the most crucial definition of the term
comedy. The Greek word Komos or Komoidia literally means “a musical
and dancing festivity”15 which, in short, one can understand as the
positive conclusion of the protagonists’ struggles and happy reunion of
the community in the “good city”. Such an interpretation indicates a clear
association with the six components of the dramatic world elaborated on
by Aristotle who enumerated: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle,
and song as the necessary parts (of the dramatic world).16 What I wish to
discuss now is the plot, considered by Aristotle as the driving force of
drama. As we see in Poetics, the plot can be either simple (haploid) or
complex (peplegmenoi). A simple plot advances continually without any
sudden interruptions, but in the case of a complex plot we deal with the
dynamic action in which one can encounter reversal (peripetia) or
recognition, or both. Aristotelian peripetia is the reverse of the
protagonist’s situation by means of an unexpected event occurring in the
story. Such a reversal is strongly connected to recognition, which simply
means the hero’s passage from ignorance to knowledge; in other words,
obtaining the awareness of some previously unknown information. Again,
we can view the implementation of such a poetic device as one more
means of leading the plot towards its ultimate finale which, in the case of
comedy as I have already mentioned, is the reunion of the main
protagonists and consequently the communal entrance to the “good city.”
In practice, however, it is very difficult to maintain the above theory
in its perfect form. A clear alteration to the discussed pattern can be found
in Dante’s Divine Comedy. As Murphy cleverly suggests: “Dante
articulated three realms of the comic imagination in the three stages of his
journey to God. Comedies can be infernal, purgatorial, or paradisal.”17
The lowest, infernal level can be considered a black comedy. The

15
See Murphy, The Comedy Of Revelation, 16.
16
See Arystoteles, Poetyka, 20, 34.
17
Murphy, The Comedy Of Revelation, 24.
 Comedy and Romance in Literature and Film 41

protagonists of the infernal comedy are bound to encounter dark settings

and the situations in which no helpers are provided. Experiences such as
darkness, disasters and death frequently, likewise, constitute the universe
of the infernal level. Despite the black humour of the infernal level, it still
remains a comic world which has the power to evoke laughter in the
audience.
Purgatorial comedies present the characters heading toward their aims
through a constant struggle. The task is easier, however, than in the case
of the infernal comedy since the helpers, usually feminine, are present at
this level. Murphy argues that purgatorial comedies are of a Quixotic
type, since the plot often involves quests and suffering: “The characters
are on their way to happiness, always on the verge of achieving their
desire as the action concludes.”18
The paradisal level is the lightest type in the course of which the
characters gain their aim with minimal effort. The overall tone of the
comedy is light and the protagonists victoriously attain the “heavenly
banquet” in the end. The paradisal level is “visionary comedy.”19
The division of Dante’s Divine Comedy and its later interpretations
make us aware of the existing variety of the types of comedy. Thus,
assuming that the above division can be applied to the analysis of comedy
in general terms, it becomes evident that the previously discussed pattern
of comedy, as elaborated by Aristotle, provides only one of the possible
variants of the creation of the comic world. Hence, the term “comedy”
becomes multidimensional and demands a profound examination in every
case.

Romance
Since there are some similarities and indeed an overlap between
comedy and romance, the next part of my thesis will be devoted to the
related mode of romance. At some point in his Anatomy of Criticism,
Northrop Frye delivers a very brief, but at the same time, pithy description
of the romantic reality. “The mode of romance,” Frye argues, “presents an
idealized world: in romance heroes are brave, heroines beautiful, villains
villainous, and the frustrations, ambiguities, and embarrassments of
ordinary life are made little of.”20 Throughout the centuries some aspects
of “romance” have undergone slight alterations; nevertheless, the basic

18
Murphy, The Comedy Of Revelation, 24.
19
Murphy, The Comedy Of Revelation, 24.
20
Frye, Anatomy Of Criticism, 151.
42 Chapter Two

perception of the term has remained much the same. Therefore, it is

possible to talk about a certain fundamental romantic pattern.
The romantic plot together with its most crucial components, the
adventure and quest, are the first of such stable elements. According to
Frye there are three stages of the quest. Namely: the stage of a dangerous
journey, the climactic struggle, and the exaltation of the hero.21 The first
stage, therefore, means the adventure in the broad sense; the second stage,
the struggle is usually some kind of battle or confrontation, either
metaphorical or literal, in which there is only one victor. In some cases
both the hero and the villain perish. Such a situation closes the romantic
conflict between both protagonists but does not close the story itself,
since the pattern requires the presence of the third stage, mainly the
exaltation of the hero, whether he is alive or not. Thus, looking at the
three stages altogether, we may recall the Greek terms respectively. The
stage of journey and setting the conflict is to a large extent the Greek
agon, the struggle and death is pathos, and finally the exaltation part is
anagnorisis or discovery. According to the romantic pattern; dead or
alive, the positive character finally becomes recognized as a hero.
It is necessary to note that both the hero and the enemy are equally
important in romance. This is, in part, due to the ever present reference to
the opposition between the divine qualities of the hero and demonic
qualities of the villain. Romantic characters are usually something more
than ordinary humans. It is quite frequent that they empower some
extraordinary abilities. The critics are concordant with the thesis that
constructing the reality of a divine hero and a demonic villain bears clear
reference to mythical tradition. Hence, in the character of the hero we can
find associations with: “spring, dawn, order, fertility, vigour, and youth,”
and, respectively, the villain is associated with “winter, darkness,
confusion, sterility, moribund life, and old age.”22
However, apart from the above-mentioned main pair of romantic
protagonists, there are also other types characteristic of the genre.
Returning to the subject of quest and struggle, it is obvious that the hero
fights for some superior ideal. This ideal is frequently personified in the
figure of a woman, the damsel of his heart. She is usually pure and lovely
and divinely beautiful and, therefore, goddess-like. This almost unearthly
creature becomes the reason of the hero’s, and sometimes also of the
villain’s, passion and determination. Love and desire of the soul become
the main motives and aims of the protagonists’ existence. The feeling has

21
See Frye, Anatomy Of Criticism, 187.
22
Frye, Anatomy Of Criticism, 187.
 Comedy and Romance in Literature and Film 43

nothing to do with laws or logic, however. It seems to regulate life, even

though at first it usually causes disintegration and emotional chaos.
Despite all of the difficulties the hero has to tackle, romantic love
possesses a healing power and is worth living and dying for.
Lesley Brill describes the world of romance thus: “In the world of
romance […] the ordinary constraints of natural law are loosened. As in
dreams and nightmares, reality mixes with projections of desired
anxiety.”23 He further indicates that, similarly to folk tales, romance is a
world of talking animals and personified nature, the world of evil witches
and magicians and other fairy creatures which suddenly become plausible
and do not question the credibility of the story in any case. Moreover,
these extraordinary characters fit into well established types; that is, the
figure of a “good old king, unjustly disinherited prince or princess, evil
magician, wicked stepmother.”24 Additionally, all these fairy tale
characters are placed in a fairy tale-like setting. The romantic universe is
mainly a fantastic one. It is a universe of mysterious castles inhabited by
equally mysterious masters, it is the reality of whispers and love oaths,
and fantastic adventures of errant knights and their divine damsels.
At this juncture we should look comparatively at the modes of
comedy and romance. It is quite clear that both modes have a number of
points in common. They are both based on the second half of the mythic
cycle, which moves from “death to rebirth, decadence to renewal, winter
to spring, darkness to a new dawn.”25 This is the contrary movement to
the corresponding modes of tragedy and irony which, according to Frye,
are based on the first half of the natural cycle.
The first similarity between comedy and romance to mention would be
the fact that they both emphasize the triumph of life and renewal. In order
to make further comparison of the two modes more clear, I will present it
by means of the following table:

23
Brill, The Hitchcock Romance, 6.
24
Brill, The Hitchcock Romance, 6.
25
Northrop Frye, A Natural Perspective (New York: Harcourt Brace &World,
1965), 121.
44 Chapter Two

COMEDY ROMANCE
PLOT PLOT
The comic plot consists of a series of The romantic plot is formed by a set of
comic intrigues and occurrences adventures which happen to the
usually involving the comic male- protagonist during the heroic quest he
female couple. must undertake for the sake of
defending his ideals.

The plot moves from the agon (comic The plot, similarly to the comic one,
intrigues) through the scenes of moves from the agon (which in this
sacrifice and feasting to a comos and case would be quest and journey),
marriage (the ritual reward). subsequently, however, changes its
path to pathos (struggle and death
motives), and finally to anagnorisis
(the discovery and recognition of the
hero).

The comic plot usually presumes comic The term of continuity is understood in
characters to be inseparable from the romance as an eternal ideal. Beauty and
community they belong to and, love acquire the rather platonic
therefore, marriage towards which the meaning of admiration and worship.
action moves forms a guarantee of the
community continuity, also in terms of
the generations to come.

SETTING SETTING
The action of the comedy is usually The romantic universe usually lacks the
placed in a specific time frame and sense of biological time and is placed
realistic setting. in unrealistic, fantastic, and mysterious
fairy tale-like setting.

PROTAGONISTS PROTAGONISTS

Comic heroes are realistic figures who The romantic protagonist is a human
often fall victim to various intrigues of being, nevertheless superior in degree
the villains. In spite of many to the others. He is an idealistically
difficulties, they finally (and usually) oriented chivalric knight errant type
undergo the recognition phase which who fights dragons in order to serve his
leads to the fate reversal and triumphal ideals often personified in the figure of
comos and marriage. Comic the damsel he worships.
protagonists tend to be erotically
oriented, rather than in the service of
religious affection.
 Comedy and Romance in Literature and Film 45

Comic villains are also realistic The romantic villain is a diabolic

humans usually opposing the hero in figure, either a human or a supernatural
order to interfere and block the hero’s character possessing supernatural
way to the completion of his goal. powers (a magician, a witch, or other
fairy tale-like creature). His aim is to
fight and destroy the romantic hero.
Thus, the duel becomes unequal and
therefore, in physical terms, it is
doomed to be lost by the hero.

The comic heroine is also an ordinary The romantic heroine is a damsel of

human. She usually becomes the hero’s extraordinary beauty. She is often a
driving force and the reason for the human; nevertheless she bears a clear
whole comic commotion. analogy to a divine goddess who exists
to be worshiped.

Table 2-226

The above table indicates all the main aspects of comedy and romance.
It also shows how the two modes differ from each other and which
elements can be considered common to both. The conclusion which can be
inferred from the comparison confirms Frye’s thesis that they represent the
same stage of the cycle of nature, as well as supporting the view that, in
spite of certain differences, comedy and romance are indeed related to
each other. As we will see in Hollywood narration, when we speak of
romance their relation to comedy is even closer.

Hollywood
So far I have been discussing comedy and romance in its original
literary form–its origins and its features. This part of the chapter is going
to be devoted to a radically different kind of narration, namely to cinema
and its application of the two modes.
Since the beginning of film history the genre of comedy has been
practiced. It is the Depression era, however, which is considered to be the
golden age of comedy’s development and it is during the Great Depression
that the vast genre of “comedy” split into several subgenres classified

26
My comparison of comedy and romance relies on several sources
(alphabetically): Brill, The Hitchcock Romance; Frye, Anatomy Of Criticism; Frye,
A Natural Perspective; Northrop Frye, The Secular Scripture. A Study of the
Structure of Romance (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1976); Poague,
The Cinema Of Frank Capra.
46 Chapter Two

according to the theme and the characters it presented.27 The split was the
reflection of the historical and social situation in America and it also
marked a certain transition in the perception of humour. However, in spite
of the fact that cinema represents a radically different style to literature,
film comedies combine many of the elements characteristic to previously
discussed literary genres. By means of describing three major comedy
streams which emerged during the 1930s-screwball comedy, romantic
comedy and populist comedy-I am going to indicate how the pivotal
literary structures have been incorporated into cinema. At the same time,
the three film genres are closely connected to the major concern of my
book; i.e. of Frank Capra and his movies. For the time being, however, I
would like to concentrate on a basic theoretical sketch of comic
Hollywood productions.

Screwball Comedy
The term “screwball” in its original meaning refers to sport, to baseball
specifically, and it describes a ball that moves in an unconventional or
unexpected way. Therefore, the name itself suggests what sort of comedy
the screwball genre is. It is also closely connected to the American
political situation at the time the genre was born and its early
representative films form a clear social commentary to the desperate time
of the country during the Great Depression.28
On the subject of screwball stylistics, we have to mention the easy-to-
notice combination of the typical silent comedy device of the sight gag
(visual expression of face and gestures) with the crucial romantic comedy
element, the witty dialogue.29 Such a merger resulted in the necessity of
creating the figure of the comic antihero (who is to be found in the case of
romantic comedy as well). Wes D. Gehring argues for the existence of five
key component characteristics for comic antiheroes in screwball, namely:
“abundant leisure time, childlike nature, basic male frustration (especially
in relation to women), a general propensity for physical comedy, and a
proclivity for parody and satire.”30 Since screwball comedy is usually set
in the reality of the wealthy high society milieu, leisure time is available in
its full range, while money (or the lack of it) is not the concern of the
protagonist. The anticomic protagonist frequently happens to be an
absentminded figure involved in an affair with a screwball heroine trying

27
See Gehring, Romantic vs. Screwball Comedy, 4-11.
28
See Geoff King, Film Comedy (London: Wallflower Press, 2002), 52.
29
See Gehring, Romantic vs. Screwball Comedy, 10.
30
Gehring, Romantic vs. Screwball Comedy, 29.
 Comedy and Romance in Literature and Film 47

to fit him into her vision of a relationship. The phenomena we are

discussing here can be called the reversal of the traditional relationship
pattern. The roles of the man and woman are switched in such a way that it
becomes typical for this cinematic genre. Thus, the woman becomes a
dominant character, while the man is slightly childlike and immature and
hence demands being taken care of: “the woman leads the charge while the
male holds back in the manner of the stereotyped weaker sex.”31 Such a
reversal rarely takes place in the related genre of romantic comedy. In
other words, this kind of relationship can fit into the concept of the child-
husband and mother-wife motif. Similarly, it is the woman who dominates
and, from the perspective of being a childlike male, a screwball reality is a
“salute to childhood.”32 On the other hand, such a situation is a source of
frustration since the male constantly undergoes the process of ritual
humiliation. And, in fact, this is the focal point of the screwball genre
theme. Female characters turn out to be generally stronger than males.
Heroines are prepared to face the zany and frequently illogical reality;
males, however, have to cope with both the zany reality and zany females.
These attempts are usually doomed to failure; nevertheless, the conflict
that emerges from the male-female combats creates an ideal space for
stylistic devices. Ghering attributes to the screwball antihero a “propensity
for physical comedy.”33 I have already mentioned screwball’s connotations
with the silent slapstick tradition. To make the picture complete, we could
easily add some farcical elements (clearly referring to Aristophanic comic
pattern), as well as the motif of romantic hide-and-seek to the visual side
of the screwball, and the presence of the witty dialogues and an
improbable zany plot.34
The paradoxical nature of the theme of love is worth discussing at this
point. Although love is the driving force of the screwball plot, and being
together is certainly the source of genuine fun for both of the
protagonists, in the case of a screwball relationship, love is not
infrequently diminished to triviality and additionally coloured with irony.
Being the crucial point, it simultaneously becomes the subject of satire or
even parody, and hence cannot be equalled with the romantic
understanding of the term.

31
Gehring, Romantic vs. Screwball Comedy, 34.
32
Gehring, Romantic vs. Screwball Comedy, 43.
33
Gehring, Romantic vs. Screwball Comedy, 53.
34
See King, Film Comedy, 52-56.
48 Chapter Two

Romantic Comedy
The above short description of the screwball genre contrasts with what
I am going to discuss now. The most distinctive element of the romantic
comedy is the theme of love, occupying the focal point of this movie
genre. Although the element of fun is frequently strongly accented in the
romantic comedy, love and affection remains a serious subject. Apart from
the above-mentioned thematic focus, Gehring enumerates five pivotal
aspects differentiating romantic comedy from its screwball counterpart.
These include: “the accenting of sentiment over silly, a propensity for
serious and/or melodramatic overtones, more realistic characters […],
traditional dating ritual […], and slower story pacing.”35
Let us first investigate the subject of sentiment. The meaning of the
term refers here to many dimensions of love. It highlights the importance
of love in everyone’s life as well as the longing for some past lovers
(especially in the case of the older figures, who frequently appear as a
symbol of love’s purity). Sentiment is a promise of melancholic memories
of idealized lovers and feelings. Once again the notion confirms that love,
which is rather trivialized in the case of the screwball comedy, gains a
different perception and role here. It no longer remains a silly adventure,
but the aspect determining life at its core. Thus, obviously melodramatic
overtones in romantic comedy seem normal, if not inevitable. Frequently
love has to undergo a certain trial of credibility. Lovers, or at least one of
them, have to prove that the feeling is genuine. And yet there is no
guarantee of success. Contrary to the rules of screwball, the happy ending
of love is never fully granted. Nevertheless, romantic comedy sends us a
message that, in spite of all the heartaches and failures, love is worth
fighting for.
Romantic characters are more realistic and more believable than zany
screwball heroes. Couples and families reflect a natural pattern more likely
to be found in real life. Frequently the main protagonist has a close friend
who helps in the most difficult struggles, serves as an advisor and also
adds some humour to the situation the hero gets into, thus playing a
significant role of a leaven and counterbalance to the serious tones of
affairs of the heart.
Perhaps the most striking difference between the two comedy types
lies in the way the male–female relationship is treated. A slightly eccentric
and dominating screwball heroine is replaced here by a caring and more
“conventional” woman, although often slightly hesitant towards the idea of

35
Gehring, Romantic vs. Screwball Comedy, 67.
 Comedy and Romance in Literature and Film 49

stable mating (at some point at least). The male in a romantic comedy
usually has to mature a bit, nevertheless it is he who is the stronger one,
and it is he who, through the process of facing difficult choices and his
own indecisiveness, eventually has the final word. Thus, the relationship
pattern is more traditional, more male-directed and love-oriented.
The final characteristic element of romantic comedy enumerated above
is a slower story pacing. It is slower, of course, in relation to the pace of a
screwball comedy. The aim of slowing the pace down is to maintain a sort
of an emotional suspense based on the viewer’s uncertainty whether the
couple is finally going to be together or not. It also marks the seriousness
of various romantic choices, as well as the necessity of the protagonist’s
contemplation of life which may result in the character’s “transformation-
through-love.”36 Such a device creates the impression of the plot’s reality,
while in the case of screwball’s quick pace of action it is hardly possible to
realize the actual improbability of the events. Gehring notes:

Romantic comedy has much more to do with reality than its sister format,
screwball comedy. […] [S]crewball comedy is a distraction from the real
world while romantic comedy promises something special in the most
familiar of settings […] the proverbial, ‘this could happen to me.’37

Let us assemble the characteristic features of romantic and screwball

comedy by means of the following chart:

SCREWBALL COMEDY ROMANTIC COMEDY

x emphasis on fun and humour x emphasis on love and sentiment
x physical comedy (sight gags x funny and witty dialogues
referring to the silent movies era) x a reality-based story
x a zany improbable plot x sentimental and melodramatic
x propensity for black humour overtone (pain and suffering may
x lack of sentiment occur)
x love treated in a light manner x love treated very seriously
x a male character suffering x a more serious heroine
humiliations from a zany heroine x the traditional dating ritual (the
x a reversed pattern of the dating man is dominant and active)
ritual (an eccentric heroine dominates x slower plot pacing
the man in a relationship)
x a battle of the sexes
x eccentric behaviour
x quick plot pacing

36
King, Film Comedy, 51.
37
Gehring, Romantic vs. Screwball Comedy, 95.
50 Chapter Two

SIMILARITIES
x both types are based on the antihero development
x a clear fascination with the upper-class milieu is visible
x the characters are “ordinary human beings”
x verbal interactions
x witty and funny dialogues
x both types were initially a response to the political situation of the Great
Depression era

Table 2-3 38

Populist Comedy
One more type of comedy I would like to discuss at this point is
populist comedy. However, in this case the term “populism” is not
associated with the nineteenth century political movement, but rather with
“a basic belief held by many people that the superior and majority will of
the common man is forever threatened by the usurping, sophisticated, evil
few.”39 The main alteration “populism” in comedy brings to the overall
comedy genre is a thematic one. As the name itself suggests, this type of
comedy touches the problem of a common man and the protagonist
usually plays the part of a spokesman for the whole of society. Hence,
apart from discussed comic pattern, populist comedy is broadened by its
political and social context. Again, this genre flourished as a direct
response to the gloomy social situation of the 1930s where Hollywood
arguably became the most powerful and appealing means of expressing the
voice of the populace. As David McMurrey argues, in the centre of the
populist theme lies

the evaluation of the common people as superior morally, socially, and

physically to the other groups in society. Although this idea–which in many
respects resembles the tradition of the primitive man or the noble savage–is
a familiar one, the view of the lower classes, the workers, and the poor as
qualitatively better in a variety of ways than other groups in society
represents a reversal of traditional attitudes.40

38
The comparison is based on Gehring, Romantic vs. Screwball Comedy and
King, Film Comedy.
39
Gehring, Populism And The Capra Legacy, 1.
40
David McMurrey, The Populist Romance: A Study Of Michelet’s Le Peuple And
Selected Novels Of Hugo, James, Zola, And Galdos (University of Texas at Austin,
1980), online on January 16, 2013 at:
http://www.prismnet.com/~hcexres/dissertation/diss_michelet.html.
 Comedy and Romance in Literature and Film 51

Other characteristics of populism are provided by Wes D. Gehring in

his Populism and the Capra Legacy. The critic states that the term
“populism” includes several elements which, gathered together,
complement the above-mentioned theory, enabling us to mark a more
definite borderline between populist comedy and other genres:

Other characteristics frequently associated with this kind of populism

include a celebration of rural and/or small town life, mythic-like leaders
who have risen from the people (also reflecting the movement’s often
patriotic nature), an adherence to traditional values and customs (mirroring
the phenomenon’s strong sense of nostalgia), an anti-intellectualism (in an
elitist sense), a faithfulness to honest labour, and a general optimism
concerning both humanity’s potential for good and the importance of the
individual.41

In summary, “populism” refers to a conviction of the constant

repression of the common man and a need to reverse the order and
hierarchy, as well as to a strong belief in hope, optimism, strength of
community and social values, and the “second chance” that everyone
should be given.42
The term “populism” frequently goes hand in hand with another one:
namely “fantasy of good will”. The term has emerged from the same
tradition and is usually used in reference to a quasi-realistic setting of most
of the populist movies. As Gehring argues, the populist fantasy “becomes
more palatable to an audience no longer required to believe realistically in
the traditional dichotomy of good and evil at the heart of populism. This is
because fantasy is based on a complete suspension of disbelief. One never
stops to ask: ‘Is this possible?’ when witches fly in The Wizard of Oz
(1939).”43 Good will is obviously connected with most of the main features
of populism: naiveté, and optimistic ‘feel-good’ endings.
It has been largely agreed upon that Frank Capra (whose case will be
discussed later on) can be considered “the archetypal author of the populist
film comedy.”44 The populist character cannot be discussed without
mentioning the name of American famous cracker-barrel philosopher,
actor, writer and a statesman, Will Rogers (1879-1935). Rogers (among
others) was one of the favourites of the director John Ford. In the early
1930s he was a top box-office star–a portrait of a “proper” righteous
American and a man of reason and simple-life wisdom. Rogers was also

41
Gehring, Populism And The Capra Legacy, 1.
42
See Gehring, Populism And The Capra Legacy, 113.
43
Gehring, Populism And The Capra Legacy, 15.
44
Gehring, Populism And The Capra Legacy, 2.
52 Chapter Two

treasured as a spokesman and journalist and was even considered as a

presidential candidate. In his article concerning Ford’s Judge Priest (1934)
Gilberto Perez discusses Rogers’s status as follows: “Many people
identified themselves with him. Or he identified himself with them: he was
popular as a populist, homespun and down-to-earth, a figure of the
common man speaking common sense.”45
That Will Rogers is still alive in the consciousness of American society
is hardly surprising. Both his film characters as well as his real life attitude
prove the thesis that it is possible to be a genuine populist and that
populism as such does not have to be merely a “fantasy of good will,” but
it can be truly implemented into reality. Rogers’s words: “It’s great to be
great, but it’s greater to be human”46 can serve as a summing up of what
we call populism.
Will Rogers can be treated as an archetypal cracker-barrel populist
hero. Such a character, according to Gehring, is characterized by five
crucial elements: “political involvement, rural or small-town residency,
employment, capability [to deal with any situation], and fatherly
leadership.”47 Rogers seems to fit every single point of the above pattern.
As we will have a chance to see later, the younger version of the archetype
will become altered to some degree, usually by means of involvement in
some love affair.
Thus, the populist protagonist still remains a comic type getting into
all sorts of troubles and frequently (if he is young enough) being
enchanted by some female beauty. In the first place, however, he is a
figure representing a “common man” fighting for his rights and reflecting
his needs.
Such a character is, in a way, a mixture of both previously mentioned
comic sub-genres. He bears some features of a screwball hero: every now
and then he tends to behave slightly immature and childlike, he is often
dominated or at least assisted by some energetic woman, and he happens
to act in a zany and unconventional way. It cannot be denied that a
populist protagonist also remains in possession of some romantic features:
he is sentimental and caring and, moreover, he is usually a Quixotic type
ready to face and fight every difficulty, alone if need be, in the name of
ideals and common good.
Populist comedy is likely the most moralistic of the three discussed

45
Gilberto Perez, “Saying 'Ain't' And Playing 'Dixie': Rhetoric and Comedy In
Judge Priest”, Raritan, Vol. 23, No. 4, (2004), 48.
46
Will Rogers quoted at Will Rogers Memorial Museums, online on January 16,
2013 at : http://www.willrogers.com/says/will_says.html.
47
Gehring, Populism And The Capra Legacy, 4.
 Comedy and Romance in Literature and Film 53

types. The concept of traditional social attitudes’ reversal reflects

increasing disappointment and criticism towards class division and general
social injustice. On the other hand, the movies’ happy endings can be read
as the manifestations of optimism and hope promising the improvement
and revitalization of society. It is hard to deny that the populist hero
mirrors the virtually universal longing of men for an ultimate “heavenly
banquet” down here on earth, and therefore a figure appealing to audiences
through his passionate faith in the ideals and overall goodness of human
nature.

Audience Response: Emotions, Laughter, Morals

Cinema, like literature, and in fact any sort of artistic expression, is
built as a relationship between an artist and a viewer. The audience is an
inseparable and essential element of the cinematic realm. Therefore, this
section of the chapter will be devoted to the notion of the audience,
together with the whole variety of issues the term covers, namely:
emotions, laughter, and morals.

Emotions
Many attempts to understand, to name, and to define the term
“emotion” have been made. One of the ancient theories belongs to Plato
who, in his Republic, presented the arguments against dramatic art.
According to the philosopher, drama addresses the emotions of spectators,
from which arises the danger of undermining the rule of reason in an
individual, as emotions are irrational.48 Furthermore, if emotions constitute
a threat to reason, they are also a threat to the whole community. Having
proposed the above thesis, Plato perceived dramatic art as a perilous tool
that encourages identification with the characters of the play promoting
emotions like fear, pity and anxiety. The identification of such emotions
could easily deny the importance of reason and stimulate emotional
dispositions, which Plato considered unhealthy.49
Still, to this day, critics who might be called neo-Platonists argue for
the need of, as Noël Carroll states, “censoring mass art”50 in the struggle to
elevate reason over emotion. However, contemporary psychology tends to

48
See Noël Carroll, A Philosophy Of Mass Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998),
250.
49
Carroll, A Philosophy Of Mass Art, 251.
50
Carroll, A Philosophy Of Mass Art, 250.
54 Chapter Two

challenge Plato’s assumptions of treating emotions as irrational. The so-

called cognitive theory of emotions not only suggests that reason and
emotions are not opposed, but also that reason is a constituent element of
emotions. Carroll suggests further that there are at least two components
constituting emotion. These are a cognitive component (i.e. a belief or
thought about the person, situation, or place based on some knowledge we
possess), and a feeling component (a bodily change and/or
phenomenological experience). Both of the components correlate with
each other (i.e. the feeling state is triggered by the cognitive state). The
resulting conclusion of the above theory becomes a direct contradiction to
Plato’s notion, since “if reason/cognition is a constituent of an emotion,
then an emotion cannot be the antithesis of reason/cognition.”51 Emotions,
Carroll maintains, are necessarily governed by reason.52
One of the key areas that touches upon the problem of emotion in
cinema is that of the viewer's identification with the characters.
Contemporary criticisms also provide us with a modern interpretation of
the theory of identification. The concern about the harmful influence of
emotional identification with the characters of the drama, however, has
been transferred to similar cinematic situations, and the phenomenon of
identification is now blamed for “encourag[ing] audiences to take on
particular anti-social emotions […].”53
In response to theory of identification, Carroll suggests another view.
He argues that, in fact, it is hardly possible to identify emotionally with
the protagonists by literally taking on their emotions. We can be happy (or
unhappy) because of the outcome of events the characters are involved
into, but

we are happy in a way similar to onlookers or observers, not participants.

Our emotions do not duplicate theirs, although our recognition of what
their emotions are […] are ingredients in our rather different (not identical)
emotional states.54

To sum up, the term “emotion” can be considered on a number of

different levels. As Carroll indicates:

Certain phenomena, such as fear, anger, patriotism, horror, admiration,

sorrow, indignation, pity, envy, jealousy, reverence, awe, hatred, love,
anxiety, shame, embarrassment, humiliation, comic amusement, and so on,

51
Carroll, A Philosophy Of Mass Art, 254.
52
Carroll, A Philosophy Of Mass Art, 255.
53
Carroll, A Philosophy Of Mass Art, 260.
54
Carroll, A Philosophy Of Mass Art, 260.
 Comedy and Romance in Literature and Film 55

are paradigms of what counts as emotion in ordinary language.55

Searching for a definition, however, we can state along with existing

theories, that “emotion” consists of several inseparable constituents,
namely somatic experiences, our beliefs and thoughts, as well as appraisal
of events.56
We might further wonder what is it that makes the emotions play such
a vital role in cinema. Carroll offers a suggestion that emotions keep us
focused on the action and plot of a story, organize our attention upon the
characters, as well as organize our perception of the events throughout the
whole movie. In other words, the emotions are frequently used by
filmmakers as a tool that helps to manage the audience’s attention.57
Following such a line of thinking, we come to the conclusion that
emotions can be directed. Alfred Hitchcock, in a conversation with
Francois Truffaut, proceeds even further by talking about directing the
viewers.58
Thus, we have come to the point when another crucial item should be
given attention, namely the audience and its role in cinema. While
Hitchcock was playing with his audience, Frank Capra understood the
audience’s importance in a different way. As Capra stated in his biography,
he made the movies about people and for people (i.e. the audience).59
Therefore, his filmmaking process frequently turned out to be a dialogue
between the director and his audience. Such an approach was especially
transparent in the case of filming Capra’s Meet John Doe, where in search
of the audience’s positive response, five different endings were created.
Richard J. Gerrig and Deborah A. Prentice argue that “viewing means
participating.”60 However, the statement only pertains to the psychological
and emotional aspects of “participation”. Capra offered his audience
participation in a much broader sense. It was no longer passive
participation alone, but the possibility to identify with the artist.
As I have already stated, Frank Capra, a widely recognized populist

55
Noël Carroll, “Film, Emotion, And Genre”, Passionate Views: Film, Cognition,
And Emotion, (ed.) Carl Plantiga and Greg M. Smith (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1999), 22.
56
Noël Carroll, Filozofia Horroru (GdaĔsk: Sáowo/obraz terytoria), 2004.
57
See Carroll, A Philosophy Of Mass Art, 249, 269.
58
See Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, translated by Tadeusz Lubelski
(Izabelin: ĝwiat Literacki, 2005), 256.
59
See Capra, The Name Above The Title, 305.
60
Richard J. Gerrig and Deborah A. Prentice, “Notes On Audience Response”, in
Post-Theory. Reconstructing Film Studies, David Bordwell and Noël Carroll (ed.),
(Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 402.
56 Chapter Two

and humanist, treated such a cooperation as natural and the simplest way
to appeal to the viewers. His comedies could thus be the direct answer to
people’s needs and preferences, which still can be considered as valid and
current. Mary P. Nichols's claim that it is hope that popular audiences
demand and her defence of popular culture in a broader sense61 provide us
with an argument in favour of Capra's approach towards his audience.
Another element that Capra recognized as a vital component of his
cinematic dialogue with the audience was laughter, which will be the focus
of the next sub-section of this chapter.

Laughter
Emotions, the audience, and laughter are closely connected to each
other. For Capra, evoking laughter was a major goal of comedy, so we will
discuss it at length. In The Name above the Title, Capra reflects on the
mystery of laughter. He asks the question:

What is laughter? … [T]his sudden, explosive, salutary, almost involuntary

release of happy energy? … [T]his rippling, guttural, inarticulate cry of joy
only humans utter and understand? … that dissolves hate, heals the sick,
and binds humanity together in a common fellowship only humans can
join?62

The above quotation is a clear confirmation of Capra’s humanistic

approach. It also traces the echoes of Aristotle’s theory that human beings
are the only creatures that laugh.63 In an attempt to answer the question,
Capra suggests that elements like memory, historical sense, as well as a
vision of reality can be an answer. Having a certain picture of what things
should be like, we laugh when they are different. However, such an
explanation seems not to be enough, since “we smile and laugh at birds,
weddings, young people in love, harvest festivals, and many other normal
events that are as they should be.”64 One more important aspect of
laughter, according to Capra, is its fragility and the fact that by its nature it
cannot be forced into being. To be evoked, laughter requires some kind of

61
See Nichols, “A Defence Of Popular Culture”, 76.
62
Capra, The Name Above The Title, 453.
63
See Atistotle, De Partibus Animalium, online on January 16, 2013 at:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/AriPaan.html, book III, chapter 10.
Capra mentions the fact in connection to the thesis that man is also the only
creature who has a soul. He further wonders whether these two components are
related to each other. See Capra, The Name Above The Title, 453.
64
Capra, The Name Above The Title, 454.
 Comedy and Romance in Literature and Film 57

a trigger in the form of “something pleasant, comic or witty.”65 Finally, he

concludes his reflection with the statement that “laughter is the most
pleasantly mysterious component of a much greater mystery–the human
psyche.”66
Capra’s theory is the contemporary view upon the matter. Throughout
the ages, however, the phenomenon of laughter was a subject of numerous
discussions on the field of many branches of science and philosophy. The
earliest attempts to define the essence of both laughter and happiness date
from the times of ancient Greece. While Socrates (469-399 B.C.)
considered “virtue” the ultimate aim of a man, Aristotle presented a
slightly different opinion indicating that the highest good is not virtue but
happiness.67
The attitudes toward “laughter” kept changing together with changing
tendencies of the epochs. Although happiness itself was held in high
esteem (in accordance with the ethics of eudaimonism), early Christian
thinkers perceived laughter with ambivalence. The Church understood
joyfulness as levity, lack of self-control, sexual immorality, and a “vulgar
eruption of the body that contained the indecent excess of paganism and
was impudent.”68 Therefore, early Christians were called upon to restrain
laughter and to rely on the vision of monastic silence as the proper manner
of behaviour on the path leading towards salvation.
The pattern obviously refers to the fact that the Scripture does not
indicate any situation in which Jesus laughs. Instead, it provides us with
Hebrew verses defining proper Christian conduct unquestionably:

The house of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is
in the house of mirth. It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a
man to hear the song of fools. For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so
is the laughter of the fool: this also is vanity.” (Ecc.7, 4-6).69

It is not until the medieval period that we can trace the attempts of
reconciling religion with laughter. The medieval distinction between good
and bad laughter must be stressed, however. In many morality plays
(characteristic for the period), bad laughter is to be attributed to human
ignorance and folly, and “hell”, in more general terms, while good

65
Capra, The Name Above The Title, 454.
66
Capra, The Name Above The Title, 454.
67
See Wáadysáaw Tatarkiewicz, Historia filozofii, vol. 1, (Warszawa: PaĔstwowe
Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1970), 60-108.
68
Andrew Stott, Comedy: The New Critical Idiom (London: Routledge, 2005),
128.
69
Ecclesiastes 7, 4-6 quoted in Stott, Comedy, 128.
58 Chapter Two

laughter brings to one’s mind associations with chastity, piety, and the
religious virtues of St Francis of Assisi. Thus, Stott argues that “medieval
laughter was part of creation”70 and that it can be understood as
metaphysical.
Another aspect responsible for changing attitudes towards laughter
was the development of medicine, as well as philosophy. Surprisingly,
both branches stressed the importance of cultivation of a sense of humour
in order to maintain a healthy balance of both body and mind.71
The sixteenth century provided us with another perspective of the
understanding of a human being and, consequently, the nature of laughter.
In the writings of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, we find the
notion that it is the recognition of one’s superiority towards others that
evokes laughter. It can be treated then as a tool serving to form a hierarchy
in a society. As Hobbes states: “Laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory
arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by
comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.”72
Therefore, human nature is defined here as slightly malicious and not
devoid of evil propensities. Such an explanation of laughter brings us to
further rumination over the matter of morality and, as a result, the
phenomenon of laughter tends to appear suspicious and therefore,
discarded as morally wrong.
In the eighteenth century, however, the attempts to change the
perception of laughter as immoral have their origins. The contemporary
“incongruity theory” (supported, among others, by Schopenhauer and
Kant) suggests a definition stating that inconsistent and incongruous
elements of circumstances arouse laughter. Thus, eighteenth century
humour would be based on a juxtaposition of opposites, as well as on
linguistic jokes, altogether forming the definition of the most characteristic
device for the period of “wit”. Laughter no longer tends to be associated
with immorality based on social inequality but with incongruity of
circumstances, the clever use of language, and altogether with the ability
to laugh for sheer pleasure, devoid of any ill-natured connotations.
The nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century bring us the
works of the philosopher Herbert Spencer and psychiatrist Sigmund Freud.
Spencer sought for connections of laughter to purely physiological
motives, while Freud joined Spencer’s theory to his own concept of the
“unconscious”. The thesis known as “relief theory” treats laughter as “a
symptom of division and struggle within the self, recognition […] of

70
Stott, Comedy, 130.
71
See Stott, Comedy, 131.
72
Thomas Hobbes, Human Nature quoted in Stott, Comedy, 133.
 Comedy and Romance in Literature and Film 59

incongruous selfhood.”73 The relief theory further indicates the reasons for
sense of humour subjectivity, since appealing to a variety of unconscious
experiences and ideas; it recognizes impulses which are individual for
everyone. The next important point of Freud’s theory is the explanation of
a demand for jokes as the means of public expression of one’s views on a
taboo subject. The situation creates the need for a division of jokes into
“innocent” and “tendentious”. An “innocent joke” would be the one close
to the eighteenth century understanding of the notion of “wit” since,
according to Freud’s definition, it would be a linguistic pun. A
“tendentious joke”, for a change, would be one intending to express
aggressiveness, satire, or self defence (a hostile joke), or to expose
someone (an obscene joke).74 The jokes in such situations would be the
only acceptable way of self-expression; subsequently, laughter could be
treated as a purely physical sign of subconscious relief.
The twentieth century offers a wide variety of different arguments
attempting to specify the actual nature of laughter and its contemporary
meaning. Among them there is a poststructuralist attempt to define
laughter as an attempt to express cognition of what is beyond, or outside
linguistic boundaries. For some of the deconstructionists, laughter was a
way to express what cannot be expressed by means of language which, by
its nature, is not fully meaningful anyway. Thus, laughter would be treated
here as an extra-linguistic device.75
In our search for an historical explanation of the notion of laughter we
encounter a wide variety of theories. Among others, we find one made by
the Marxist critics Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. The critics
undertake a problem of mass culture and its powerful weapons of
manipulation like cinema. The movies, according to them, offer false
satisfaction and life which is viewed instead of being experienced. Stott
presents the following interpretation of the above thesis:

The laughter of the culture industry is therefore a kind of infantilized false

consciousness, attached to images in films that allude to the gratification of
desires, such as kissing or the possibility of sexual intercourse. […]
Laughter is offered instead of satisfaction.76

Such a statement is a contradiction to the formerly mentioned Capra’s

understanding of laughter and emotion (and could be categorised as part of

73
Stott, Comedy, 138.
74
See Stott, Comedy, 139.
75
Stott, Comedy, 142.
76
Stott, Comedy, 144.
60 Chapter Two

the Platonic turn Carroll describes), the role of the viewer and, in a broader
perspective, cinema in general. By no means does cinema constitute a
substitution for experience. For Capra, the filmmaking process involves
the mutual cooperation of an artist and the audience: “Comedy is good
news. […] it is fulfilment, accomplishment, overcoming. It is victory over
odds, a triumph of good over evil.”77 Finally, laughter, the result of
positive emotion, is an outburst of happy energy. Thus, cinema is not only
the promise of experience but actual experiencing. The emotions the
audience encounter while viewing a movie aim at causing the viewer’s
catharsis and, in consequence, drawing a moral lesson.78 Similarly, Carroll
argues that it is not immaterial what evokes emotions in a viewer, i.e., the
moral aspect of comedy is an important issue.

Morals
The fundamental question at the basis of mortality according to
Socrates is that of how to live. Aristotle added to this the important
concern of how do we live well, which he felt was the important issue at
the base of the “good life”. We can add that, in order to establish one’s set
of morals, an essential component is to discover and define one’s identity.
According to Charles Taylor, the item is not merely the question of
providing the self with a genealogy or name but rather stating which ethics
are of vital importance to someone. In Sources of the Self, Taylor offers the
following explanation to this idea:

To know who I am is a species of knowing where I stand. My identity is

defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or
horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good,
or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other
words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand.79

These are the horizons, then, which provide meaning to various things,
events and experiences and which, moreover, allow us to differentiate
between good actions and bad ones within their framework. Consequently,
the lack of such a framework or horizon may cause an “identity crisis”,

77
Capra, The Name Above The Title, 453.
78
In the sixth chapter of Poetics Aristotle presents similar view upon the aim of
dramatic form in which through pity and fear the viewer undergoes catharsis. The
whole experience is similarly aimed at drawing a moral.
79
Charles Taylor, Sources Of The Self: The Making Of The Modern Identity
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 27.
 Comedy and Romance in Literature and Film 61

i.e. as Taylor defines it: “an acute form of disorientation which people
often express in terms of not knowing who they are, but which can also be
seen as a radical uncertainty of where they stand.”80
The above thesis concludes that only after we define our identity are
we able to specify our moral code. A declaration of our moral code,
nevertheless, is only one step towards proving the genuineness of the
morals we choose for ourselves. The authenticity of our choice is put to
continuous test in the course of life and, therefore, our task is to persist in
once chosen ideals in lieu of numerous temptations of conformist reality.81
The problem of identity-defining one’s morals-as well as proving its
authenticity is a frequent subject of populist comedies. These three
correlated items bring to mind another crucial populist issue, namely the
question of the “common good”.
The notion of “common good” has been recently given a good deal of
attention and numerous attempts to explain the actual meaning and
evaluation of it have been undertaken. Robert N. Bellah in his essay
“Religion and the Shape of National Culture”, recalls the words of Pope
John Paul II who defined the term as “the good of all and of each
individual”, and emphasized the importance of solidarity: “a firm and
preserving determination to commit oneself to the common good.”82
Further in the article, Bellah looks for the answer to the question why the
idea of common good seems to be mainly Catholic-related and why it is
not easy to grasp for Protestants. Andrew Greeley seeks the explanation in
the theory that it is natural for a Catholic to determine his/her place in
society because he sees society as God’s sacrament, i.e. “a set of ordered
relationships, governed by both justice and love, that reveal […] the
presence of God. Society is 'natural' and 'good,' therefore, for humans and
their 'natural' response to God is social.”83 On the other hand, society for
the Protestant is

God-forsaken and therefore unnatural and oppressive. The individual

stands over against society and not integrated into it. The human becomes
fully human only when he is able to break away from social oppression
and relate to the absent God as a completely free individual.84

80
Taylor, Sources Of The Self, 27.
81
Charles Taylor, Etyka autentycznoĞci (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 1996), 57.
82
John Paul II quoted in Bellah, “Religion And The Shape Of National Culture,”
America, vol. 181, no. 3, (1999), 9.
83
Andrew Greeley quoted in Bellah, “Religion And The Shape Of National
Culture,” 10.
84
Greeley quoted in Bellah, “Religion And The Shape Of National Culture,” 10.
62 Chapter Two

This thesis, Bellah states, is however a bit too categorical since it

ignores historical evidence of the protestant capacity for forming
communities.85 Greeley’s opinion is also contradicted by the fact of ever
.

growing utilitarian and expressive individualism which is “something very

deep, very genuine, very old, very American.”86 Thus, Bellah suggests that
the cultural codes present in American society originate from the mixture
of the Protestant and Catholic set of values and determinants and, as such,
are complimentary. Catholic sacraments, he claims, “pull us into an
embodied world of relationships and connections […] rather than a world
in which individuals attempt to escape from society.”87 Yet, the
combination of those cultural codes still allows a person to maintain his
individuality.
“Common good”, “community”, and “home” are the subjects frequently
discussed by sociologists and the critics in connection to each other.
Nevertheless, the terms, although related, do not bear the same meaning
for the whole of American society. In his study concerning The Wizard of
Oz, Paul Nathanson argues that the notion of “home”, finding one’s home,
and going back home are the subjects close to the heart of every
American.88 It is not surprising historically since, as Nathanson puts it,
“the New World was 'discovered' and the United States was 'invented.'”89
Hence, he suggests, the ideas of “home” (understood as people and
landscape)90 and “quest” are strongly rooted in American culture and thus
American specific. We can find the evidence of this thesis in many cinema
classics. While Gone with the Wind (1939) highlights the value of
(home)land,91 Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) celebrates home and staying at
home.92 Probably the most direct proof is delivered in the concluding
scene of The Wizard of Oz in which the main protagonist, having returned
after a long journey, utters: “There’s no place like home!”93
“Community”, on the other hand, tends to be considered the dominant
concern of Catholic-related minorities. In The Catholic Imagination
Greeley discusses the subject on base of the movies of Italian American

85
Bellah, “Religion And The Shape Of National Culture,” 10.
86
Bellah, “Religion And The Shape Of National Culture,” 10.
87
Bellah, “Religion And The Shape Of National Culture,” 13.
88
See Paul Nathanson, Over the Rainbow. The Wizard Of Oz As A Secular Myth Of
America (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 55-104.
89
Nathanson, Over The Rainbow, 114.
90
Nathanson, Over The Rainbow, 115.
91
See Nathanson, Over The Rainbow, 143-144.
92
See Nathanson, Over The Rainbow, 55.
93
See Nathanson, Over The Rainbow, 139.
 Comedy and Romance in Literature and Film 63

directors. “Most Italian American films,” he states, “are about an intense

family life, intricate extended family relations, and a close-knit
neighbourhood community.”94 The statement happens to be thoroughly
appropriate in the case of Frank Capra (a cultural Catholic himself).
Indeed, in the most general of terms, as I shall discuss more precisely
further in this book, the issues of family, neighbourhood, and local
community can be considered the most frequent thematic motives of the
filmmaker.
All the above-mentioned aspects of American culture (common good,
community, home, searching for one’s identity) add together to form a
background to what I earlier defined as “populism”. Both literature
throughout the ages, as well as cinema, have provided us with a variety of
examples of populist characters acting on behalf of the community they
belong to. These protagonists fight for the honour and ideals they believe
in, and are ready to sacrifice their own personal happiness or even life in
the name of a common good.95 It is obviously a moral choice that drives
the main heroes’ actions and their strong belief in propriety of it.
Interestingly, the problems discussed in the most representative movies
of the populist genre, although dating back to 1930s, appear to still be
appreciated by the contemporary audience. In the light of all the above-
mentioned arguments, the answer to the question why should not be
surprising. Bellah’s arguments concerning the state of American society
indicates its currency. Even if we disregard his analysis, despite all the
political, economical, and social changes that are a natural outcome of the
passage of time, with all certainty we can indicate some values which
remain profoundly evocative. The ideal of willingness to help others,
treasuring the plain joy of life, and longing for happiness form the
everyday concerns of an everyman. Therefore, it seems to be the thematic
universality of the populist movies, as well as their optimistic message,
that makes the twenty-first century viewer want to reach out to them and
to treat their morals as contemporarily valid or at least as a corrective to
the radical individualism present in American society that Bellah claims is
destructive of its sense of the common good.
Probably the same reasons can be applied to Frank Capra and the
explanation of his movies’ relevance today. The heartwarming message
beaming from them usually promotes a common man engaged in a
constant struggle for the common good, and celebrates the triumph of the

94
Andrew Greeley, The Catholic Imagination (Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 2001), 112.
95
See Wystan H. Auden, “The Quest Hero” Tolkien And The Critics, (ed.) N. D.
Isaacs, R. A. Zimbardo (London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968).
64 Chapter Two

joy of life comprised of simple truth, need for romance, and a never-
ending longing for ideals, which, among others, will be the subject of my
analysis in the subsequent parts of this book.96
The following chapters will be devoted to the films of Frank Capra
representing the three Murphy Dante-based categories of paradisal,
purgatorial, and infernal comedies. My aim will be to indicate the
presence of Frye's romantic mode within all of the chosen Capra's movies
and to provide the arguments in favour of the thesis that they can be
considered to constitute the examples of the genre of romance.

96
These values are likewise central to contemporary positive psychology discussed
earlier.
 CHAPTER THREE

FROM INNOCENCE TO EXPERIENCE:

INNOCENCE

The Paradisal Level

In the previous chapter I presented several perspectives from which the
subject of comedy and romance can be viewed. I indicated that the subject
is a complex one and recalled some important concepts concerning the
matter. This chapter will be devoted entirely to Frank Capra and his
contribution to the realm of romance in cinematic comedy. Following the
previously discussed Francesca Aran Murphy’s theory based on Dante’s
division of the comic world, the subsequent two chapters of the book will
be devoted to the categories of innocence and experience respectively.
Thus, Capra’s movies will be grouped into two groups of comedies: the
first one reflecting Dante’s paradisal level (the stage of innocence), and the
second one devoted to the combined level of purgatorial and infernal
comedy (the stage of experience). I have chosen to interpret such a
division in terms of a natural parallelism and correlation between paradise
and childhood innocence; purgatory and the process of gaining experience,
i.e. entering adulthood; and finally, between inferno and the state of being
experienced, and thus facing ultimate questions. However, it is essential to
note that all Capra’s comedies which are going to be discussed in this book
include the crucial element of the main characters’ rebirth, regardless of
which comic category they belong to. Therefore, in these I am going to
reverse the order of Dante’s original journey since, contrary to Dante, who
travelled in search of God, my journey throughout the realm of Capra’s
cinematic universe is in search of man who is born as an innocent child
and later on the experience he gains, despite numerous doubts and
downfalls, helps him to establish his humanity and finally leads him to
become reborn to life again. Hence, what we experience here is the full
circle beginning and ending on a paradisal level, which will be dealt with
in the final section. Such a categorization allows us to examine the stages
66 Chapter Three

of development of both of the characters throughout the stories, as well as

Capra’s directorial vision of the filmic universe in a social and historical
context. In this chapter I aim not only to justify the choice of such a
device, but also to indicate the presence of strong romantic mode elements
in all of the discussed categories despite any outside changes which might
have been of influence.

Lady For A Day (1933) and You Can’t Take It With You (1938)
Dante’s vision of paradise is a romantic one in which the tangible
senses cease to be of the essence. It is an immaterial picture blurred with
colours and sounds where the notions of ideals, emotions, and feelings
reign.1 Therefore, paradisal comedy is bound to bear similar features.
According to Murphy, the mood is going to be light, the troubles minor or
nonexistent, and the innocent characters are going to achieve their aims
with little effort. Another vital point of paradisal comedy, i.e. full comedy,
is rebirth. Since paradisal comedy is a visionary one, it is only through the
constant projection of a dream that the accomplishment of such mundus
imaginalis is possible. Hence, it seems that a persistence and faithfulness
in fulfilling one’s dream is the driving force of the paradisal level of
comedy. The Frank Capra films selected for this section can serve as the
examples of the paradisal mode of comedy so let us examine each of them
closer.
Lady For A Day (1933)2 is based on Damon Runyon’s short story
Madame La Gimp (1929). The central character, Apple Annie (May
Robson), is an old shabby beggar selling apples on the streets of New York
as her means of support. Her most faithful customer, Dave the Dude
(Warren William), is a petty crook who never makes any important
decision until he has bought his good luck apple from Annie. The main
plot begins with the disclosure of the existence of Annie’s illegitimate
daughter who as a child was sent to Europe to be educated. All her life
Louise (Jean Parker) has been convinced she was the daughter of a grand
society dame, Mrs. E. Worthington Manville, the identity of whom Annie
managed to maintain by means of sending letters written on stolen hotel
stationary. However, when Louise announces the news about her
engagement to a Spanish aristocrat and her plan to pay a visit to New York

1
See Dante Alighieri, Boska komedia (Warszawa: Ludowa Spóádzielnia
Wydawnicza, 1992).
2
Lady For A Day was nominated for Oscars by the Academy in four categories:
Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay Adaptation,
however, the movie did not win any of the awards.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 67

together with her fiancé as well as her future father-in-law, Apple Annie
sinks into despair, realizing that the whole fiction is about to crash and the
happiness of her only child is bound to be ruined. At this point Annie is
forced to gamble with her fate and try to turn the fairy story she has
invented for the sake of her daughter into reality.
The trick becomes possible with the help of Dave the Dude who,
deprived of Annie’s lucky apples, refuses to run his business deals and
prefers to get involved in Annie’s charade rather than to lose her
“support”. Thus, after numerous comic obstacles, the double Cinderella
motive becomes successful and the dreams of both female characters come
true. Louise gets full approval and parental blessing from her fiancé's
father, and Apple Annie is transformed into a lady (even if it is only for a
day) and helps her daughter to marry the man she loves, regardless of her
lower social status. According to Ray Carney, Lady For A Day is “one of
Capra’s happiest and most high-spirited achievements, a song of praise to
the power of human imagination at work.”3 Indeed, the movie is a
visionary comedy. As soon as we learn the story of Louise and the dream
world which her mother has created for her, we are provided with the
proof of the above thesis. Thanks to her motherly affection, Annie
manages to project her dream of her daughter’s life so skilfully that, in the
end, it becomes reality. Not only does Louise gain an education which
would normally be far beyond her reach, but she also succeeds in making
the upward movement into high society by means of her marriage. Such a
scenario set in the dim reality of the Depression era can only be possible in
a fairy tale. And clearly the story, as I have already mentioned, is an
American version of Cinderella, where a beggar's daughter (even though
she is unaware of the fact of her mother’s poverty) marries a count, an heir
to a vast family fortune. Moreover, despite some of the initial difficulties
concerning the bride’s mother's “life style”, everything is solved fairly
easy and all the obstacles, no matter how serious, are overcome almost
miraculously. With help of–in this case–a fairy god-father incarnated in
Dave the Dude, Apple Annie undergoes a transformation from a street
beggar to the respectable Mrs. E. Worthington Manville. Moreover,
although, to say the least, it is not the sort of thing to happen in the real
world, the fact does not astonish the viewer of this romantic tale at all.4
The story unfolds in a light and happy mood regardless of the gloomy
social and political circumstances of the period. The portrayal of Annie’s
New York street friends is rather neutral and devoid of commentary

3
Carney, American Vision, 73.
4
Joseph McBride calls the story the “Pygmalion for the Depression Era,” see his
Frank Capra, 298.
68 Chapter Three

concerning their social situation. The milieu of the beggars as well as their
various occupations are presented rather as one of the possible ways of
earning a living in a big city. A dark subject of social inequality like this
could easily become a good starting point to convey explicit political
criticism (although the class contrast has been visualized in the movie);
however, dealing with this side of matters in a fairy tale would be
counterproductive. The beggars in Lady For A Day are well organized, self
confident, and ready to protect their friends (as they were ready to protect
Annie when she found herself in trouble). They form one more social
group which serves as the background for the story in the movie.
Another significant element which definitely helps us to classify Lady
for a Day as the paradisal comedy is the lack of a villain. Although it is not
the first thing to be noticed while watching the movie, once you have
realized the fact it turns out to be quite surprising, since the existence of an
archetypal hero automatically evokes the need to expect the presence of a
villain as a counterbalance. Even the original Cinderella has a wicked
stepmother and two bad stepsisters. However, the visionary universe of
Lady For A Day is different. There is no place for villains here (although
there is a threat of failure). Actually, all the characters of Lady For A Day
are shown positively, whatever their social and financial status. The rich
European aristocrat count Romero's (Guy Kibbee) intentions to check his
future daughter-in-law’s family background are driven by the fatherly
concern about his son’s happiness; Dave the Dude, although a crook and a
swindler, is ready to risk being caught by the police and perhaps going to
jail in order to help the old beggar; the street beggars, Annie’s friends, also
seem to be content with their lives; and finally the police and the cream of
New York high society, having learnt about Annie’s troubles and the whole
carefully planned charade, willingly decide to join in. There is no need to
mention the young couple, Louise and her fiancé, who are so deeply in
love (just like the original Cinderella and her Prince) that they do not even
consider the possibility of being separated.
All of the above-discussed elements: a dreamlike or visionary reality,
the light mood and a fairy tale-like story, positive lively characters, and the
lack of a villain, build up a comedy of a paradisal type. Similar features
can be spotted in another Capra comedy, You Can’t Take It With You
(1938).5 The story is based on the Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman play
of the same title; however, Capra decides to alter some of the main points
as well as to shift the focus to different subjects than in the original script.

5
You Can’t Take It With You was awarded by The Academy Awards in two
categories: Best Picture, and Best Director.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 69

The setting for the story is the house of the zany screwball family of
Grandpa Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore). Each family member is an
eccentric individualist thoroughly occupied with some unique hobby and
devoting seven days a week to its pursuit. Hence: Grandpa Vanderhof
maintains a vast collection of stamps, his daughter writes theatrical plays
and experiments with painting pictures, her husband spends most of the
time producing fireworks, their younger daughter practices ballet dancing
around the house while her husband plays some musical instruments, and
the other daughter, Alice Sycamore (Jean Arthur) is the only one in the
house who has a job (and it is only because she wants it). The whole
family does not worry about financial matters since, according to the
philosophy of Grandpa Vanderhof, they are all lilies in the field and
Providence will take care of them anyway. Meanwhile, there are more
important matters in life like, e.g.: having friends, being good and helpful
to others, pursuing your passions, and enjoying the simple pleasures of
each and every day.
The idealized world of Grandpa Vanderhof’s family is contrasted with
the distinct universe of a big city financial tycoon, Anthony P. Kirby
(Edward Arnold). Both families are linked by two young protagonists
Alice, occupying the post of A. P. Kirby’s stenographer, and Tony Kirby
(James Stewart), who, having fallen in love with the girl, becomes the
initiator of the conflict. Tony’s plan to marry a girl from a lower social
class meets with the disapproval of his parents. Nevertheless, this turns out
to be not the only level of conflict between the families. Additionally,
Grandpa Vanderhof happens to inhabit the house scheduled to be
demolished as an element of realizing Kirby’s big munitions plant. By
means of their refusal to leave the house (even though a vast sum of
money is being offered), Vanderhof blocks the conclusion of Kirby's
profitable Wall Street deal. His family house, however, means much more
to Grandpa than just a property: it bears a strong sentimental value and
memories of his late wife, with which he does not want to part. The comic
chain of events develops further complications, including putting both
families in jail, and leads to a violent row between Alice and Tony,
eventually resulting in the couple’s splitting up. Although the gap between
the two worlds seems too broad to be crossed, after numerous turning
points and struggles, the viewer finally witnesses the surprising happy end
in which not only does the main couple become reunited, but also Kirby,
Sr., under the influence of Grandpa Vanderhof’s life philosophy, is
transformed from a cold-blooded Wall Street magnate into an
understanding father and a man of flesh and blood.
The light-hearted mood of Grandpa Vanderhof’s house as well as its
70 Chapter Three

inhabitants' constant need to pursue their passions and ideals made Frank
Capra reminisce about the movie as “the first hippy picture”.6 The
accuracy of this statement becomes clear especially in relation to the
variety of eccentric characters and the peculiar community they form
under the roof of Grandpa Vanderhof’s house. Unlike Lady For A Day, not
every character in You Can’t Take It With You can be easily classified.
Undoubtedly, all members of Grandpa Vanderhof’s family are positive
characters, and we may certainly treat young Tony as such as well. The
difficulty arises, however, in the case of Anthony P. Kirby, who in the
context of the whole story cannot be labelled a definitively negative
character. The figure of the Wall Street tycoon, who in the Caprian
universe would normally equal an utter villain, was transformed here to
another kind of a character: a “villain-hero”7 combining features of both,
and thus having a chance to become liberated from the powers of big city
evil.
The process of Mr. Kirby’s metamorphosis becomes one of the most
crucial themes in the movie and thanks to its successful accomplishment,
the final happy end is granted. Nevertheless, it would be impossible
without the influence of Grandpa Vanderhof, “the spokesman for the
Capra humanism”,8 and the young couple’s refusal to accept the
threatening social rules, as well as their strong determination to achieve
their goals. An almost miraculous turn of events brings the two families
together, the young lovers (just like Louise and count Romero in Lady For
A Day) are united in spite of coming from different social strata, the
seniors of the families discover a common passion for music and, in the
course of playing the harmonica together, turn out to be kindred spirits
after all. All previous problems disappear and the proverbial better future
is almost tangible. Once again Capra provides us with a paradisal type of a
visionary fairy tale in which no obstacle on the way to fulfillment of one’s
dreams is too big to overcome.
In the first chapter of this book I claim that modes of comedy and
romance share a number of common features. The thesis becomes even
easier to defend if we take into consideration the mode of romance and the
notion of a paradisal comedy as characterized earlier in the chapter. In fact,

6
Frank Capra quoted in Schickel, The Men Who Made The Movies, 77.
7
In his Frank Capra, Charles Maland clearly classifies A. P. Kirby as a villain and
a direct adversary of a hero, Grandpa Vanderhof (See 102). However, Capra
himself describes the character as a villain-hero (See Capra, The Name Above The
Title, 241), and many critics (e.g. L. A. Poague) choose to accept such a
classification.
8
Maland, Frank Capra, 102.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 71

most of the romantic elements enumerated by Northrop Frye9 can also be

stated to be the features of the paradisal mode of comedy. Even such a
concise characteristic of paradisal comedy as depicted above provides us
with evidence. In both cases the story (or at least a part of it) is set in an
idealized world, the heroes' actions are driven by the desire of the soul
and, therefore, the characters are provided with almost supernatural
strength, bravery, and chastity; the heroines are pure, beautiful and
goddess-like damsels. Other elements that frequently occur in both modes
are numerous adventures and quests leading to the final confrontation
between the positive and negative character in the course of which the
hero inevitably gains victory. The world of romance (and paradisal
comedy) is ruled by love and ideals. Reality and dreams are often mixed
here creating the impression of a fairy tale. This description is adequate in
the case of Lady For A Day and You Can't Take It With You since both of
the movies can be classified as paradisal romantic comedies.
At first glance, the setting of Lady For A Day and You Can't Take It
With You does not promise much of a fairy tale. The initial scenes offer the
viewer the fuss and noise of the big metropolis. Lady For A Day
introduces us to a busy street of New York and right away visually depicts
the social contrast between the high society enjoying the night life and the
milieu of the beggars trying to earn their living on the streets. Similarly,
the action of You Can't Take It With You also takes place in New York and
the starting scene introduces the viewer to the equally busy Wall Street and
the business world: the daily bread of A. P. Kirby. In these cold and
unfriendly settings we meet the protagonists. Apple Annie attempts to
make ends meet by means of selling apples (with not much luck that
evening), Mr. Kirby hurries into his office with his head full of the grand
deal he plans to accomplish; Tony, who has lately been appointed a vice
president of his father's company, does not seem particularly happy about
his position (in fact he seems bored). Capra also offers the viewer the
chance to see Grandpa Vanderhof in similar surroundings. It is in one of
these busy offices that we see Vanderhof for the first time and it becomes
instantly clear that the man does not belong there. Unlike others in the
office, he is not in a hurry, he looks relaxed and at ease, and the moment
he speaks we learn the doctrines of Vanderhof's philosophy of life which,
in the harsh world of business and finance, must sound preposterous and
childish. Strictly speaking, it is not easy to spot any trace of a fairy tale in
such a world. Nevertheless, as the movies unfold, Capra allows his

9
Northrop Frye's thesis concerning the mode of romance was discussed in Chapter
Two.
72 Chapter Three

characters to be shifted into another reality: the reality Apple Annie

conjured up for the sake of her daughter, and the Walt Disney reality of
Grandpa Vanderhof's house. In this fairy tale setting Annie is no longer a
street beggar but a respectable dame whose daughter marries a young
aristocrat. In You Can't Take It With You Vanderhof's house is a happy
asylum not only for the members of his family but for anyone who is tired
with the “real world” and who fancies staying there and having fun. In
both stories the main characters succeed in projecting their dreams and
visions towards people they love and care for. Both stories convey the
optimistic message that if you desire something truly good your dreams
may become reality.
Careful examination of the vast scope of characters presented in Lady
For A Day and You Can’t Take It With You helps us to find more analogies
to the world of fairy tale imagery. We may easily identify at least three
main categories of characters in both stories: the parents, the young lovers,
and the helpers. In The Anatomy Of Criticism Frye points out that, in the
world of romance, “divine or spiritual figures are usually parental, wise
old men with magical powers.”10 There are many ways to interpret the
above statement in connection to the first category of characters, the
parents. In the case of the two discussed Capra movies, the group consists
of two conventional parental figures: Apple Annie and Mr. Vanderhof.
Both characters are strong personalities who base their lives on ideals
which they consider to consist of fundamental values. Although the
characters are certainly not divine figures in the direct understanding of
the term, nevertheless they undeniably possess magical powers which
allow them to accomplish their mission of implementing a fairy tale reality
into their surroundings. It is thanks to these powers that all the miracles
can happen. Annie plays the role of a fairy godmother to Louise, helping
her to escape the hardship and social position the girl is not even aware of.
Grandpa Vanderhof is the spiritus movens of the lifestyle of his family and
friends. Moreover, Vanderhof’s kindness and wisdom have the power to
influence and change lives. This unusual ability is displayed in the first
sequence of the movie in the conversation between Grandpa and Mr.
Poppins, the office clerk, who in a mechanical style deals with checking
the figures in the documents, but secretly is an inventor “making up
things”. After a short conversation with Mr. Vanderhof, Mr. Poppins is
ready to leave his job behind, and joins the Vanderhof’s house, where he
can finally devote himself to whatever pleases him. It takes slightly longer
in the case of A. P. Kirby; nevertheless, Vanderhof’s philosophy helps him

10
Frye, The Anatomy Of Criticism, 151.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 73

to re-determine his life priorities as well. In his house Grandpa is a

shepherd of the flock which he protects with fatherly affection. He is the
wise man giving advice and helping to make the right choices. The
patriarchal role of the chief of the congregation is most explicitly
portrayed in the scenes of leading the prayers preceding the family meals.
This important moment is the time of giving thanks to Providence, as well
as the possibility to recount all the positive events the day has brought.
This is a ritual festivity symbolizing Grandpa Vanderhof’s world’s unity
and order.
Contrary to Grandpa Vanderhof, who was able to decide about the life
he wanted to lead, Apple Annie was not given such an opportunity. And
yet her low social position does not seem to diminish her ability to
influence others. As I have already pointed out, she is successful at
changing her daughter’s life into a fairy tale. This is, however, not the only
alteration she introduces into her reality. In fact, Annie’s troubles link
together quite a unique range of personalities. It is even more surprising
when we realize the unusual quantity and variety of people who get
involved into helping the case of the beggar woman they have nothing in
common with. The romanticism of Dave the Dude’s life ideology becomes
clear at the moment he refuses to make any business deal without first
buying the “lucky” apple from Annie. Dude’s decision to aid Annie in
organizing the charade is also the behaviour one could not necessarily
hope for in the “real world”. As Leland Poague notices: “through the
process of helping Annie, Dave becomes an increasingly better person,
more aware of others and more empathetic toward their needs.”11
However, this is not the end of miraculous social interactions. The
concluding reception turns to a heavenly banquet of a communal act of
good will. 12 Having heard the story of Apple Annie, the high society of
New York decides to join the party in order to help the woman. Not only
do they take part in the reception, but after the party is finished, count
Romero, Louise and her fiancé are collectively escorted to the ship sailing
back to Spain. Thus, Annie’s little family affair gave the nobility an
opportunity (in the best tradition of Dickens' Christmas Carol) to pay their
regards for others, to unite in an initiative to make an elderly woman
happy, and to resolve to henceforth be better people. The grand finale of
Lady For A Day echoes Frye’s concept of the comic plot. The rejuvenating
experience of disinterested help results in the recovery of the community,
which supports the idea that New York after Annie’s reception changes

11
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 222.
12
See Chapter Two.
74 Chapter Three

into “the good city”.13

The second category of characters, the young lovers, is represented by
two couples: Louise and Carlos Romero and Alice Sycamore and Tony
Kirby. In Lady For A Day, Capra decides to leave the young couple
oblivious to the fact they are the cause of the whole turmoil, and the focal
attention is shifted to the other characters, Apple Annie and Dave the
Dude. Thus, the young lovers in this case represent the values of purity,
innocence and romantic love and become an impersonation of an ideal for
the preservation of which the battle will be fought by others. Alice and
Tony, on the other hand, have to struggle for their love themselves.
According to Poague, the relationship between Alice and Tony is a
“Romeo-and-Juliet-type love affair that cuts across class barriers.”14 The
thesis is true especially in the case of the main topic concerning the
ideological split between the two families. Since Grandpa Vanderhof and
Mr. Kirby, the patriarch of the family clans, have built their lives on quite
different values, it is inevitable that both worlds will clash. The resolution
of the conflict, however, does not follow the Capulet-Montague pattern
and the young couple are finally gratified with the prospect of living
happily ever after. Nevertheless, before this can happen, the young lovers
have to undertake the quest during which the strength of their feelings will
be tested.
The plot of You Can’t Take It With You revolves around Tony who, as
Poague notes, is the central character of the movie. He stands between the
interests of Mr. Kirby, who wishes Tony to be his successor in the world of
business and one day to become a financial tycoon like his father, and the
hopes of Mr. Vanderhof’s family, who are all glad to see him as Alice’s
future husband. Thus, Tony has to choose whom he wants to be, and his
moral choice becomes the main subject of the story.15 Tony’s decisions
will have an influence upon both families.
Grandpa Vanderhof perceives Tony as Alice’s choice and is ready to
accept him into his family with an open heart. However, he needs to be
sure Tony is the proper man for his granddaughter, an heiress of the ideals
of romantic love and humane values. The opportunity of testing Tony
occurs after the Kirbys’ visit to Grandpa Vanderhof’s house during which
both families are arrested for the illegal manufacture of fireworks (the
hobby of Alice’s father). The experience at the court helps Tony

13
See Chapter Two.
14
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 48; see also Poague, Another Frank
Capra, 49; and Robert Willson, “Capra’s Comic Sense” in Frank Capra. The Man
And His Films, Glatzer and Raeburn (ed.), 91.
15
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 50.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 75

acknowledge the strength of his parents’ class prejudices impeding the

realization of his romantic plan of the reconciliation of both families.16 The
social and ideological contrast between the families is depicted, not
without irony, at the moment of organizing the defence. Very quickly Mr.
Kirby manages to organize four attorneys to represent him before the
court, while Grandpa Vanderhof chooses to defend himself and his family
on his own. Nonetheless, the Vanderhof’s clan is not left without support,
since, having learnt about the arrest, Grandpa’s numerous friends and
neighbours rushed to the court immediately (“I didn’t know anybody had
that many friends anymore,” comments the sympathetic judge). In the end,
the Vanderhof clan is fined the sum of $100 for disturbing the peace and
the illegal manufacture of fireworks. The money is raised thanks to the
collective contribution of all gathered in the court chamber, indignantly
ignoring the proposal of Mr. Kirby to finance the fine.
The judge’s inquiry about the circumstances of the two families being
mixed up together becomes the actual moment of Tony’s trial. The
fictional reason provided by Grandpa of Mr. Kirby’s intention to discuss
the purchase of the house is confirmed instantly by the Kirbys who are
anxious not to reveal the real reason, i.e. a formal introduction to their
prospective daughter-in-law’s family. Tony fails the trial by means of
remaining silent and not denying the statement, which is enough to
infuriate Alice and to make her publicly refuse to have anything more to
do with the entire Kirby clan, and to declare that Tony’s family is not good
enough for her.17 This is, nevertheless, only the beginning of the hero’s
romantic climatic struggle for the damsel. Tony might have lost the battle,
but not yet the war. The court event helps him to define the values he
really treasures and contributes to his making the final decision of leaving
his father’s business and returning to his college dream of utilizing the
energy in grass (the romantic concept per se). Tony’s choice instigates a
series of essential changes in his environment and, thus (like Apple Annie
and Grandpa Vanderhof), Tony unconsciously acquires the ability to
change others’ lives: Mr. Kirby finally realizes the importance of values
other than money and social status, Grandpa Vanderhof remains in the
house he loves so much, and the two families become reconciled. The
impossible becomes possible and the romantic hero and romantic heroine
are happily joined together.
The reality of both Lady For A Day and You Can’t Take It With You,

16
See Poague, Another Frank Capra, 53.
17
Alice, therefore, is not a Juliet Capulet type, since apart from being an object of
romantic desire, she does not hesitate to take an active part in fighting for her
ideals.
76 Chapter Three

luckily for the main protagonists, is crowded with the helpers. Owing to
the third category of characters (characteristic of the paradisal mode), the
struggles of the protagonists can be accomplished with less effort. In both
stories, families, friends, and neighbours form a certain chain of helpers. It
is Dave the Dude who has the means to provide material support in Lady
For A Day, but it is Annie’s beggar friends who start the initiative of
helping her and who inspire Dave with the idea in the first place. The
chain is lengthened by Missouri Martin (Glenda Farrell), Dude’s
girlfriend, responsible for the visual transformation of the rugged
Cinderella into Mrs. E. Worthington Manville. She is also the one who
convinces Dave to carry on with supporting Annie’s deception till the very
end. Thus, the couple contributes not only to Cinderella’s physical
transformation but also help to supply the fairy tale setting, i.e. provide the
luxurious penthouse as well as Annie’s fictional husband. As Dave the
Dude and Missouri Martin play the part of fairy godparents to Annie, so
does Annie to her daughter, Louise. It is vital to notice that both acts are
devoid of any self-interest: neither Annie nor Dave and his associate can
expect a reward greater than appreciation.18 Therefore, the need to
accomplish their goals is based thoroughly on a romantic virtuous ideal of
doing something good for its own sake.
The chain of disinterested helpers in Lady For A Day closes with high
society magnates and the local authorities who, having acknowledged the
seriousness of the matter at stake, all agree to participate in the charade.
Both groups of helpers are necessary for the fairy tale to end happily.
(Similarly, it was not enough for the original Cinderella’s fairy godmother
just to wish for the happy ending, she also needed the helpers, even if they
were only mice and pumpkins). Annie’s story ends with the rejuvenating
communal festivity, and the triumph of the fantasy of good will becomes
the ignition for inner transformation of people involved, and a promise of
a better life.
The chain of helpers is even more tightly bound in You Can’t Take It
With You. The first and most obvious helper in the movie is Grandpa.
Grandpa’s past decision to quit his profession as a businessman and to
change his life entirely (because he had no fun) has made the idyllic
atmosphere of his house possible. The zany, but kind-hearted members of
the household can thus confine themselves to their hobbies and, refusing to
live according to the conventional pattern, have a merry and enjoyable
time. Such social courage would probably seem too much of a risk if not
for Grandpa. He is thus the driving force for his house’s inhabitants, which

18
The “lucky” apple stops being the main motivation after a while.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 77

can be exemplified by the previously discussed case of Mr. Poppins. The

range of Mr. Vanderhof’s help is extended further to other people and
problems. When young Tony appears, Grandpa plays the role of the helper
on different grounds. This time the elder man helps the younger one to
specify and firmly define the real values in life, as well as to gain the
courage to defend them, which in turn helps Tony and Alice reunite after
the row in court. Tony’s self-definition provides him with the strength and
confidence to refuse to stay in the family business (which has been the
desire of his father all along, but not Tony’s). As a result, the younger
Kirby’s decision initiates the chain of events leading to essential changes
in the life of his father. A. P. Kirby, being a step from concluding a
decisive business goal he was striving to obtain for a long time, suddenly
realizes he is about to lose the precious father-and-son bond and decides to
prevent it. Thus, Grandpa Vanderhof finally provides indirect help to Mr.
Kirby by means of liberating him from the oppressive claws of capitalistic
machinery. Later on, in the final scene, Grandpa helps Mr. Kirby in a
direct way by advising him how to restore his relationship with Tony. The
somewhat eccentric idea of playing the harmonica, suggested by Grandpa
as a remedy, turns out to work and the Kirby family is reunited.
There are also other helpers in You Can’t Take It With You, namely the
neighbours. This characteristic-for-Capra’s stylistic group of people,
representing the best humane and American values, acts in the name of the
idea of “Love Thy Neighbour”.19 As with the group of the beggars in Lady
For A Day, the Vanderhof neighbours are compassionate and disinterested
in their conduct. They are always there for anyone in trouble. The court
scene and the initiative of collecting the money for the fine that the judge
orders to be paid by Grandpa’s family speaks for itself. By means of
opposing Mr. Kirby's paying off the fine, the whole community unites in
an act of protest against the power of capitalism Mr. Kirby stands for. The
conclusion of the court scene echoes the voice of the community and
constitutes Capra’s commentary on the social situation.
The subject of characters in paradisal comedies excludes the existence
of a villain. And, indeed, there is no such a character type in Lady For A
Day. The matter is complicated, however, in the case of You Can’t Take It
With You. It is certain that Mr. Kirby, Sr. cannot be treated as a model
villain. Therefore, as I have already indicated, the figure was christened by
Capra with the term of a “villain-hero” and was gifted with a complex
mixture of virtues and vices.20 At the beginning of the story the harshness

19
Capra, The Name Above The Title, 241.
20
The construction of the figure of Mr. Kirby can be compared to a well-known
literary example of Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, another villain-hero,
78 Chapter Three

and stiffness of Mr. Kirby, a thriving banker and businessman, contrasts

starkly with the warm and always-present vitality of Grandpa Vanderhof.
The two patriarchs, as Capra put it, seem to represent two different
philosophies: “Devour thy neighbour versus love thy neighbour”.21 The
statement is adequate in relation to Kirby’s business kingdom, and the
accuracy of the thesis is undeniable when we take into consideration the
desperation with which he strives to achieve control over the munitions
market (this particular deal is blocked by Grandpa’s refusal to sell his
house). The villainous portrait starts to blur, however, in the scenes
between the father and the son. In the first office scene we witness a
friendly conversation between Tony and his father, and it is hard to deny
that there is a positive potential in the character of Kirby, Sr.–the sincere
laughter, the reaction to his son’s joke about the slingshot market that he
must have forgotten to control, cannot be the sign of anything else. Thus,
Mr. Kirby aspires to be a good father. In his elaboration on the symbolism
of the family portraits placed in Mr. Kirby’s office, Poague indicates that
the father’s wish to make Tony his successor in business flows from the
hereditary imperative to pass on the legacy of his ancestors.22 The father’s
intention to hand over the values that his entire life has been built upon
cannot really be perceived in a negative light, especially if the intention is
also based on the wish to secure financial support for his son.
The trouble, however, lies in the fact that Mr. Kirby’s fatherly care
does not leave any space for Tony’s own mind. Mr. Kirby does not for a
moment wonder whether his dreams of prolonging the family banking
tradition are shared by his son as well. Furthermore, in the eyes of Mr.
Kirby, Tony’s college dream of utilizing energy from grass is considered a
mere joke. He is finally forced to listen and to reflect on Tony’s ideas
when the latter announces his resignation from the lucrative post of vice
president and the intention to leave the city. This event triggers Mr.
Kirby’s personal revelation, and at this moment he begins to realize that
the angry words of Grandpa Vanderhof uttered in a jail scene accusing him
of being a failure as a father might actually be true. Fortunately, not
everything is lost yet. Having acknowledged what the real value is in life,
with the help of Grandpa Vanderhof Mr. Kirby is offered the chance of a
new beginning.23 By the sounds of Polly Wooly Doodle performed in a

who in the course of events preceding Christmas Eve undergoes a thorough

metamorphosis from a heartless businessman to a warmhearted altruist.
21
Capra, The Name Above The Title, 241.
22
See Poague, Another Frank Capra, 57.
23
Poague suggests that the fact of Mr. Kirby’s playing the harmonica which Alice
had once given to Grandpa as a "new birth-day" present (“Anytime I get an
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 79

harmonica duet with Grandpa, Mr. Kirby becomes ritually admitted into
the community. The father regains the son’s respect and affection and the
transformation of the newly cleansed character is celebrated in a komos-
like communal musical festivity.
In The Cinema of Frank Capra Poague suggests an interesting idea of
parallelism between the characters of Grandpa Vanderhof and A. P. Kirby.
“The difference between Kirby and Grandpa Vanderhof is not that great,”24
he notes. This thesis, which contradicts any possibility of categorizing Mr.
Kirby as a villain, has its source in the author’s scrutiny of the life paths of
both characters. Grandpa Vanderhof, like Mr. Kirby, was once a
businessman and similarly suffered from gastric pains symbolizing
constant mental business-related anguish. Nonetheless, unlike Mr. Kirby,
Grandpa one day felt that such a life did not satisfy him any longer, which
was enough for him to get up and leave the office never to return. On the
basis of such evidence Poague argues that “Kirby represents what Grandpa
would have become had he continued in business. Similarly, however,
Vanderhof represents what Kirby might become.”25 And, indeed, the grand
finale of the story confirms the accuracy of the above prediction, since the
philosophical gap between the two families becomes bridged at last. The
final scene of the movie presents the two families gathered together so as
to participate in a feast (another heavenly banquet) at Mr. Vanderhof’s
house. The humble attitude of everyone at the table (including Mr. and
Mrs. Kirby) during Grandpa’s usual prayer signifies Mr. Kirby’s
conversion from the villainous to the heroic side. He is no longer a villain-
hero. He acquires the status of a hero; moreover, because he resolves to
base his life upon ideals, he can now be called a romantic character as
well. Such a happy ending is a triumph of an “inherent morality” which R.
J Reilly describes as “a cosmic moral law, consciously obeyed or
disobeyed by the characters, but existing nowhere as a formulated and
codified body of doctrine.”26 The concept confirms the idea that what Mr.
Kirby was in need of was a stimulus which would help him to
acknowledge and recover this inherent morality ever-present within him.
Furthermore, the reconciliation of the two families reflects the idea of

impulse to buy you a present, that’s your birthday.”) is meaningful, and the act
itself gives Mr. Kirby the chance of new birth and new life. See his Another Frank
Capra, 61.
24
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 51.
25
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 51.
26
R. J. Reilly, “Tolkien And The Fairy Story” in Understanding The Lord Of The
Rings, (ed.) Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs (New York: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 2004), 95.
80 Chapter Three

satisfaction of a “primordial human desire [...] to hold communion with

other living things [and other people],”27 which can be included into the
scope of vital elements characterising the nature of a visionary romantic
fairy tale.

It Happened One Night (1934)

I would like to complete my discussion of the level of innocence with
the analysis of another paradisal comedy of Frank Capra, It Happened One
Night (1934).28 The film is based on the short story by Samuel Hopkins
Adams published in 1933, under the title Night Bus. The plot of the movie
centres on Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert), the daughter of another Wall
Street tycoon. In order to escape from the power of her father, she
hurriedly marries King Westley (Jameson Thomas), an aristocrat playboy
aviator whom Ellie’s father considers a joke and a fake. Alexander
Andrews (Walter Connolly) strongly opposes this reckless marriage and so
decides to confine his daughter in a luxurious yacht in order to prevent the
consummation of the marriage. Nevertheless, after a violent row Ellie
manages to escape and begins a journey on a long-distance night bus from
Florida to New York with the intention of rejoining her husband. In the
course of the journey she meets Peter Warne (Clark Gable), a recently
dismissed journalist, who decides to help Ellie reach her destination safely
in exchange for exclusive rights to the story of a runaway heiress which he
hopes will allow him to regain his job. The matter becomes complicated,
however, when the two associates fall in love with each other and the
destinations they initially had in mind, as well as purposes they wanted to
achieve, become perplexed and unclear. A series of humorous events,
including outwitting the detectives sent by Ellie’s father, mutual hitch-
hiking, and pretending to be husband and wife, unite them with a bond
which, in the end, the couple wishes to preserve. A misunderstanding on
the night preceding the journey’s end leads the couple to part and almost
results in Ellie’s reunion with her “husband”. Luckily, on the day of her
church wedding to King Westley, Alexander Andrews, seeing the chance to
get rid of his tiresome son-in-law, succeeds in convincing his daughter
about the purity of Peter’s intentions and the disinterestedness of his love

27
J. R. R. Tolkien in Reilly, “Tolkien And The Fairy Story,” 94.
28
It Happened One Night swept the Academy Awards ceremony of 1934 winning
Oscars in five categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and
Best Screenplay. It was the only film to win five Oscars in the main categories
until One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975, and the first comedy to win the
Best Picture award.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 81

(he did not claim the financial reward for taking care of Ellie during the
journey). In a climactic scene the bride-to-be runs away from the altar in a
long white gown to rejoin Peter. The couple elope and live happily ever
after.
Unlike Lady For A Day and You Can’t Take It With You, which in a
number of aspects are constructed similarly, It Happened One Night is
built on a different pattern. First of all, the difference can be noticed if we
recall the previously described groups of characters; i.e. the parents, the
young lovers, and the helpers. These categories, as characterized above,
cannot be detected in the case of It Happened One Night. The parents are
reduced here to the single person of Ellie’s father,29 whose role in the story
can be rather associated with the category of the helpers. Peter, on the
other hand, is a character devoid of any familial context, and therefore
stands on his own. The relationship between the main protagonists is also
of a different type than in the case of the young lovers from Lady For A
Day and You Can’t Take It With You. Ellie and Peter are not just another
couple of love birds oblivious to the problems of the outside world, or
struggling for the right to be together against some external obstacles. It is
the relationship of a zany, screwball type, where male and female fight
against each other for gender dominance and establishing their independence.
Love comes to them unexpectedly and, against their will, turning their
whole world upside down.
The complexity of the relationship between Ellie and Peter has become
the subject of the debate concerning the actual genre of the movie, since
the story combines the features of two comic subgenres: screwball and
romantic comedy. While some critics, e.g. Charles Maland or Richard
Blake, decisively perceive It Happened One Night as representative of
screwball comedy in its pure form30, others tend to notice numerous
elements which they claim to be incompatible with the characteristics of
the initial screwball formula. Such an approach can be encountered in a
number of Wes Gehring’s works concerning the various comedy types.31
Gehring argues that the movie fulfils the demands of the romantic comedy
genre, and for the sake of supporting this thesis he indicates that the main
focus of the story in fact revolves around the reality of the events and the
love affair of the protagonists (which ultimately ends in marriage), rather

29
Unless we include Peter’s boss who can be considered a father figure as well.
30
See Maland, Frank Capra, 82; and Blake, Screening America, 103-127.
31
See Wes D. Gehring, The World of Comedy: Five Takes On Funny (Davenport:
Robert Vincent Publishing, 2001), 132; and Gehring, Romantic vs. Screwball
Comedy, 11-12, 82-83.
82 Chapter Three

than the pure eccentricity of the characters.32 This claim seems to be

confirmed when it comes to considering the unusual circumstances in
which the love of Ellie and Peter is born, as well as the nature of the
feeling itself. As Lesley Brill puts it, “Love between man and woman [is]
the most illogical and most common of the miracles of romantic fictions.
[...] Like divine grace, love cannot be earned or deserved; it must be
‘amazing.’”33 In accordance with the above determinant of romance, It
Happened One Night gains at least one pertinent reason for being included
into the scope of the romantic comedy genre.
Although the structural pattern of It Happened One Night is different
from the two previously discussed movies, the features allowing us to
categorise the film as a paradisal comedy are basically parallel. First and
foremost, it contains a visionary world which, according to Frye, forms the
constituent of the world of imagination comprising “the vision of a
decisive act of spiritual freedom, the vision of the recreation of man,” as
opposed to external compulsions of the world we live in: “compulsion on
action or law; [...] compulsion of thinking, or fact; [...] compulsion on
feeling.34
At the very beginning of the movie the strong individualism of the
main characters provides us with two separate visions of their future.
However, the actions of both Ellie and Peter are stimulated by the same
urge to escape from the restrictive roles imposed upon them by various
social circumstances. And thus, in order to liberate herself from the
authority of her father, Ellie marries King Westley against her father’s will,
and next escapes from the yacht, the place of her imprisonment, so as to
prove her own independence. Peter, on the other hand, regardless of the
fact of being thoroughly devoid of any financial support, flees from what
he considers the oppressive demands of his editor. Both characters board
the bus to New York with the intention of beginning a new life in the city.
The journey, which as the movie unfolds becomes mutual, therefore turns
into a quest for fulfilment of thus far unacknowledged needs and ideals
which are just about to be awakened and verbalized.
Another paradisal element to be traced in It Happened One Night is the
cheerful mood of the movie. Again, following the pattern applied in Lady
For A Day and You Can’t Take It With You, Capra concentrates mostly
upon the development of the main characters and their relationship.
Throughout the whole movie the audience is presented with a vast number
of witty dialogues as well as brilliant visual humour. The clash of the

32
See Gehring, Romantic vs. Screwball Comedy, 12.
33
Brill, The Hitchcock Romance, 20.
34
Frye quoted in Reilly, “Tolkien And The Fairy Story,” 104.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 83

strong personalities of Ellie and Peter, the difference of social background,

and the hardship of mutual peregrination trigger the gradual transformation of
the characters, the process of which is depicted by means of numerous
comic encounters. In spite of all the obstacles, the characters keep
realizing their plans in a casual manner and without much effort. Similarly,
the ultimate goal (which in the course of the story undergoes a vital
change) is achieved easily and in a comic fashion. As Capra himself
explains, the intention of the movie was “pure entertainment, well-done
entertainment, believable entertainment, and unfettered with any ideas,
any big moral precepts or anything else. Just sheer entertainment, fun.”35
Nevertheless, it is important to mention that there are a number of scenes
which can be viewed as Capra’s social commentary of Depression era
America, even though it does not constitute the focal point of the movie.
The reality of Ellie and Peter, however, turns out to be another world
of a fairy tale, where the usual frustrations of everyday life do not threaten
the protagonists (to a high degree), and where ultimately the hero and the
heroine can break free from any oppressive boundaries. The lack of a
villain in the story is a factor consolidating the idea of including the movie
into the category of paradisal comedies. Hence, the plot revolves around
the battle of sexes undisturbed by any outer villainous influence. Ellie
Andrews and Peter Warne are thus fairy tale-like characters: Ellie–a
beautiful rich princess, who outside of the safe surroundings of her father’s
castle needs (against her own conviction) protection and guidance; and
Peter–a heroic prince helping a damsel in distress. The adventures Ellie
and Peter share together during the journey bring the chance to disclose
and acknowledge the romantic parts of their characters which causes much
bewilderment and amazement for them both. Again, as in Lady For a Day
and You Can’t Take It With You, the pattern of a fairy tale-like ending
reemerges. The hero and the heroine manage to overcome the barriers and
prejudices deriving from the fact they belong to different social classes.
Unlike the two movies mentioned above, however, It Happened One Night
constitutes a reversed Cinderella motif, since it is the hero who comes
from the socially lower strata and, therefore, unlike the classic epic quest
hero, his arete is concealed by his social status.36 Thus, although the social

35
Capra quoted in Schickel, The Men Who Made The Movies, 73.
36
See Auden, “The Quest Hero,” p. 37; Auden presents two types of quest heroes:
the Epic type, whose “superior arete is manifest to all,” and the other one whose
arete is concealed. He argues the second one is a type to be encountered frequently
in fairy tales: “The youngest son, the weakest, the least clever, the one whom
everybody would judge as least likely to succeed, turns out to be the hero when his
manifest betters have failed.”
84 Chapter Three

roles are reversed here, the happy komos-like ending resulting in the
couple’s pronouncement of the implied wedding vows, repeats the pattern
of upward social mobility. The ending of the story uncovers the door to an
idealized reality where two such distinct worlds as Ellie’s and Peter’s can
join together, and where any possible differences lose their importance.
The story, as such, is again a visionary paradisal comedy proving that
dreams can come true. Therefore, the nature of It Happened One Night
allows us to qualify it as eucatastrophe, i.e. “the true form of the fairy-
tale”,37 including an inevitable happy ending as well as “a piercing
glimpse of joy”38 experienced by the viewer as a result of his identification
with the characters in the story and satisfying his search for “reality of
truth”39 within the story.
The romanticism of the plot becomes all the more conspicuous when
we consider the setting in which the story takes place. As I have already
mentioned in the case of Lady For A Day and You Can’t Take It With You, it
is most improbable for such miraculous scenarios to happen within the
bleakness of the Great Depression. Yet, Capra’s vision convinces us about
the reality of the viewed scenes. The daughter of a beggar can marry a rich
count; the business tycoon is ready to give up his financial ambitions for
the sake of enjoying the pleasures of everyday life among his family and
friends; and the poor reporter can win the affection and be joined in
marriage with the heiress to a vast fortune. The fairy tale, though
improbable in the social context of 1930s, becomes plausible when
narrated within the framework of a realistic visualization of Depression era
America. Lady For A Day and You Can’t Take It With You, although devoid
of any directly verbalised social commentary, both present at least a
glimpse of the city they take place in. Thus, the familiarity of the New
York locations intensifies the impression of the authenticity and credibility
of the stories.
Since the reality of It Happened One Night is mobile, the surroundings
of the protagonists constantly keep changing. It is no longer the closed
space of rooms, offices, and penthouses of Lady For Day and You Can’t
Take It With You. The largest part of It Happened One Night takes place on
the road, revealing the hardship of being on the move. The familiarity of
the picture would strike a chord with its1930s contemporaries, since, as

37
Tolkien introduced the term eucatastrophe for the sake of depiction of “the true
form of the fairy tale” constituting the direct opposition to Tragedy which is “the
true form of Drama.” See Tolkien quoted in Reilly, “Tolkien And The Fairy Story,”
102.
38
Tolkien quoted in Reilly, “Tolkien And The Fairy Story,” 102.
39
Tolkien quoted in Reilly, “Tolkien And The Fairy Story,” 102.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 85

Robert Badal states, “being on the road was very much a part of the times.
The Depression was an era of migration.”40 The moment Ellie and Peter
abandon the cosiness of stability, i.e. Mr. Andrews' ship, and the editor’s
office (equalling the loss of employment) respectively, they decide to share
the not-always-easy lot of many fellow Americans of that time. The
numerous turns of events expose the couple to travelling together by bus,
on foot, by means of hitch-hiking, sharing the cabin of a motor camper, as
well as experiencing hunger and the state of being penniless. All these are
thoroughly new experiences for such a high society dame as Ellie
Andrews, and for her the whole event turns into a lesson in simple
humanity. Badal points out that It Happened One Night repeats one of the
frequent themes of the 1930s comedies: namely the motif of “wealthy
people living somewhat parasitic existences, but finding out about life by
associating with regular folk.”41 However, the long journey unveils not
only the dark side of middle class American life. The heiress also
discovers its positive dimensions. The celebration of the common life is
best portrayed in the scene of communal singing on the bus, in which
people join in to sing the subsequent verse of The Daring Young Man On
The Flying Trapeze. The scene plays a similar role to the climatic
performance of Polly Wooly Doodle in You Can’t Take It With You. Like
Mr. Kirby’s symbolic act of playing his part in the harmonica duet with
Grandpa Vanderhof, Ellie’s joining in the singing signifies the ritual
moment of her admittance into society.
It Happened One Night, in Badal’s words, is “a picture about real
Americans.”42 It also constitutes the realization of the idea of the American
Dream, in the light of which the romance of inner transformation, upward
social mobility, and reconciliation of any sort cease to be impossible.
Joseph McBride points out that “though It Happened One Night was
criticized by some for its supposed lack of social consciousness, it hardly
could have been such an enormous success if it had been nothing but
escapism.”43
The beginning of the movie presents the main characters in their
original surroundings. The first scene introduces the viewer into the high
class milieu of Ellen Andrews and her father. We find the heroine inside
the luxurious cabin of a yacht aboard which she has been imprisoned by
her father for marrying the wrong man. Ellie’s fierce argument with her

40
Robert Badal, Romance In Film. From The Silent Era To 1950 (Torrance: Jalmar
Press, 2001), 140.
41
Badal, Romance In Film, 141.
42
Badal, Romance In Film, 140.
43
McBride, Frank Capra, 305.
86 Chapter Three

father over the matter of her marriage, followed by upsetting the food tray,
signals the fiery temperament of an heiress. In the following sequence of a
quickly-paced scene her father slaps her in the face (which, inferring from
Ellie’s surprise, has never happened before), in the subsequent shot she
unbolts the door and manages to escape by means of jumping overboard
into the sea. Next, we encounter Ellie at the bus station where she is about
to embark on the long distance night bus to New York with the intention of
rejoining her newly-wed husband, the playboy King Westley. These
opening sequences of the movie alone provide us with an initial profile of
Ellie’s character. She constitutes a representative of her own class who has
never worked for a living and who has always had everything done for her.
She is pampered and egocentric and at this stage the label of a “spoilt brat”
seems to be quite adequate.
The same bus station becomes the introductory scene of the story’s
hero, Peter Warne. The shot discloses a crowd of people gathered around a
telephone booth inside of which a tall, handsome man leads a drunken
conversation with his boss, the editor of the New York Mail, during which
he gets fired for writing an article in free verse. After a short verbal
exchange the editor hangs up but Peter continues to speak pretending to be
telling off his boss. He announces he is quitting his job and “ends” the
conversation victoriously earning the admiration of his fellow reporters.
Now jobless but proud, Peter makes his way towards the New York bus
accompanied by his equally drunken companions chanting: “Make way for
the king!” Thus, the first encounter with Peter depicts another stereotype;
the character of the cynical and hard-boiled reporter was recognizable to
the Depression audience thanks to its popularization by the early 1930s
newspaper comedies. Elizabeth Kendall describes the type as a “rogue
newsman who [is] as rascally, soused, and undependable as he [is]
talented.”44 Hence, the early part of the story provides us with the
stereotypical figures of a “brat” and a “lout”.45 Picturing the characters in
the frames of stereotypical social roles is, however, just the opening
strategy since both stereotypes are bound to be outgrown in the course of
the development of the plot throughout which the protagonists will each
undergo a vital transformation.
The relationship between Ellie and Peter commences by coincidence
the moment they both board the bus. The characters are introduced by
means of a small disagreement over the seat they end up sharing together.
After a few hours they formulate opinions about each other and these are

44
Elizabeth Kendall, The Runaway Bride (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 41.
45
Both terms are used and discussed in Thomas E. Wartenberg, Unlikely Couples:
Movie Romance As Social Criticism (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999), 49-66.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 87

far from positive. Ellie perceives Peter as an impudent brute, which makes
her decide to erect the barrier indicating her high social status. To Peter,
Ellie is nothing more than a high-class “spoilt brat” whom he holds in
contempt for her apparent ignorance of life.46 The stubborn resolution to
stick to the initial appraisal of one another results in the creation of
numerous frequently contradictory roles that the characters will undertake,
choosing to ignore any evidence of the factual state. This phenomenon has
been pointed out in Carney’s American Vision:

Peter and Ellie keep getting trapped and embarrassed by their stylistic
choices throughout the film. They pick up and discard dozens of
prefabricated roles in the course of the film, many of them inconsistent
with each other, and most of them silly and childish. Ellie plays the role of
independent and liberated woman, the damsel in distress, the high-society
princess, and the frightened little girl, breathlessly, one after another. Peter
plays the romantic Romeo, the macho man, the male protector, the
worldly-wise teacher, the cynical or disinterested reporter, and the irritated
guardian, to name only most obvious and mutually contradictory. Each role
or style sooner or later comically disintegrates.47

In spite of the initial reluctance, Ellie and Peter consent to travel

together, each for a different reason. The haste with which Ellie
commenced her journey exposed her to travelling with just one suitcase (a
style unfamiliar to high-class standards) which, in addition, gets stolen
during the first stop of the bus. To make things worse, thanks to a
prolonged breakfast Ellie fails to get back to the bus on time. To her great
astonishment the bus does not wait for her return but Peter does. The
morning papers have already announced the story of Ellie’s escape and
Peter saw in it the chance for himself. He promises to help her get to New
York safely in return for the exclusive right to report her story, which he
supposes will help him regain his job at his newspaper. Thus, Ellie must
rely on Peter with the hope that he will not turn her over to her father.
Later on in the journey, having been saved by Peter from a brazen
passenger, Ellie also begins to realize her need for Peter’s company and
protection. Peter, on the other hand, discovers Ellie’s vulnerability, which
causes his irritation (“You’re helpless as a baby”), but at the same time
evokes his knightly instinct to help a lady in trouble. The further course of
the characters’ interaction displays the broader complexity of the matter.
Peter and Ellie turn out not to be the kind of people they initially appeared,
and, hence, the story can be considered a tale of mistaken identities where,

46
See Wartenberg, Unlikely Couples, 49.
47
Carney, American Vision, 236.
88 Chapter Three

step by step, the protagonists’ real personalities are being unmasked. As

Poague notices, “the comic movement of the film demonstrates how one
goes about getting past categories to people, shedding false assumptions,
and moving on to support renewed relationships.”48 The stereotypes that
Peter and Ellie have registered at the beginning subsequently collapse and
it comes as a surprise to them both.
The previously discussed scene of communal singing on a bus signals
the beginning of the phase of the melting of Ellie’s prejudice-based
defences. Slowly she becomes attracted to Peter’s world, which tempts her
with the allure of freedom and the sheer joy of living. Ellie’s original
assumption that there is nothing more to Peter than harshness and cold
cynicism starts to crumble at some point and it becomes conspicuous that
she becomes increasingly thrilled by his lifestyle. Meanwhile, Peter
resolves to become a teacher. An opportunity for exercising his newly
adopted role occurs at the autocamp where the passengers stop for the
night. First, however, Peter and Ellie are bound to discover an intimate
dimension of their relationship, which neither of them has expected. Since
on account of limited means Peter registers them as husband and wife,
they share one cabin. The situation meets with Ellie’s confusion and
embarrassment at first but it soon gives way to the conviction about the
honesty of Peter’s actions. This is the first of the three nights they will
spend together on their way, and probably the most meaningful one, as it
constitutes the moment the relationship between Ellie and Peter takes a
new direction. Being aware of the scene’s intimacy and its possible sexual
connotations, Peter tries to hide its awkwardness behind the nonchalant
fast speech he delivers. The sharply paced witty sequence including
Peter’s famous strip routine,49 and his resourceful creation of the “walls of
Jericho” (a blanket hung across the room on a chord as a means of
separating the beds), clearly indicates the sexual tension between the two.
Therefore, in spite of various barriers that originally seemed to place the
characters at a distance too great to be bridged, at this point they both
begin to sense the awaking attraction. The meaning of the scene is
strengthened by the lunar lighting and the image of pouring rain visible
through the cabin’s window–the symbolism of which can be understood as
suggesting the fertile inclination of the characters’ relationship.

48
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 156.
49
In the famous sequence of a strip routine Peter unbuttons the shirt and reveals
his bare chest. The scene is said to have revolutionized male fashion in 1930s and
resulted in the decrease of demand for undershirts (See Jan F. Lewandowski,
Wielkie kino. 150 filmów które musisz zobaczyü [Katowice: Videograf II, 2006],
30).
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 89

The next morning brings some more surprising discoveries concerning

each other. The day starts for Ellie with the picture of Peter occupied with
domestic chores. As soon as she wakes up she is scolded for sleeping too
long. This time Peter adopts the role of father-tutor. He hands Ellie a
towel, his robe and his slippers and urges her to take a shower. Throughout
these sequences, the viewer witnesses the process of Ellie’s crossing social
boundaries. Having spent the night in Peter’s pyjamas, she now has to
learn some more rules of social interactions. In order to use a shower, she
must go outside and stand in line together with other bus passengers. “She
is adapting gradually to Peters world, literally standing in his shoes,”50 as
Blake comments. When she returns to the cabin she finds Peter awaiting
her with the breakfast he has prepared in the meantime. In the following
scene, Ellie receives one more lesson, this time in the subject of dunking a
doughnut in a proper manner: “Dunking is an art. Don’t let it soak so long.
[...] You leave it in too long, it gets soft and falls off. [...] $20 million and
you don’t know how to dunk.”
Later on in the movie she will also be instructed in a proper way of
piggyback riding and he accepts all these lessons with charm and
happiness of a child. She is willing to learn and she clearly enjoys the
experience of being an ordinary human being. Moreover, she starts to
realize that she is beginning to enjoy Peter’s company as well. The initial
reluctance towards Peter seems to have vanished with the onset of a new
day, and Ellie’s radiance in the morning autocamp scene conspicuously
signifies the change. She now wants Peter to understand and like her:

You think I’m a fool and a spoilt brat. Perhaps I am. Although I don’t know
how I can be. People who are spoilt are accustomed to having their own
way. I never have. On the contrary, I’ve always been told what to do and
how to do it and when and with whom.

Peter, however, still plays the role of an irritated cynic, who whatever
he does is just for the sake of his own interest. His attitude alters after a
masterly performance they deliver in front of the detectives hired by
Ellie’s father to find the missing heiress. Ellie and Peter improvise the
scene of a violent quarrel between a husband and wife and the detectives
retreat leaving the Mr and a fabricated Mrs Warne in the course of a
furious row. The success of “the great deception”, as Peter calls it, makes
him discard his mask of iron-clad cynicism and he does not hide his
amazement and admiration for Ellie’s spontaneous response to the need of
the moment. The couple burst into laughter and the bond between them

50
Blake, Screening America, 121.
90 Chapter Three

becomes stronger. Against his initial assumptions, Peter begins to realize

that his hitherto existing image of Ellie has been much mistaken. Although
he refuses to admit it aloud, the fact that underneath the facade of a “spoilt
brat” there is a lively human being and a warm emotional woman becomes
explicit. Such an alteration in the mutual perception of the characters
provides a proof to the previously formulated thesis of a tale of mistaken
identities.
Poague categorises It Happened One Night as a Comedy of Errors in
which “stereotypes are mistaken for individuals.”51 This statement
probably does not need further defence. It is not only the stereotype of a
rich spoilt brat that crumbles in the course of the action. The attraction of
Ellie towards Peter, whom she had earlier registered as a crude boor, is
discovered by her with real amazement as well. It takes some time before
she can acknowledge that the role of a self-interested reporter Peter
maintains is merely a pose. “People are too complex to be easily
categorised. [...] It is [the] tendency to oversimplify, to assume that reality
will match one’s own misguided expectations, that is the major villain of
the film,”52 Poague points out. However, it does not seem to be such a
“villain”, if it turns out necessary for triggering the process of the
characters ultimate recognition.
Having acknowledged their misjudgements concerning each other,
Ellie and Peter pass on to the next stage of their relationship. Blake,
considering the subject of the characters’ mutual journey and the
development of their relationship, recalls Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:
“During their travels the pilgrims discover and reveal quite a bit about
themselves, and in the act of discovery they are transformed.”53 And,
indeed, the journey of Ellie and Peter symbolically stands for the process
of self-recognition as well. Locked in the claustrophobic world of her rich
father and restrained by the rules of aristocratic bon ton, Ellie has never
had a chance either to learn the ways of the outside world or to look into
her own inner self. At last, weariness with the sterility of her world leaves
her no choice but to cling to the first opportunity of liberation. She
deliberately “takes a plunge”,54 as Blake comments in reference to her
jumping overboard, which can be interpreted as a symbolic act of breaking
free from her father’s power and “diving” into new life. Ellie initially
seeks the means of her escape in marriage to King Westley, unconscious of
the fact that the act can only mean transfer from the confinement of her

51
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 157.
52
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 156.
53
Blake, Screening America, 117.
54
Blake, Screening America, 118.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 91

father’s world to a similar one, which additionally will condemn her to the
necessity of sharing her life with a man she does not love. It is only when
by mere coincidence she becomes entwined with the utterly different
world of Peter that she discovers her own ability to enjoy pleasures of
common interactions with people and acknowledges the fact that life can
be fun. Ellie’s journey then becomes a romantic quest for freedom, self-
recognition, love, and ideals she has been unable to experience so far.
It is this feeling of Ellie’s “sterile hopelessness”55 that Peter mistakes
for upper class-bound haughtiness which results in his obstinate denial to
admit his misjudgement. Hence, his attitude toward Ellie gets formulated
during their first encounter on a bus when he acknowledges her lack of
experience and naiveté, and is willing to associate it with spoilt-
brattishness. Peter considers himself to be a man of the world and is
anxious to uphold this image in the eyes of Ellie. Peter’s harshness in the
first scenes of his interaction with Ellie is, therefore, one of his roles. At
the beginning of the film, in Carney’s words, Peter is “the playful,
detached master of the roles and movements.”56 This picture collapses as
the initial indifference gradually transforms into concern, and finally into
commitment. In the course of the movie the viewer is provided with a
variety of scenes presenting Peter in a light quite different from the one
imposed by the stereotype of a cold-hearted newspaper man. Elizabeth
Kendall points to several occasions picturing Peter in domestically
inclined circumstances (e.g. the first autocamp scene).57 Such situations
stand strongly at odds with the above-mentioned stereotype. Moreover,
they prove (as in the case of Ellie) that beneath the iron mask of cynicism,
there is a man of flesh and blood. Kendall perceives him as a typical
representative of the Depression era man:

Peter Warne [...] has no pretences to social power. He’s broke; he’s out of a
job; he can’t even run fast enough to catch the guy who stole Ellie’s
suitcase. He’s a surprisingly frank embodiment of the ineffectuality of the
American male in the face of the Depression. He can do only one thing
well: take care of someone who’s lost.58

Andrew Bergman, on the other hand, examines Peter’s character from

another angle and describes him as “part the hack reporter [...], part the

55
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 165.
56
Carney, American Vision, 238.
57
See Kendall, The Runaway Bride, 45.
58
Kendall, The Runaway Bride, 45.
92 Chapter Three

small town idealist.”59 Apart from the evident complexity of Peter’s

personality, both of the quotations likewise indicate the romantic side of
the protagonist. Like Ellie, he is an idealist. However, because of his lower
social status, he is confined by the bleak circumstances of his times.
Nevertheless, Peter’s romanticism, notwithstanding his initial prejudices
towards Ellie, commands him to act chivalrously. He serves the damsel in
distress, unconsciously revealing the nobleness of his heart, while, at the
same time, he tries to maintain the protective pose of cynical coldness. As
Carney notices, both Ellie and Peter “use [their] ability to play [...] as a
mode of evasion, a way of avoiding authentic emotional or ethical
involvements.”60
As I have already mentioned, any means of self-protection or evasion
are sooner or later bound to fail as the bond between the protagonists gets
tightened in the course of the adventures they share together during the
subsequent stages of the journey. Soon after reentering the bus after the
night spent at the autocamp, the couple are forced to leave it again as one
of the passengers recognizes Ellie from the front pages of the papers and is
interested in claiming the prize her father assigned for the information
about his daughter's whereabouts. The next part of the journey is,
therefore, the most trying one because of the lack of finances as well as the
characters’ uncertainty if the goals they had at the start are still of any
value. The moment of epiphany comes the following night which the
couple are forced to spend in a hayfield; the romantic moonlight and
nature surrounding Ellie and Peter indicate the growing attachment to each
other. Although the words they utter still aim at contradicting the existence
of any feeling between them (“You can leave any time you see fit.
Nobody’s holding you here,” says Ellie), the actions cannot be mistaken
for anything else. Peter proves his concern about Ellie’s comfort by
preparing her hay bed and searching for food. Ellie, on the other hand, in
spite of her declaration of self-sufficiency (“I can get along”), panics as
soon as Peter disappears out of sight, and she assumes he has actually
abandoned her for good. Ellie’s hysterical reaction reveals her need and
desire for Peter’s company; now she is truly afraid of losing him. The

59
Andrew Bergman, “Frank Capra And Screwball Comedy” in Frank Capra. The
Man And His Films, 72. The term “small town idealist” refers here to the character
of Longfellow Deeds (Mr. Deeds Goes To Town), who unlike Peter Warne, came
from a small town. By means of this comparison Bergman intends to highlight
similarity of both protagonists' characters. Capra’s notion of “small town” stands
for all the virtues of American social life, and associates with fulfillment of the
American Dream values.
60
Carney, American Vision, 238.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 93

romantic visualisation of the scene: moonlit faces and impressionist-like

illumination of the whole setting, intensifies the conviction that, at this
point, both Ellie and Peter wish to get neither to New York, nor back to
reality at all. The scene depicts the strong sexual magnetism between the
two and it is clearly much more intense here than in the autocamp scene. It
signifies the transition of the protagonists to the next stage of inner
transformation. Carney notices that “every element of the hayfield scene:
nature, romantic lighting, and most of all, [...] all the pregnant pauses and
silences between the two of them communicate the opposite of their
toughness, independence, and self-sufficiency.”61 Once again, Ellie and
Peter are bound to discard the roles they intended to play in front of each
other, and although the feeling has not been verbalised, yet the
consciousness of its existence confuses them. Capra makes his characters
experience their epiphany in silence. Nevertheless, the crucial moment is
highlighted by the watery image of dew covering the haystacks–Capra’s
characteristic symbol of fertility.
The night hay-stack scene is followed by a happy sequence of Peter’s
tutoring Ellie in the art of hitch-hiking. He prides himself on being an
expert, which in a most comic fashion gets refuted after an entire column
of cars passes them without paying much notice. Ellie turns out to be more
resourceful in this case and, to Peter’s astonishment and indignation, she
makes the first car come to a halt by means of exposing her leg while
pretending to adjust the garter. This scene is not the first one to illustrate
Ellie’s attempts to break free from the sterile habits of high society ways.
Like Peter, she wants to improvise and taste life and its enjoyments and to
get rid of the shackles of her old self.
Carney points out that “the ideal of leaving the shell of the old self
behind, of making a new identity for oneself, [...] links [Capra’s
characters] [...] with the Puritans who came three centuries earlier.”62
Considering Ellie Andrews, the statement is adequate; however, the
situation is quite the reverse in the case of the heroine of Capra’s previous
movie, Platinum Blonde (1931). The structure of both It Happened One
Night and Platinum Blonde is similar: both stories develop the subject of
cross class romance and upward social movement; both stories present a
working hero, a journalist, falling in love with a rich heiress; and,
similarly, both couples get married in spite of their social difficulties.
Nevertheless, the heroines differ from each other immensely. While Anne
Schuyler (Jean Harlow) turns out to be precisely what she appears to be at

61
Carney, American Vision, 242.
62
Carney, American Vision, 238.
94 Chapter Three

the very beginning, i.e. a rich high class woman deeply rooted in her
milieu and enjoying her luxurious lifestyle, Ellie Andrews is a romantic
improviser and she establishes her rebellious character and desire to create
a new identity as early as the first scene of the movie. Anne Schuyler’s
conviction that she is able to induce her husband, Stew Smith (Robert
Williams), to give up his profession, friends, and habits and to transform
him into one of her own kind inevitably leads the couple’s relationship to
an unhappy ending. Having acknowledged the fact that all that awaits him
in the confinement of Anne’s world is being “a bird in a gilded cage”,
Stew Smith decides to break free and to leave his rich wife. He returns to
his old life which, as Capra portrays it, is far more enjoyable, exciting, and
lively than the stiff and sterile world of the Schuylers. It Happened One
Night pictures a different situation. Ellie Andrews is keen to learn and
open herself up to each new experience emerging before her. She enjoys
improvising and in the course of her journey she acknowledges that in
order to feel real freedom, she needs to break away from high class
sterility. Contrary to Anne and Stew, the success of Ellie’s relationship
with Peter lies in her acceptance of him as he is. Moreover, not only does
she accept Peter as he is, she also likes the lifestyle he represents and
therefore does not attempt to change it.
Having recognized herself in love, Ellie deliberately delays the
moment of reaching New York and insists on staying overnight in a motel.
This final night the couple spend together before the journey is over
constitutes the ultimate break of the boundaries; the scene presents Ellie
and Peter in beds separated by the familiar “walls of Jericho.” The
sequence lacks the cheerful atmosphere prevailing earlier in the movie.
Being on the verge of achieving their final destination, the vision of
parting which looms over the characters causes a gloomy mood mirroring
the state of their anxiety and uncertainty about the future. It is this
particular scene in which Peter’s personality of a romantic hero is utterly
revealed. In response to Ellie’s question if he had ever been in love, Peter
depicts a picture of his visionary dream of ideal love and ideal
companionship:

I saw an island in the Pacific once. Never been able to forget it. That’s
where I’d like to take [the woman I love]. She’d have to be the kind of girl
who’d jump in the surf with me and love it as much as I did. You know, the
nights when you, the moon, and the water all become one. You feel you’re
a part of something big and marvellous. That’s the only place to live. Why,
the stars are so big and clear overhead you feel you could reach up and stir
them around. [...] Boy, if I could ever find a girl who was hungry for those
things.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 95

Poague describes Peter as a “reporter tired of being just a reporter. He

is a poet at heart.”63 And it is this suddenly unmasked poetry of his soul (in
which Carney finds the features of an Italian opera64) that makes Ellie
cross the boundary of the “walls of Jericho” and cling to him with the plea:
“Take me with you, Peter. [...] I want to do all those things you talked
about.” However, Peter astounded by Ellie’s proposal, initially dismisses
her. He can reply only after some time during which Ellie, overcome by
weeping, falls asleep. This unexpected turn of events and a few moments
of brooding over the matter arouses Peter’s hope for what he so far has not
even had the courage to fantasize about, namely the possibility that they
both may have a chance to become the characters of such a fairy tale, and
to realize his visionary dream at last. However, Peter’s pride forbids him to
ask Ellie to marry him with no money in his hands and, therefore, he
decides to set off to town in search of funds he hopes to get from his boss
in return for the story of his prospective marriage to Ellie Andrews. In
Poague’s words: “He decides to play prince charming, riding off in the
night to bring the talisman back before daybreak, so that he can awaken
his princess with a triumphant kiss.”65
This romantically-driven spontaneous act initiates the flow of comic
errors once more, since, having been awaken by the suspicious landlady
and informed about the absence of Peter, the princess assumes that she has
been intentionally deserted as well as ultimately rejected by her prince.
Now broke and devoid of any financial resources, Ellie rings her father
who, by the time Peter has completes his plan successfully, has collected
his daughter from the motel. The chain of misunderstandings leads Ellie’s
father to insist on having a proper church wedding with King Westley as a
means of settling down and putting an end to all Ellie’s problems. Peter, on
the other hand, believes he has been deliberately “taken for a ride” and, in
a letter to Mr. Andrews, demands refunding of the sum of $39.60 he
incurred while taking care of Ellie, which, as he says, is a matter of
principle.
The sequences preceding the wedding provide the viewer with an
opportunity to get acquainted with the character of Mr. Andrews. Up to
this point Capra’s development of this figure is aimed at imposing the
image of Mr. Andrews as a Caprian stereotypical picture of a rich magnate
who is used to having the last word in every case and is convinced of
being entitled to it on the ground of the superiority of his social status.
Throughout the film Capra presents him in the role of a tyrant standing in

63
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 154.
64
See Carney, American Vision, 247.
65
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 164.
96 Chapter Three

the way of his daughter’s happiness; the angry father arranging the search
for Ellie and appointing the prize for any information about her. Finally,
when we observe the pompous escort accompanying Ellie’s return home,
we still tend to believe in Mr. Andrews’ villainous nature. Nevertheless,
the final part of the movie refutes the incomplete portrayal. The fact that
we have been misled about the character of Ellie’s father is especially clear
when it is contrasted with the stiff artificiality of King Westley. The
conversation between the father and daughter just before the ceremony
reveals the unsuspected warm relationship and attachment between them,
as well as clarifying any doubts as to the reasons for Mr. Andrews’s
actions concerning Ellie. He turns out to be a loving father and a wisely
practical man, and additionally gifted with a good sense of humour.
Mr. Andrews ascertains that Ellie’s odd conduct on the day of her
wedding cannot be put down to the usual behaviour proper to brides on
their “big day”. He decides to interrogate her and, having discovered the
reason of her grief, suggests calling off the ceremony and pursuing the
desires of the heart. Subsequently he decides to summon Peter Warne to
his house in order to gain the full view of the matter. Peter pays the visit
and in the angry fashion of a haughty child admits that he is in love with
Ellie. Peter’s visit becomes the cause of the next misunderstanding
between him and Ellie, since she assumes the purpose of his reappearance
is solely a financial one. After that she refuses to talk to her father about
anything concerning Peter and the ceremony begins. The scene of the
marriage ceremony, organised in the best style of high class lavishness,
presents Ellie walking down the aisle escorted by her father. Mr. Andrews
decides this is the last chance to dissuade her from getting entangled for
life with a man he still considers a mug, and tells her that Peter is an
alright-guy and that he did not come to claim the financial reward. He also
informs her that he arranged a car waiting for her at the back gate just in
case she should change her mind about marrying King Westley. Ellie does
nothing until the minister utters the ultimate question: “Wilt thou take this
man to be thy wedded husband, as long as ye both shall live?”66 The
subsequent shots present the crowd of confused spectators watching Ellie
in her white gown and a long veil rushing down the lawn to the car
awaiting her. The car disappears out of sight and the next shot registers the
figure of Mr. Andrews smoking a cigar with contentment.
Mr. Andrews’ role in this fairy tale is, thus, essential for the final happy
reunion of the lovers. Thus, the initial evaluation of his character, which

66
The scene may be argued to significantly highlight the role of the “church” and
the authentic marriage ceremony in causing Ellie to search her heart and
conscience for the truth of her feelings at the conclusive moment.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 97

Capra prompted the viewer to make so hastily, proves to be erroneous.

Therefore, recalling the three categories of the paradisal characters I
discussed earlier in the chapter in relation to Lady For A Day and You
Can’t Take It With You, Mr. Andrews can be included into the combined
category of the parents and the helpers. Considering a flying carpet escape
from the wedding ceremony Mr. Andrews provides for his daughter, it can
be argued that a trace of magical powers (claimed by Frye to be
characteristic for such type of characters) can be observed about Mr.
Andrews. Therefore, he certainly fits into the canon of old and wise
parental figures who have important influence upon the ultimate outcome
of the young lovers’ struggle. Mr. Andrews’s presence and attitude towards
his daughter’s dilemmas consolidate the premise that the world of It
Happened One Night is a romance.
There is yet one more important scene in the movie after Ellie’s
climatic escape. Capra presents the picture of another autocamp where
Ellie and Peter spend their wedding night; however, we do not see the
characters themselves there. Instead, we are offered the chance to witness
the conversation of the astounded owners of the place discussing the
peculiarity of the couple who had asked for a rope, a blanket, and a toy
trumpet “on a night like this”. The following sequence shows the cabin;
the sound of the trumpet is heard, and “the walls of Jericho” fall down.
Thus, the last sign of the boundary between the two ceases to exist. The
significance of this scene lies in the symbolic depiction of the completion
of the characters’ transformation. The mutual experiences of the romantic
quest made both Ellie and Peter more vulnerable and more human. The
final reunion also signifies the ultimate “collapse of ego boundaries”67
between the characters, which Joseph Kupfer connects with the growth of
virtuous friendship. Peter is now able to verbalise his romantic longing for
an ideal partner and admit that he loves Ellie, although such an act
deprives him of any means of defending the image of a tough guy he had
tried to maintain so hard. On the other hand, Ellie’s spectacular escape

67
Joseph H. Kupfer, Visions Of Virtue In Popular Film (Boulder: Westview Press,
1999), 66. In one of the chapters Kupfer discusses the nature of the relationship
between the main characters in John Huston’s The African Queen (1951). There are
numerous analogies to be traced between the stories of Rose Sayer and Charlie
Allnut and Ellen Andrews and Peter Warne. Like Ellie and Peter, Rose and Charlie
come from two socially distinct realities and represent different kind of lifestyle.
Furthermore, similarly to Ellie and Peter, Rose and Charlie are compelled to share
time and space together, which ultimately leads to collapsing of class prejudices
and ego boundaries and results in the characters’ recognition of mutual values and
subsequently falling in love and getting married. (See 61-89).
98 Chapter Three

from the wedding indicates an important change as well. Kendall points

out that the scene is “a reprise of [her] initial escape from the yacht, but
with a new dimension represented by newsreel cameras.”68 She explains
that while the first escape was a spontaneous “private” act, the second one
becomes a “public” decision witnessed by a vast amount of people and
recorded by the cameramen hired for the occasion. At the end of the
movie, then, Ellie is not only an heiress but also a citizen.69
The above examples allow us to formulate the premise that romantic
love is the tool by means of which any kind of obstacles can be overcome.
It Happened One Night is a story of reconciliation “between the classes
and the genders, the generations, between the Depression anxiety and
happy-go-lucky optimism.”70 First and foremost, however, it is a visionary
fairy tale in which the hero and heroine discover the romantic depths
within themselves and, through the subsequent stages of their perilous
journey and brave climatic struggle, succeed in achieving their mutual
goal. Carney notices that the place Ellie and Peter choose for their
wedding night is not the Pacific island of Peter’s visionary dream but a
shabby motel.71 Nevertheless, in the context of the whole story, this
shabby motel acquires the metaphorical meaning; it becomes the sanctuary
where the lovers can be finally exalted and united in a heavenly banquet.
Ellie and Peter form “a new model of the American couple,”72 Kendall
claims. She explains her statement by indicating that in order to produce
such a social unit Capra deliberately mixed up the features defining
different classes and genders. As a result we gain the characters who
reflect the reversed configuration of stereotypical traits: “The man isn’t
always supermanly; the woman isn’t always ultrafemale. Each possesses
qualities that should by convention belong to the other.”73 Peter proves to
constitute a mixture of a iron-clad cynical man of the city and a romantic
idealist. He is an Everyman who is compelled to give up the protective
pose of a tough guy the moment he gets entangled with by a love bond
with Ellie. At the same time, however, although socially beneath Ellie, he
becomes her protector throughout the journey. Ellie, on the other hand,
requires Peter’s protection in spite of being a rich heiress, which places her
in a socially higher position than Peter.74 At times she displays a

68
Kendall, The Runaway Bride, 48.
69
See Kendall, The Runaway Bride, 48.
70
Kendall quoted in Gehring, Romantic vs. Screwball Comedy, 5.
71
See Carney, American Vision, 247.
72
Kendall, The Runaway Bride, 45.
73
Kendall, The Runaway Bride, 45.
74
See Kendall, The Runaway Bride, 42.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 99

propensity to improvise which stands rather at odds with the picture of the
sterile world she originates from. Thus, the conventionality of the roles is
disturbed and features of both characters intertwine with each other.
Such an original development of the characters signifies the wind of
change in perception of the social situation of the 1930s’ America.
McBride describes It Happened One Night as the story of

the proletarian hero humbling, educating, and finally winning over the
“spoilt brat” heiress, a story that not only provide[s] the fantasy of upward
mobility, both sexual and economic, but, more important, represent[s] the
levelling of class barriers in the Depression.75

The movie is the story of the humbling and educating not only of one
character but of both of them since Ellie has to learn to be “one of the
folk”. In order to do this, she has to swallow her pride of a privileged
heiress and to lower herself to the level of an ordinary woman and a
citizen. Kendall states that “as the lovers negotiate equality across the gulf
of class and gender, they are metaphorically healing the painful divisions
in American society.”76 Therefore, the film can be considered a cross-class
romance representing Capra’s idea for renewal of democracy. Both
characters acknowledge the need to be educated in democratic values and
the success of their love affair illustrates Capra’s hope for possibility of
democratic society’s recuperation.77 It is the transformation of Ellie which
is particularly significant. As Blake points out:

Her changes are crucial for Capra’s belief that the wealthy are really good
people, and that once the rich and the poor begin to understand each other,
then the rich will solve America’s social problems without government
interference.78

The motif of transformation and recovery (understood as “renewal of

health [...] and re-gaining of a clear view”79) of the members of the upper
class reappears frequently in Capra’s movies: Anthony P. Kirby, the rich
plutocrat in You Can’t Take It With You, under the influence of romantic
visions and the ideology of Grandpa Vanderhof, undergoes a
transformation and at the end of the movie which recognises democratic
values as a proper way of achieving harmony and happiness in life. The

75
McBride, Frank Capra, 305.
76
Kendall, The Runaway Bride, 49.
77
See Wartenberg, Unlikely Couples, 58.
78
Blake, Screening America, 119.
79
Tolkien quoted in Reilly, “Tolkien And The Fairy Story,” 99.
100 Chapter Three

climax of Lady For A Day presents the communal transformation of New

York high society members who gets inspired by the idea of providing
disinterested help to Apple Annie. It Happened One Night is an example of
a double transformation: first and foremost it is Ellie who learns the ways
of the common people in the course of her journey, and subsequently gains
“a clear view”80 and becomes changed from an heiress to a human. At the
end of the film it is also Mr. Andrews who gets transformed. He no longer
demands Ellie to bend to his will but acknowledges her right to live her
own life. What is even more important, Mr. Andrews approves of Peter
and his lifestyle, notwithstanding the difference in social status. This
signifies the magnate’s readiness for accepting the necessity of social
changes. In Blake’s words: “the classes [get] joined, having discovered
there is more uniting them than separating them.”81 In the case of all three
movies the climactic scenes constitute the moments of social epiphany
ultimately leading to creation of utopian community which, in Capra’s
understanding, is essential for the redemption of American society as well
as for the realization of the American Dream.
In relation to its setting in time and lyricism of Capra’s narration, It's A
Wonderful Life is called by Kendall “a Depression pastorale”.82 In spite of
the rather dim political and social situation of Depression era America, the
main characters’ experiences are far from gloomy. The various comic
coincidences Ellie and Peter are submitted to make them explore other
dimensions of American reality. Forced to exchange their bus journey for
hiking, and thus deprived of any facilities of civilisation, the couple can
experience a union with nature. They cross a stream, sleep in a haystack,
feed on raw carrots, are exposed to the changeable weather, and all this
turns their journey into a quest of mutual and self-discovery.
It is when surrounded by nature that Ellie and Peter begin to realize
their mutual attraction. Capra’s depiction of the pouring rain jingling
against the motocamp window lit by the bright moonlight, as well as the
scene of crossing the stream in order to find the safe shelter for the night in
the hayfield, can serve as examples of the romantic visualisation aiming to
convey the message without the use of words. Water is a very crucial
symbol for Capra as it “represents a rite of passage”.83 A number of
examples can be found to support the thesis. Ellie and Peter get cleansed
of their stiff social boundaries by the sudden downpour which sentences
them to sharing the journey together. Alice Sycamore and Tony Kirby in

80
Tolkien quoted in Reilly, “Tolkien And The Fairy Story,” 99.
81
Blake, Screening America, 125.
82
Kendall, The Runaway Bride, 47.
83
Blake, Screening America, 124.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 101

You Can’t Take It With You prefer to spend their first date in Central Park
rather than at the Monte Carlo ballet, which was their initial intention.
Similarly to the rainy autocamp scene in It Happened One Night, it is late
at night that Alice and Tony, drowned in the conversation, sit on a bench
with a glimmering moonlit lake behind them. Tony delivers a bitter speech
concerning his youthful dreams he had to abandon for the sake of
continuing his father’s business. The lunar light illuminates the characters’
faces and the surrounding trees and reflects in the lake which turns the
scene into an impressionistic picture prophesying the changes which are
about to ensue. Again, water in this case can be considered as a purifying
source designed to intensify the moment of a personal revelation which
will provide Tony with the strength and determination to struggle for his
dreams and visions.
We encounter a similarly constructed scene in Lady For A Day. It is
dark again and this time the viewer witnesses a romantic love scene in the
garden. The silhouettes of Louise and Carlos are blurred by the moonlit
fountain through which the figures are presented. This vision could easily
be a watercolour picture depicting the two lovers eternalised on a canvas
in an epiphanic moment of pregnant romantic bewilderment. In the next
sequence, Carlos’ place is taken by Annie. The picture, however, is now
reversed and the still brightly lit fountain twinkles behind the two women.
Louise tells her mother how happy she is and pleads with Annie to assure
her that everything is going to be alright. Holding Louise tight in her arms,
Annie lifts her eyes towards heaven, folds her hands as in a prayer and,
immobilised in the humble pose of a Holy Madonna, whispers that
“nothing is going to happen”. The image of water in this scene reflects the
fertile expectations of Louise, as well as Annie’s desperate hope for a
fruitful happy ending to this fairy tale.
The symbols of water and moonlight seem to be interconnected in
Capra’s stylistics. Water imagery and rain in particular, according to
Carney, is sexually suggestive84 and therefore signifies the fertile nature of
the characters’ relationship. Moonlight, on the other hand, can be
associated with romantic love and the longing for ideals. Louise and
Carlos make their love vows in the moonlight; it is by the shimmering
moonlit lake that Tony Kirby describes his idealistic romantic visions;
Peter Warne reveals the romanticism of his soul and heart in the moonlit
room of the autocamp; and finally, the soft lunar light illuminates the
figure of Ellie the moment she crosses the walls of Jericho to plead for
Peter’s love. These are all profoundly emotional scenes and even the

84
See Carney, American Vision, 240.
102 Chapter Three

language the characters use in all three cases becomes inspired and poetic.
It seems, then, that in unity with nature the characters acquire the
consciousness of belonging to the universe and it transforms them into
poets.
In summary, it becomes transparent that Capra’s paradisal universe is
full of poetic idealists and romantic knights and damsels struggling to
maintain “the integrity of the innocent world against the assault of
experience.”85 The characters are in a constant quest for establishing an
idealized world of childhood dreams here on Earth. In this world sterile
social boundaries are replaced by the vision of the utopian community in
which the citizens live their lives in accordance with the Lincolnian motto:
“With malice towards none, with charity to all.”86 Hence, Capra’s
paradisal world is devoid of real villains, and although at times some of
the characters lose their ability to recognize true values, this state is
usually temporary. As Maland states: “Capra defend[s] characters who
[are] much more concerned with having fulfilling lives and close human
ties than with accumulating wealth.”87 It is therefore essential for the
characters to undergo a transformation in the course of which they can
experience epiphanic revelations and acquire a chance to re-determine
their life-priorities and recover the proper perspective. Capra’s paradisal
romance presents love as a divine notion; love equips young people with
strength and courage to fight for it although a happy ending is not always
certain. Brill explains that romantic love “has nothing to do with laws, or
force, or logic.”88 The young couple are not necessarily perfectly matched.
They are often divided by social rules, unfavourable circumstances, or
even by the distinction between their own personalities and temperaments.
Nevertheless, love is destined to reconcile any kind of difference, which

85
Frye quoted in Brill, The Hitchcock Romance, 6.
86
Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address” in The Norton Reader. An
Anthology Of Expository Prose, Arthur M. Eastman, Caesar R. Blake, Hubert M.
English, Jr., Alan B. Howes, Robert T. Lenaghan, Leo F. McNamara, James Rosier
(ed.), (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1965), 298. In You Can’t Take It With
You Grandpa Vanderhof quotes this passage in the speech revealing his patriotic
ideology: “[...] communism, fascism, voodooism, everybody’s got an ism these
days. When things go a little bad these days, you go out and get yourself an ism,
and you’re in business. [...] John Paul Jones, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams,
Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Lincoln, Grant, Lee, Edison, and Mark Twain.
When things got tough for those boys, they didn’t go running around looking for
isms. Lincoln said, ‘With malice towards none, with charity to all’. Nowadays they
say, ‘think the way I do or I’ll bomb the daylights out of you.'”
87
Maland, Frank Capra, 87.
88
Brill, The Hitchcock Romance, 21.
 From Innocence to Experience: Innocence 103

confirms the premise that it is worth fighting for. “Love heals,”89 Brill
reminds us. It heals the hero and the heroine within the frame of their
relationship; moreover, it heals the society, allowing it to sustain the hope
that fulfilment of the American Dream is still possible after all.
Capra’s stories analysed above constitute the realization of the concept
of eucatastrophe. As the examples of true fairy tales, they also reflect the
vision of an ideal childhood and innocence. These are the stories in which
the Cinderellas marry their princes, rich and poor become united in a
communal celebration of a fertile reconciliation, and the world is painted
in the moonlit chiaroscuro of a paradisal romance.

89
Brill, The Hitchcock Romance, 21.
 CHAPTER FOUR

FROM INNOCENCE TO EXPERIENCE:

EXPERIENCE

The Purgatorial and Infernal Level

The previous chapter was devoted to the stage of innocence
corresponding to the paradisal mode of Frank Capra’s comedies. In the
subsequent part of my book I will discuss the stage of experience. My aim
here is to present and explore the romantic nature of several slightly darker
examples of Capra’s movies as viewed in the light of a combined
purgatorial and infernal level of comedy which, as I shall indicate,
interweave with each other in Capra’s filmic universe.
For Dante, purgatory is a place of atonement for one's committed sins.
Therefore, the mood of this realm differs substantially from the one
presiding in paradise. Nevertheless, apart from darkness and suffering,
there is also hope here based on the conviction that this stage of the
journey is temporary and the tormented souls will eventually be
redeemed.1 The case of purgatorial comedy, as it was already discussed in
the first chapter, is parallel. There is suffering and an uphill struggle in this
type of comedy. As Francesca Aran Murphy points out, the characters are
constantly “on their way to happiness, always on the verge of achieving
their desire as the action concludes.”2 Therefore, purgatorial comedies can
be considered Quixotic or quest comedies. Following the pattern of Don
Quixote, however, the protagonists are not left completely on their own.
They are granted the assistance of the helpers, who in the case of Capra’s
cinematic world are frequently female.
The domain of Dante’s inferno is far gloomier as it is never-changing
and excludes hope thoroughly. The doom of the souls gathered here is
clearly determined by the inscription on the infernal gate: “Abandon all

1
Dante Alighieri, Boska komedia (Wrocáaw: Wydawnictwo Siedmioróg, 1997).
2
Murphy, The Comedy Of Revelation, 24.
106 Chapter Four

hope, ye who enter here.”3 Similarly, there is no place for helpers in an

infernal comedy. The characters are, therefore, left alone to cope with the
disasters they experience. This type of comedy includes death and
darkness. Laughter is ironic and serves as a means of survival. Infernal
comedies “take place in an underworld of the human spirit.”4
I have decided to interpret both the purgatorial and infernal mode of
comedies as constituents of the “experience” category of Frye's romance.
Hence, this stage demands a close examination of the process of gaining
experience, i.e. entering adulthood (purgatorial mode), as well as the state
of being experienced and thus facing the ultimate questions (infernal
mode). For this purpose I have chosen three Capra’s movies which I
consider to be examples of the category in question.
Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, and
Meet John Doe have long been treated by critics and cinema scholars as a
trilogy. The source of such a categorization lies in the choice of the
populist subject, the development of the protagonists vis-a-vis their social
and emotional maturation, as well as the moralistic message of the movies.
It is therefore necessary to examine the trilogy from the perspective of
populism of which, as was mentioned in the previous chapters, Capra is
considered to be the archetypal filmmaker.
In his autobiography Capra states that his conscious commitment to the
idea of spreading a populist message was the outcome of an incident that
altered his perception of himself as a filmmaker and influenced the future
direction of his artistic realization. As I have already mentioned, the
overwhelming burden of the unexpected enormous success of It Happened
One Night and the anxiety of an inability to live up to it further in his
career became the reason of Capra’s self-doubts, and eventually brought
him to an illness resulting in his hospitalisation. During this indisposition
he was visited by an unknown man who accused him of being a coward
and an offence to God and humanity because he was not using the talents
he had been gifted with for the sake of opposing the evil in the world and
influencing it with positive values, but was squandering it on trivialities.5
The occurrence turned out to be Capra’s moment of epiphany and he
resolved that his films would no longer be made for the sake of sheer
entertainment but would “integrate ideals and entertainment into a
meaningful tale.”6 Hence, starting with Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Capra
was determined to convey an important message through his films. Let us

3
Dante, Boska komedia, 12.
4
Murphy, The Comedy of Revelation, 24.
5
See Capra, The Name Above The Title, 176.
6
Capra, The Name Above The Title, 185.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 107

now have a detailed look at the constituents of the trilogy.

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

The plot of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)7 centres around the
character of Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper), a small town postcard
poetry writer, the local band’s tuba player, and a voluntary captain of the
fire brigade. The story begins with the announcement of the news of Mr.
Deeds’ inheritance of $20 million. In consequence of the unexpected
change of his financial situation he is forced to leave his home town,
Mandrake Falls, Vermont, and the only life he knows in order to manage
his newly acquired estate in New York. From an almost idyllic small town
life Deeds is transferred into a place where he has to confront the tough
rules of a big metropolis. His fortune immediately attracts all sorts of “city
vultures” who watch Deeds’ apparent naivety with contentment and
conviction that his ignorance of financial and business matters bears the
promise of an easy gain for them. One of such “vultures” is a journalist,
Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur), whose slick manoeuvres lead Deeds to being
ridiculed on the first pages of the newspapers and nicknamed a “Cinderella
Man” as soon as he appears in New York. To get the news for her precious
stories, Bennett, under the false name of Mary Dowson, pretends to be a
poor girl in search of employment. She easily gains the affection of her
victim since, by playing her new role convincingly, for Deeds she
impersonates all the values he has always treasured: innocence, purity and
sheer goodness. Thus, in Deeds’ eyes, Mary is the long awaited “lady in
distress” whom he wants to serve and protect. However, after a series of
struggles with the greedy businessmen eager to bilk Deeds out of his
money, the truth about Mary Dowson comes to light, leading the
protagonist to the state of profound despair and disillusionment.
Disheartened, Deeds resolves to return to his hometown and to leave
behind the cruel big city reality; his intentions are altered, however, by the
visit of a ruined farmer accusing him of frigidness and wastefulness. The
event makes Deeds decide to invest the money in a socially useful aim of
providing impoverished farmers with free land and seed. Unfortunately,
the implementation of his noble idea turns out to be problematic because
of his opponents who, having learned about the intent, claim Deeds’
mental instability and consequent inability to manage the fortune.

7
Mr. Deeds Goes To Town was nominated for Academy Awards 1937 in five
categories: Best Director, Best Leading Actor, Best Picture, Best Sound,
Recording, Best Writing, Screenplay, and won one Oscar for Best Director.
108 Chapter Four

Brooding on the madness of a civilised city world, Deeds refuses self-

defence at a crucial moment of the court hearing assigned to determine the
real state of his mental condition. Bennett, who by this time has realized
her guilt and fallen in love with Deeds, rises to speak in defence of his
sanity and publicly declares her love for him. This announcement revives
the hero’s zest for life and convinces him to give a defence speech which
proves his sanity and eventually leads him to victory and reconciliation
with his beloved.
In accordance with Capra’s promise, Mr. Deeds is a moralistic tale. The
plot glides between the subject of the characters’ romantic development
and the discussion of ethical ideas of good and evil, social responsibility,
and the question of humanity in a broader sense. Longfellow Deeds,
therefore, comes to New York as a childlike romantic but, by the end of his
tour de force, he becomes transformed into a romantic populist conscious
of the poor state of American social conditions and the need for at least
opposing them, if improving them is not in his power.
The subject of the protagonist’s maturation will become one of the
focal motives to be repeated throughout the trilogy and other Capra
“committed” films.8 Charles Maland enumerates four conventions of the
narrative pattern within Capra’s populist mode; namely: the hero, the
heroine, the ritual humiliation of the hero, and the ritual victory.9 Referring
to the previously discussed field of comedy and its types, the latter two
elements in particular recall the echoes of Aristophanic agon and komos
respectively linking the movies with folk fertility rituals (the expulsion of
Death and bringing in of Life),10 and thus indicating the romantic nature of
populist genre.
The Caprian agon is a long term process during which the hero is
forced to struggle for his ideals and maintain the already mentioned
“integrity of the innocent world against the assaults of experience.”11 This,
however, does not come as easy as in the case of the paradisal hero or may
not come at all. In many cases the purgatorial hero will come merely as
close as being on the verge of achieving his aims. Therefore, Capra’s
purgatorial komos will also differ from the paradisal one. The final ritual
victory will be the sign of the protagonists’ conversion and maturation. It

8
After the visit of the unknown man mentioned earlier, Capra made a declaration
to commit his talents to the service of man: “I knew then that down to my dying
day, down to my last feeble talent, I would be committed.” See Capra, The Name
Above The Title, 185.
9
See Maland, Frank Capra, 93-94.
10
See Chapter Two.
11
Northrop Frye quoted in Brill, The Hitchcock Romance, 6.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 109

will revive optimism and hope for renewal; nevertheless it will be

darkened by the shadow of the hero’s infernal experience which
constitutes a component of this category of Capra’s comedies.
The purgatorial path of Longfellow Deeds paradoxically begins with
the news of his inheritance brought to him by legal representatives whom
Deeds seems to intuitively distrust. The divergence between the stiff
fashion of the neatly attired businessmen and the small town reality of
Mandrake Falls is comically conspicuous. They are as misplaced and
lacking any familiar context here as Deeds in his New York mansion a
while later. The initial scenes signal a very clear contrast between the two
realities and intensify the feeling of awkwardness of the main character’s
situation and his sense of alienation within his new surroundings.
All of a sudden Deeds is uprooted from his natural background, his
hometown and his friends, and forced to become a dweller of the unknown
city, a strange house, and an unfamiliar world. The unexpectedness of it all
brings a great deal of confusion to his so far quiet and ordered life. It is in
the very first scene in the New York house that we realize Deeds’
misplacement. Capra presents the process of outfitting Deeds by the group
of stylists and tailors to the accompaniment of relentless queries and
pieces of financial advice provided by numerous lawyers and businessmen
who, lured by Deeds’ declaration to give the money away, hope for some
financial profits. However, notwithstanding his apparent naivety (that
everyone counts on), Deeds judges the matters on the basis of simple
“common sense” and is far from spending the money on anything about
which he is not convinced. Moreover, the peculiar conventions of the
luxurious lifestyle thrust upon him by his new financial status annoy him
and seem to offend him. He opposes the idea of valets, bodyguards, and
advisers telling him how to look, where to go, and what to do and with
whom. Capra quickly makes us aware of the artificiality of the city codes
as well as the immensity of the restrictions resulting from the rules of a
wealthy life style imposed on the so far free small town boy. Therefore,
watching the scene of the tailoring of Deeds’ clothes, the viewer cannot
avoid the impression that it is not only his garment that is being
refashioned. Step by step the attempts are made to rid him of his freedom
and personality.
The adequacy of this idea is even more striking when we compare the
scene to another group shot; namely, the Mandrake Falls train station
farewell party. The divergence of the two scenes or, furthermore, the two
realities, is depicted visually. The station scene pictures Deeds playing the
tuba in the middle of the local brass band performing For He’s a Jolly
Good Fellow. Nevertheless, despite his distinguishing height, Deeds looks
110 Chapter Four

natural and in the right place. The picture clearly indicates that he is one of
the people and he belongs there. The case is different in the other scene,
however. The claustrophobic impression of the tailoring scene is
intensified by the photographic depiction of Longfellow from a lower
angle, which makes him seem even taller than he really is. Thus, the hero
(without the tuba–a symbol of his artistic inclinations) towers above
everyone present in the room, which stresses the sense of his
misplacement and consequent alienation. This problem of the main
character’s alienation is also the recurrent motif in all parts of the trilogy.
As Ray Carney points out, Capra’s populist individuals are tragically
forced “out of their places [...] into institutional realms, to act publicly.”12
Thus, trapped in this new reality, Deeds will be unable to escape from the
pressures of the constant public scrutiny ever again. In New York every
single move of Deeds will be carefully watched and widely commented in
public. Even his courtship of Mary Dowson will be constantly witnessed
by the eager eyes of the press, denying Deeds the right to any privacy.
By means of uprooting his character from the idyll of the small town
life and placing him into the sterility of big city conventions, Capra
indicates the inevitability of Deeds’ impending identity crisis. Repressed
by social codes, he is no longer granted his artistic freedom. Freedom,
which in Carney’s words, “exist[s] in the visionary and artistic state, but
[...] not within but outside of repressive social forms.”13 Therefore, Deeds’
habitual tuba playing, as well as his constant search for rhymes to his
verses, in New York are considered to be a sign of eccentricity or even, in
the end, insanity. Big city life demands sacrificing Deeds’ purity and
becoming contextualised within stiff social codes. Hence, the tailoring
scene at the beginning of Deeds’ New York adventures acquires a
symbolic meaning: “a tailor [...] goes to work on the individual's
identity.”14 In the course of the story, the authenticity of the character’s
moral values will be tested within the hostile social context and he will
have to prove whom he really is. However, the chaos and confusion
caused by the sudden uprootedness will turn out to be fruitful in the end.
Although this stage of the hero’s development entails immensely difficult
life experiences and victimization of the character, it is through this
hardship that Deeds’ mature identity will be shaped and finally
established.
Deeds receives the news of the inheritance with surprising scepticism,
as if predicting intuitively the whole chain of troubles that are entailed by

12
Carney, American Vision, 263.
13
Carney, American Vision, 266.
14
Carney, American Vision, 271.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 111

it and at once he professes he does not want the money. Nevertheless, he

goes to New York with the intention to look into the matter. To the lawyers
he declares he is going to give the money away. We also hear him
explaining to the members of the opera board that he is going “to do a lot
of good with that money.” But for the time being these are merely
unspecified vague ideas echoing his small town upbringing and the
populist belief in every man’s duty to help others. Therefore, to become a
conscious executive of his intentions, Longfellow needs to undergo the
purgatorial process of social and ideological maturation.
The purgatorial mode includes the character’s uphill struggle, during
which Deeds is ridiculed as the most naive and childish of men on earth,
nicknamed a “Cinderella Man,” humiliated and deceived both socially,
publicly, and privately by the woman he falls in love with. However, it is
even before his world crumbles apart, when he learns the real identity of
Mary Dowson, that he intends to get back to Mandrake Falls for the sake
of deciding how to distribute his wealth usefully. “I once had an idea I
could do something with the money, but they kept me so busy I haven’t
had time to figure it out. I guess I’ll wait till I get back home,” he explains
to Mary. The same evening he proposes to Mary by means of a poem
written for this occasion. The artistic unconventionality of his proposal as
well as his longing for a green world that would provide him with wisdom
and inspiration for making a proper decision concerning the fortune's
distribution display the romanticism of Deeds' nature. In hope of achieving
the inner harmony he is unable to find in New York, he wants to return to
the rural womb of his home town, where his fertile ideas could be
developed. Deeds’ plans are altered by the subsequent dramatic chain of
events which eventually force him to remain in New York.
On the day following Longfellow’s proposal, Mary’s deceit is
unmasked by his press agent, Cornelius Cobb (Lionel Stander). He
informs the hero that Mary is in fact the star journalist and a Pulitzer Prize
winner, Babe Bennett and, worst of all, it is she who is responsible for the
spiteful “Cinderella Man” articles. Mary affirms the dreadful news on the
phone and Deeds hangs up, refusing to wait for any explanation she might
offer. With his hopes lost and ruined he feels even more estranged than at
the moment of his New York life initiation and decides to leave
immediately. He is halted, however, by an unemployed farmer (John
Wray) who breaks into his house accusing Deeds of being a “money-
grabbing hick” feeding doughnuts to horses rather than hungry people, and
in a gangster-like fashion threatens Deeds with a gun. The incident helps
112 Chapter Four

Deeds choose the aim to which he will devote his money.15 Within the next
characteristic-for-Capra newspaper montage sequence we are provided
with a detailed plan of Deeds’ further action as well as the social
commotion instigated by the news. The hero is finally going to give his
fortune away by means of dividing a huge farming district into fully
equipped ten acre farms at a cost of $18,000,000. Soon, thousands of
unemployed storm Deeds’ mansion to apply for the grant and we are
offered the picture of the character in the process of reviewing the
applicants with a frenzied zest. By now he has realized more clearly than
ever what a terrible burden his fortune really is and what a great deal of
misery and troubles it has brought upon him. Therefore, he clutches at the
homestead plan as if at the last straw bearing a promise of liberation from
his problems.
Nevertheless, the presumption that Deeds’ process of social maturation
has been completed at this point of the story is mistaken In Leland
Poague’s opinion, Mr. Deeds is “a film by a sentimental poet about a
sentimental poet that shows how overdone sentiment can cloud
perception.”16 Poague indicates that, to maintain a common sense balance
between an overdose of sentiment and getting utterly lost within cynical
perception, one needs to acquire a “realistic awareness of the complex
nature of life in the world. [...] What is needed is both intellectual honesty
and spiritual constancy: perceiving problems accurately and dealing with
them appropriately.”17 Deeds’ urgent desire to escape from his urban
problems denotes his inability to find such a golden mean. The truth about
Mary has shattered him so severely that for a time he wrongly assumes
that “all men are moochers [...] [and] everyone is out to take advantage of
him.”18 Thus, he becomes contaminated by New York cynicism. Deeds’
actions at this point are, therefore, a sign that the character is only halfway
to the real completion of the process of social maturation. It takes a drastic
occurrence like his encounter with a hunger-crazed farmer to revive
Deeds’ social awareness. Yet, it is practically not until the very end of the
movie that Deeds can be treated as a fully mature, socially responsible
individual.
Deeds’ populist scheme to dispose of his wealth by means of financing
farmsteads is thwarted by the joint actions of a crooked lawyer John Cedar

15
The incident is interpreted by many as a paraphrase of Capra’s autobiographical
element discussed earlier in the chapter. The visit of an unknown man helps both
Capra and Deeds to make vital decisions in their lives.
16
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 175.
17
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 175.
18
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 175.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 113

(Douglas Dumbrille) and Deeds’ late uncle’s only living relative, Mr.
Semple (Jameson Thomas) and his wife (May Methot), who claim the
right to the legacy and charge Longfellow with insanity, which implies his
inability to handle the fortune. A warrant of arrest is delivered to
Longfellow while he is reviewing the applicants for the farms. Thus, just
like every other matter concerning Deeds since he has become a legal heir,
the arrest is conducted in public. This time, however, he is surrounded by
the farmers–the common people who in Capra’s cinematic language
symbolise positive moral values and support. At this stage of his social
maturation Deeds is no longer on his own; the bond between the
protagonist and the farmers is illustrated in the scene preceding the arrest
in which one of the applicants offers a sandwich to his exhausted
benefactor. Deeds accepts the kind gift gratefully but as soon as he starts
eating, his eyes are set on a crowd of hungry people waiting silently for an
application. Upon reflection, he orders lunches to be provided for all the
applicants, replying to Cobb’s exclamation: “There must be two thousand
of them!”, with the matter-of-fact statement: “Well, it doesn’t make them
any less hungry.” The sense of communion is born as the farmers
acknowledge Deeds’ generosity and the fact that he is a man of flesh and
blood and not just one more “money-grabbing hick,” the impression which
they might have got out of his profile as created by the press. Therefore,
the farmsteads scheme becomes, in a way, a manifestation of Deeds’
authenticity in front of the eyes of the public.
From this temporary glimpse of communal unity and social
understanding, Longfellow is thrust down into the emotional abyss of
further disillusionment and a feeling of the pointlessness of all his actions.
He awaits the court sanity hearing in the custody of the County Hospital.
However, the atmosphere of the hospital ward scene differs a lot from the
one discussed above. The glimmer of hope evoked by the conviction of his
populist actions’ propriety evaporates rapidly and the protagonist is
pictured in a state of utter breakdown and capitulation, leading him into
the refusal of legal or any other form of help and finally results in his
sinking into silence.
A dramatic change of the sequence stylistics will not escape the
attention of the viewer. The interior of the hospital custody is a gloomy,
confined, scarcely furnished space with a claustrophobic impression
intensified by the overpowering darkness of the location; the only light
illuminating the figures inside comes from outside of the barred window.
However, the view Capra offers to the audience is the one from the
perspective of the entrance door and what we can see are the faceless dark
silhouettes of Mr. Deeds sitting in a stooped pose and staring blankly
114 Chapter Four

through the window and Cobb bending over him. Such a visual depiction
of the bleakness of the character’s circumstances evokes the realization
that the discussed sequence can no longer be perceived within the stylistics
of purgatorial comedy. Its film noir mood and visual effects, together with
the protagonist’s nonverbal reply to the situation, provide the information
that the real drama unfolds in “in an underworld of the human spirit” and,
therefore, the sequence belongs to the infernal realm.
Capra’s cinematic world of inferno is a noir period experience of
darkness and despair.19 In the trilogy, however, the state turns out to be
temporary and therefore it allows the character to be transferred back into
purgatory in the end and thus be redeemed and restored to life. Within the
infernal sequences the protagonists are devoid of effective helpers but such
a state frequently results from the protagonists’ infernal loss of confidence
in others as well as their bitter intention to give up and retreat. Until now
Deeds had managed to convert some of the big city cynics, e.g. his press
agent Cobb, who would now be happy to provide Deeds with any possible
form of help. In a ward scene, however, Cobb’s emotional attempts to
persuade Deeds about the necessity to stand up and fight for the cause are
silently rejected as Deeds chooses to trust no one. At this juncture the
decision to stay on his own is his own choice as well as a sign of his
psychological and emotional distress. “He’s sunk so low, he doesn’t want
help from anybody,” Cobb informs Bennett. Capra comments on the
situation with use of low-key lighting indicating that the only “light”
Deeds can expect may come from the outside world. For the time being,
however, the character rejects it and is therefore bound to remain in the
depths of an inner inferno.
Throughout the entire asylum scene Deeds remains in a static position;
as if paralysed, he keeps gazing intensely into the distance. The motif
appears in many of Capra’s movies but, as Carney accurately points out,
from Mr. Deeds the pattern changes its former meaning and it now
symbolises the hero’s “deepest despair or abject withdrawal from the
world [and] evidence of impotence, cynicism, failure, or abandonment of
hope.”20 It is also a frequent feature of Capra’s populist stories that at a

19
It is interesting to note that the noir-elements, which are undeniably present in
the trilogy, in the case of Mr. Deeds predate film noir as a genre, which is accepted
to have begun with John Huston's Maltese Falcon in 1941.
20
Carney indicates that before Mr. Deeds the motif of gazing into the distance
symbolised the character’s romantic “state of imaginative elevation and meditative
abstraction”. In Capra’s populist movies, it acquired a new meaning. See Carney,
American Vision, 263.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 115

certain point the central character is drawn “to the verge of suicide.”21 In
the case of Mr. Deeds the suicidal motif is realized symbolically by means
of his alienation and socially incongruous conduct within the infernal
sequence, which ultimately threatens to bring him to public self-
annihilation.
Deeds’ persistent silence continues during most of the decisive court
sanity hearing. In fact, even his answers to the inquiries of a sympathetic
judge are nonverbal. The hero is not represented by any legal counsel and,
what is more, he does not intend to defend himself against any of the
charges. The hearing starts with Mr. Cedar’s theatrical brief of the
defendant's behaviour during his stay in New York. In a cunning fashion
the lawyer presents Deeds as an irresponsible, childish, and utterly
unpredictable character. The judge and the audience (both the one present
in the court, and the one viewing the movie) are offered the story of
Deeds’ conspicuous detachment from reality manifested in the acts of
playing the tuba “in the midst of normal conversation,” feeding doughnuts
to a horse, or jumping aboard a fire engine. For the sake of proving Deeds’
derangement Cedar produces the witnesses connected with various spheres
of cultural and social life of New York and Mandrake Falls. A respected
opera singer recounts how she and other members of New York musical
elite were “bodily” ejected from Deeds’ house; the physicians from the
County Hospital testify that Deeds refused to be professionally examined;
and two elderly ladies brought from his home town especially for the sake
of the hearing declare that Deeds is and has always been “pixilated”.22 The
picture is completed by the long tirade of the famous Austrian psychiatrist,
Dr. Von Hallor, who, on the basis of the special chart illustrating
changeability of mood, pronounces the diagnosis of Deeds being a clear
case of manic depression.
In spite of Deeds’ silence the court hearing scene is not a quiet one, it
is just the opposite. The skilfully delivered accusatory speech of Cedar
meets with an instant spontaneous reaction of the public, who realize the
gravity of the situation and recognize the fact that there is an urgent need
to make Longfellow speak and defend himself; otherwise he is irrevocably
bound to remain in the catatonic infernal realm. It is Babe (whose series of
Cinderella-man articles are used as strong exhibits for the prosecution)
who finally rises to plead in Deeds’ defence. She confesses the real reason

21
Carney, American Vision, 71.
22
The term “pixilated”, as one of the psychiatrists present in the courtroom
explains, “is an early American expression–derived from the word 'pixies,'
meaning elves. They would say, 'The pixies had got him,' as we nowadays say a
man is “balmy”.
116 Chapter Four

for writing the articles, i.e. the promise of a raise and a month's vacation,
and states that everything she wrote about Deeds was coloured so as to
make him look silly. As she tells the judge, Deeds has been hurt so many
times since he came to New York that it is only natural he does not want to
be subject to any further humiliation. “Why shouldn’t he keep quiet?” she
explains tearfully. “Every time he said anything it was twisted around to
sound imbecilic.”
Though silent, Deeds listens attentively to the charges and subsequent
testimonies of the authoritative witnesses and quickly acknowledges the
absurdity of the scene he watches as if from the perspective of a detached
viewer. Furthermore, throughout the entire hearing sequence we may
observe Deeds’ facial response to the evidence provided by each nitwit
witness and it clearly communicates the character’s gradual change of
attitude and his growing irritation which reaches the highest point during
Dr. Von Hallor’s lecture. Nevertheless, it is still not enough of a stimulus
to restore Deeds’ will to fight and, hence, the court proclaims the
resolution to commit him to an institution for the sake of his own good. It
takes Babe’s fervent public pronouncement of her love to Deeds to finally
revive him. The confession is followed by the stream of objections from
Babe’s editor, Cobb, and finally the farmers’ dramatic appeals: “What
about us Mr. Deeds? You’re not going to leave us in the cold?”
Thus, Deeds finally rises to speak and systematically refutes the
charges by means of providing a reasonable explanation to every
occurrence mentioned by Cedar. He manages to straighten up the severely
deformed psychological portrait of his own person, and in a comic fashion
exposes before the judge the real reason of the hearing, i.e. the financial
profit of Cedar and Semple, as well as the whole artificiality of it. As
Poague suggests, Deeds needed

to be made aware that his basic personal faith in the common man is
justified no matter how crazy or fanatic some men might be, and once he
[did] so, his faith and intelligence [were] more than enough to convince the
court of his sanity.23

The act of conquering the silence culminating in the victorious speech

delivered by Deeds can be interpreted as one more transition from the
infernal to the purgatorial realm. The character overcomes despair and
resumes the quest which eventually will be brought to an end in the
komos-like ritual victory. Before it may happen, however, Deeds must
consciously acknowledge the difference between the status quo of the real

23
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 177.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 117

world and his projections of it. He is able to rise and speak only after he
agrees to accept that Babe Bennett is just a human being, with her virtues
and vices, and therefore apt to err, and not the unworldly princess he
imagined her to have been. He must also realize the pointlessness of the
attempts to “flee from the repressive forms of society”,24 since, as Carney
accurately notices: “Codes are everywhere, and everything is encoded. [...]
Any momentary leverage over social discourse can and must be achieved
within the system.”25 Deeds’ example proves the above statement since his
immature impulse to cut himself off from the world resulting in his
withdrawal into silence and inarticulateness at a crucial moment led him to
a much worse state of infernal hopelessness, insecurity and ideological
capitulation. Poague calls the act of Deeds’ retreat into silence a mistake.26
Carney, on the other hand, offers quite a different interpretation, stating
that Deeds’ personal disaster, subsequent despair and nihilism are only
stages he passes through on the way to be released to creativity and
freedom, which ultimately is expressed in the final court address.27
Therefore, the infernal sequence may be considered to be an indispensable
phase for the completion of the character’s maturation. Deeds must be
woken up to creativity within the social system. By means of accepting it,
he manages to escape from the ever threatening claws of moral cynicism.
The quest may begin once more and Deeds becomes the conscious
spokesman of populism. Thus, the previously discussed Poague’s concept
claiming the need to achieve “spiritual constancy” and “intellectual
honesty” for the sake of acquisition of a clear-sighted viewpoint finds the
realization within Deeds’ courtroom utterance.
The arguments presented in Deeds’ climactic speech prove that his
homestead scheme is a sincere commonsense-based populist action and
not the project of “a diseased mind, afflicted with hallucinations of
grandeur and obsessed with an insane desire to become a public
benefactor,” as Cedar suggests. It is, in fact, based on the simple idea
clearly inspired by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal social program.
Furthermore, the plan to distribute the money among those who are in
need is the realization of Capra’s conviction that “every person should
help those who are below them.”28
It is hardly surprising that such an idea was born in the mind of
Longfellow Deeds. Although he is the first in the line of Capra’s populist

24
Carney, American Vision, 291.
25
Carney, American Vision, 291.
26
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 177.
27
See Carney, American Vision, 293.
28
Capra quoted in McBride, Frank Capra, 339.
118 Chapter Four

heroes to be born within the next decade, Deeds is equipped with social,
psychological and ideological traits which will also become the core of the
character of his successors like, e.g. Mr. Smith. Apart from sheer
goodness, honesty and belief in the common man and common good, they
are both patriots. The decisive argument for Deeds’ coming to New York
was the wish to see Grant’s tomb–the sign of the protagonist’s patriotic
identification. It may seem startling at first glance that Deeds chooses
Ulysses Grant for his patriotic hero. As Poague suggests: “Grant is perhaps
the least idealized (or idealizable) of the populist Gods that Capra could
have chosen.”29 Nevertheless, it is Grant’s small town origin and Deeds’
profound admiration for courage and perseverance of this small town boy
on his way to the presidential chair that might be the answer for the
protagonist’s choice. After all, Grant’s life story represents the
quintessence of the American Dream incarnated into life. Deeds profound
appreciation of Grant’s achievements are expressed in an answer he
provides to Babe’s question about his first impression of the tomb, since
“to most people it is a washout.” Deeds states:

I see a small Ohio farm boy becoming a great soldier. I see thousands of
marching men. I see General Lee with a broken heart surrendering. And I
can see the beginning of the new nation, like Abraham Lincoln said. And I
can see that Ohio boy being inaugurated as President. Things like that can
only happen in a country like America.

Deeds, therefore, conspicuously aspires to join the legion of American

Dream warriors.
Looking at the tomb, Deeds seems to understand both the possibilities
and responsibilities entailed by the successful realization of the American
Dream. “The fellows who can make the hill on high should stop once in a
while to help those who can’t,” as Deeds professes at his sanity hearing.
His populist inclinations, expressed through the patriotic sentimentalism,
are in fact signalled at the very beginning of the film in his intentions to
give the money away or at least to spend it on some beneficial purpose. All
he needs is a stimulus to help him decide what exactly he wants to do with
the fortune. Even though, as McBride points out, “he never seems to have
given a thought to the Depression outside the Norman Rockwellian village
of Mandrake Falls”30 before the inheritance, once he determines the goal,
Deeds engages himself into his philanthropic scheme with an energetic
devotion.

29
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 173.
30
McBride, Frank Capra, 340.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 119

So far I have discussed the populist aspect of Mr. Deeds. I indicated the
stages of Capra’s populist hero’s social maturation within the context of
purgatorial and infernal modes of comedy. I also pointed out that both
modes interweave with each other and are indispensable for the
completion of the protagonist’s populist development. In the subsequent
part of the chapter I will examine romantic nature of the hero and the
heroine as well as the story in general.
The character of Longfellow Deeds has been given a great deal of
attention since the film first appeared onscreen and throughout the decades
the critics have provided us with detailed analyses of the character.
Perhaps the most surprising statement came from Frank Capra himself:
“Mr. Deeds was honest, but not necessarily an idealist.”31 I may agree with
the above thesis only partially, however. It is true that Deeds’ down-to-
earth attitude towards managing his newly acquired fortune displays the
hero's strong attachment to common sense rather than idealism;
nevertheless, the same can hardly be stated in regard to his romantic
relationship to Mary Dowson.
It is still in Mandrake Falls that we learn from Deeds’ housekeeper
about his chivalric idea to “save the lady in distress.” Deeds’ romantic idea
of love is further complemented by the vision of an imaginary girl he used
to hope for back in his hometown: “I used to hike a lot through the woods
and I used to take this girl with me so I could talk to her. I’d show her my
pet trees and things. [...] I haven’t married ‘cause I’ve been kind of
waiting. [...] I’ve always hoped that someday that imaginary girl would
turn out to be real.” As soon as Deeds finds Mary in need of assistance just
in front of his own house, he clings to the idea that she is the divine
answer to his reveries, and he projects his dreams and desires onto her tout
de suite. It has not been long since he came to New York; nevertheless, he
has already managed to acknowledge the harshness of big city rules. It is
hardly surprising, therefore, that he allows himself to be dazed by the
flood of warm emotions towards the woman he considers the only honest
and sincere person among the predatory fakes he is constantly exposed to.
In Deeds’ eyes Mary is the embodiment of all his youthful ideals. She is
beautiful, sensitive, smart, good and, what is most vital, she is “the lady in
distress”, which he dreamily states aloud at their first meeting.
Love comes to Deeds in a much the same fashion as it does to Capra’s
other romantic heroes: out of the blue and all of the sudden. It is amazing
and demands no proofs. Similarly, as in the paradisal comedy mode, to
Deeds love is, “like divine grace [...] brings clarity and purpose to a

31
Capra quoted in Schickel, The Men Who Made Movies, 74.
120 Chapter Four

desperately corrupt world.”32 And truly, while it lasts on a visionary level,

i.e. before Mary’s deceit is exposed, it provides the hero with the strength
to cope with the hostile New York reality. However, unlike the paradisal
mode, purgatorial comedies entail bitter experiences and the necessity to
ultimately reconcile the hero’s idealistic vision with factual reality. Thus,
the visionary fairy tale-like goddess must be recognized as a human being.
In fact, as Poague notices:

Longfellow’s great disappointment in [Mary] results less from what she

actually is than from his fantastic notions of what she should be. Deeds
clearly demands too much of her, and his romantic mistake is to assume
that actual angels exist in an unangelic world.33

The reason for Deeds’ fervent projection of his vision onto Mary can
be ascribed to his romantic desire for rural green world innocence. In
Capra’s populist movies, however, the divergence between the worlds of
small town and big city is sharply determined: the small town is associated
with positive values and honest people, whereas the big city with the
opposite features. Deeds’ search for a green world within the sterility of
New York is doomed to failure from the start. Nevertheless, the hero is
wrongly convinced that he found green world virtues in Mary.
It is not by coincidence that Capra chooses a rainy evening for the
characters to meet for the first time. Having escaped his bodyguards,
Deeds appears on the steps of his estate and takes his hat off so that he
could feel the pouring rain. With a pleased smile he appreciatively rubs the
rain into his hair. The scene is the first out of the series of Deeds’ romantic
attempts to unite with nature in New York and it is actually the first time
since his arrival that we see him smile; at last he is outside of his interiors
and on his own. At this point, he is wrongly assured of being finally safe
from the institutional context and the master of his own fate. Yet the
moment he walks out of the gate he becomes the viewer of Babe Bennett’s
cunning performance. She skilfully acts the part of a poor girl fainting out
of exhaustion after a desperate all-day-long search for a job. Deeds’
chivalric instincts are awoken instantly and in a heavy rain–Capra’s
denotation of fertility of the prospective relationship–he rushes to rescue
his “lady in distress”.
Deeds’ conviction of grasping a piece of non-institutionalised privacy
within his meetings with Mary turns out to be erroneous, since she

32
Brill, The Hitchcock Romance, 20. Brill’s concept of romantic love was
discussed in detail in the previous chapter.
33
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 172.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 121

represents an institution herself, and it is her own will and intellect that
shape Longfellow’s media portrait and gradually deprive him of his natural
optimism and strength to fight for valuable causes. Capra’s purgatorial
comedies offer no escape from “institutional predation,”34 and Deeds’
romantic trysts with Mary will be constantly accompanied by the hired
photographers. Therefore, the hero’s escape from big city sterility is as
artificial as New York purgatorial “green places” themselves. There are
several occasions when we have a chance to witness the meetings of
Longfellow and Mary. In fact, apart from the first meeting, which takes
place in the literati restaurant, the heroes spend the rest of them on the
move sightseeing the city or just walking along the streets as if in search of
a natural asylum. Nevertheless, despite the fact that we may spot some
surrogates of a green world in the scenes: the blossoming tree over Deeds’
head by Grant’s tomb; the mist enhancing the characters during their
evening walk; the moonlit park bench they sit on to rest; the impression of
apparent peacefulness of the natural surrounding is being disturbed by the
noise and constant movement of the cars flooding behind the characters or
people rushing by them. The artificiality of the purgatorial big city nature
becomes even more conspicuous when compared to its depiction in
Capra’s paradisal mode. The sentimental park bench scene, in which
Longfellow and Mary talk about their nostalgic memories of the small
towns they come from in fact has a counterpart in a similar scene in You
Can’t Take It With You. It is also a New York moonlit evening and,
similarly, the couple sits on a bench discussing memories and ideals from
the past. However, instead of the hectic street traffic, as in the case of Mr.
Deeds, there is a silvery, glittering lake behind Alice and Tony, and in their
purity, innocence and genuineness, the characters seem to be an
inseparable part of the landscape. Deeds and Mary, on the other hand, are
deprived of any possibility of harmonizing with nature as long as their
relationship is built on Babe’s falsehood and artificial presumptions and
Deeds’ longing for fulfilment of his imaginary projections. At this point,
all they may get is a false temporary sensation of establishing a natural
bond between each other within the ersatz substitute of the natural green
world.
In the world of Capra’s social comedies, the romantic association with
folk tradition has been replaced with the hero’s longing for nature and
devotion to art. Longfellow Deeds, as many other Capra’s populists, is an
artist. In the face of the impossibility of finding natural green shelter
within purgatorial New York, it is poetry and music which become the

34
Carney, American Vision, 264.
122 Chapter Four

means of the character’s artistic expression and the counterpoint to big city
sterility. Capra presents Deeds playing the tuba on several occasions in the
film and each time the syncopated tunes seem to mirror the hero’s
emotions. He plays his tuba when he first learns of the inheritance and at
the Mandrake Falls train station the moment prior to leaving his hometown
for the first time in his life; subsequently, we see him playing the tuba in
the confines of his New York estate the evening before his proposal to
Mary and the tragic discovery of her deceit. Thus, music accompanies the
hero throughout most of the crucial events in the purgatorial sequences
and it complements his quest. Moreover, it also seems to reflect his ability
to function within the social intercourse and to respond to it. Mr. Deeds’
infernal sequence, in contrast, lacks music as well as it lacks Longfellow’s
verbal response to the drama of the situation. In fact, the second half of the
movie, with the exception of the short newspaper montage, is devoid of
musical soundtrack. It is only after the courtroom scene that the tunes are
to be heard again as a musical illustration of Deeds’ verbal recovery and
his final ritual victory. Therefore, music in Mr. Deeds belongs to the
purgatorial realm and its presence in the sequences provides the
information that the character’s social and ideological quest is still in
progress.
In the previous chapter, I have already discussed Capra’s use of music
as a means of loosening tensions, creating community bonds, or tightening
the ties between the characters. As I will indicate, its function does not
differ in the case of purgatorial mode. Apart from the earlier mentioned
celebratory group scenes, like Deeds’ farewell party at the train station or
his final victory in the courtroom where music becomes the artistic
reflection of the sense of communal unity (recall the communal bus
singing in It Happened One Night), there is at least one more occasion in
the film where the vitality of music is stressed.
The evening park bench scene, mentioned earlier in the context of
Deeds’ futile attempts to find a green world in New York, is also important
for another reason. Namely, it gives a chance to verbalise Longfellow’s
idealistic hopes and nostalgic romanticism as well as his displeasure with a
disappointing city reality. Deeds quotes Thoreau: “They created a lot of
grand palaces here, but they forgot to create the noblemen to put in them,”
and concludes the reflection with the statement: “I’d rather have Mandrake
Falls,” which once more highlights his alienation and sense of
uprootedness.
The couple’s park scene also becomes the crucial stage on the way of
Babe’s conversion from a city cynic to a warm loving woman. It is
probably the first time that she genuinely seems to forget the initial reason
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 123

of her meetings with Deeds and she enjoys their time together thoroughly.
Longfellow’s nostalgic vision of Mandrake Falls brings back Babe’s own
memories of the small town she comes from and of her father who, as she
states with amazement, was very much like Deeds. It turns out that Babe’s
father, like Deeds, was a musician in a town band and that he passed some
of the skills on to his daughter. The fact is meaningful since in Capra’s
filmic universe only positive heroes, and never villains, are capable of
playing instruments. Thus, Babe’s singing and drumming performance of
Swanee River denotes her potential for a transformation into a heroine in
the full sense of the term.
The peculiarity of the case of Longfellow’s and Babe’s park musical
performance lies in the lack of instruments. Nevertheless, it is not a
problem for the romantic improvisers (which Deeds struggles to remain,
and Babe begins to be attracted to). They form their duet with use of a
stick, a trash can and the imaginary tuba on which Deeds imaginatively
intones Humoresque along with Babe’s Swanee River. This intimate
common musical festivity becomes vital especially to Babe, since through
it she gets the opportunity to acknowledge Deeds’ authenticity and
reconsider her own moral attitude. It is still the same night that Babe
reveals her moral doubts and remorse to her roommate and professes her
writing crisis and inability to write the Cinderella Man articles anymore.
So, in the case of Mr. Deeds, music can claim to play a more complex role
than just the artistic means of shaping close relationships. As has already
been stated, it also reflects Longfellow’s quest for ideals as well as his
capability of their articulation within the social context. Moreover, it also
bears the power to instigate Babe’s positive transformation.
Deeds’ artistic nature is illustrated twofold: he is a musician but also a
poet and, thus, a master of words. This ability turns out to be handy in
many aspects of Deeds’ New York life. Words become his most powerful
weapon in the final courtroom battle but they are also a means to express
his romantic desires. On the evening he meets Mary and rescues her from
the “distress” he takes her to the literati restaurant. The choice of the place
exposes Deeds’ need for strengthening his artistic identity on unfriendly
New York turf and the mere literary association of the restaurant seem to
gratify this need. Thus, it seems that Deeds intends his courtship of Mary
to be an artistic experience too.
Nevertheless, as in the literati restaurant scene where Deeds summons
the gypsy violinist to express with music what he does not have the
courage to say to Mary with his own voice, later on his proposal to Mary
will similarly be conducted in the form of a poem written on a piece of
paper and therefore excluding the necessity to use the voice. Thus, the
124 Chapter Four

state of the character’s inarticulateness can be the sign not only of infernal
disillusionment and mute protest against reality but also of the romantic
hero’s conviction of superiority of artistic means of expression over the
elusiveness and limitations of human voice.
In his American Vision Carney devotes a great deal of attention to the
subject of the characters’ “public expressive limitations”.35 His thesis that
“language in any public, conventional use of it proves inadequate to
‘speak’ the feelings of [the] ‘heart’”36 is true in the cases of both Deeds
and Bennett. Having recognized this inadequacy, at the crucial romantic
moments, Deeds uses music and poetry to communicate his feelings.
Babe’s situation is, however, more difficult since on the verge of her
transformation she lacks the fertile artistic skills. Moreover, at the moment
of Longfellow’s proposal, she is fully aware of the vileness of her deceit as
well as the magnitude of harm inflicted on him. Therefore, in this light,
she is conscious of the utter impropriety of expressing her feelings for
Deeds. Capra depicts Bennett’s romantic melodrama in a non-verbal way
with use of “expressive lighting, photographic close-ups, and accelerated
rhythms [which] pick up the burden of signification that verbal language
cannot bear.”37 At this stage of the characters relationship “the intensity of
Bennett’s desire cannot be spoken in any more direct way than between
the lines, in her pauses and stutterings, in the near hysteria of her tones, in
the silence of her agitated gestures and looks.”38
Babe will acquire the ability of verbal expression of her love and
affection only after she confesses her guilt and completes the process of
imaginative romantic transformation. Carney suggests that, contrary to
some of Capra’s earlier pictures, in the case of Mr. Deeds, Mr. Smith, and
Meet John Doe

for lovers to be together [...] is not to look off in the same direction, to
meditate together, or to share a vision or a dream but to talk together. [...]
Characters must learn to convert their capacity for imagination and vision
into practical worldly forms of verbal and social performance.39

And it is only in the grand finale that both Bennett and Deeds prove
they have possessed and mastered this capacity. The final scene clearly
indicates that the completion of Longfellow’s social maturation process

35
Carney, American Vision, 285.
36
Carney, American Vision, 285.
37
Carney, American Vision, 285.
38
Carney, American Vision, 285.
39
Carney, American Vision, 280.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 125

converges with Babe’s ultimate romantic transformation. At the end of the

story Deeds turns into the populist speaker of humanism and the romantic
warrior fighting not for imaginary fairy tale concepts but for real ideals of
common good and social justice. Babe’s transformation, on the other hand,
allows her to regain the fertile virtues she had once possessed.
Furthermore, she is now able to express her romantic emotions overtly and
possesses the strength to fight for her beloved. In the final sequences of the
movie, Babe becomes the symbol of, as Cedar states, typical American
womanhood.
Consequently, it is love that enables the heroes to speak and act again.
As Frye’s elaboration on romanticism determines, love is amazing and has
nothing to do with laws or logic.40 Clearly, this aspect of romantic love
also remains unaltered in the case of purgatorial comedy and in Mr. Deeds,
as in paradisal mode, love is still a healing power which averts apathy and
provides strength; it conquers all impediments and leads the hero and the
heroine to a ritual komos.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

and Meet John Doe (1941)
The purgatorial quest of a romantic populist is also the main concern of
the two subsequent films of Capra’s trilogy: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
and Meet John Doe. Both of the movies can be considered complementary
and a further rumination on the subject matter started with Mr. Deeds, i.e.
the restriction of the individual’s actions in the face of destructive
financial, business and political machine of the corrupt modern world. Mr.
Deeds and Mr. Smith can both be claimed to have similar narrative
constructions. However, they differ in respect of mood which darkens
more and more from one film to another to culminate in John Doe. The
almost tangible gloom of Mr. Smith and Meet John Doe reflects the
shadow of World War II looming over the world. The films are, therefore,
Capra’s response to the situation, emphasizing the need for recalling and
consolidating the democratic values and the necessity of their revival
within social consciousness.
For the above reasons I have chosen to present the plots of Mr. Smith
and Meet John Doe at the beginning of the sub-section, which will enable
me to refer to various common aspects of the movies throughout the
subsequent analysis of both films.

40
See Brill, The Hitchcock Romance, 21.
126 Chapter Four

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington41 is based on a Lewis R. Foster short

story The Gentleman from Montana. The plot of the movie to a great
extent recalls the pattern of Mr. Deeds. The main hero, Jefferson Smith
(James Stewart), a young political idealist, and boy scout leader, goes to
Washington to replace a deceased senator for the rest of his term. He is
quickly made to realize that the real position he is to occupy in the Senate
is that of an “honorary stooge” for the benefit of Smith’s state’s local
party’s boss Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold) and his pawns: the state governor
(Guy Kibbee) and the senior senator, Joseph Paine (Claude Rains). The
three tycoons hope that Smith’s naiveté will help them to launch the
fraudulent Deficiency bill by means of his voting for it. In spite of the
discovery of Taylor’s deceitful plan, Smith goes along with the idea of
sponsoring a bill for his own project of founding a national boys camp.
The project, however, turns out to be an obstacle for the realization of
Taylor’s irrigation bill as it concerns the same area of land. Before Smith
has a chance to expose the affair, the crooks pass the blame on him and
accuse him of being a fraud and therefore unworthy of being a senator.
Aided by an idea of Saunders (Jean Arthur), his secretary, who in the
course of the story overcomes her big city cynicism and scepticism
towards the young senator’s lofty ideology and falls in love with him,
Smith resorts to a filibuster with the hope of proving his innocence. After
an inspired almost twenty-four-hour long speech, the Senate is delivered
thousands of telegrams demanding an end to Smith’s filibuster and that he
resign his post. Having realized that the telegrams, the supposed
transmitters of public opinion were, in fact, manufactured as a result of
Taylor’s persistent political propaganda, the disillusioned Smith collapses.
At the final sequence, when apparently everything is lost, Senator Paine,
Smith’s surrogate father, breaks down and, after an unsuccessful suicidal
attempt at the Senate Chamber, he reveals the truth and announces senator
Smith’s innocence.
The third part of Capra’s social trilogy, Meet John Doe,42 is based on a
short story by Richard Connell - A Reputation. The working title The Life
and Death of John Doe was subsequently shortened to The Life of John
Doe, and finally Meet John Doe was agreed upon.43 The film is probably
the darkest and the most distressing one of the trilogy. Before showing the
film to the public Capra revealed that the seriousness of the theme of a

41
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in 1940 was nominated for the Academy Awards
in ten categories and won one Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story.
42
Meet John Doe in 1942 was nominated for Academy Awards in category Best
Writing, Original Story, but did not win the Oscar.
43
See McBride, Frank Capra, 429.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 127

domestic fascist using media to manufacture American ideals for the sake
of gaining political power and utter control over people “would astonish
the critics with contemporary realities; the ugly face of hate; the power of
uniformed bigots in red, white, and blue shirts; the agony of
disillusionment; and the wild dark passions of the mobs.”44
The first sequences of the film introduce a young journalist, Ann
Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck). In order to save her job at the New Bulletin,
she exercises a publicity stunt by means of writing a letter from an
imaginary John Doe, who declares that he will jump off the roof of City
Hall on Christmas Eve in protest against the disastrous state of civilization.
The letter meets with a wide response from society and Ann considers it
profitable to hire someone for the role and publicize the story through the
media. Long John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), an ex-baseball player,
agrees to play the role of John Doe as he hopes that the money he gets for
the job will enable him to gain therapy for fixing his bad arm. John Doe’s
first radio speech (written by Ann) in which he calls for neighbourly love
and simple human kindness creates a national commotion and results in
the creation of John Doe Clubs throughout the whole country. The
problem arises when the owner of the newspaper, D. B. Norton (Edward
Arnold), demands to be announced as a candidate for presidency during
the approaching national John Doe convention. Long John refuses to do it,
since by this time he has been so converted as to believe in John Doe’s
philosophy, and the apolitical nature of the clubs is one of the bedrock
ideas. In response, Norton resolves to destroy Doe and the clubs with the
power of his political machine and at the convention reveals that John Doe
is a fake. The people turn against Doe and in the depth of despair John
decides to jump off the City Hall roof so as to prove that, even if he
himself is an impostor, John Doe’s ideals are not fake after all. It takes
Ann’s declaration of love and the pleas of some John Doe club members to
persuade him not to jump but to try to restore the clubs once more,
notwithstanding the vicious schemes of any political tyrants.
In both Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Meet John Doe Capra
introduces his main characters in an unconventional way. By the time
they first appear onscreen, the viewer is informed about their
entanglement “in a complex, extended web of elaborated relationships, a
reticulated network of pressures, influences, and significances.”45
Therefore, we are made aware of the inevitability of the heroes’ stepping
onto the purgatorial path and experiencing infernal disaster before they

44
Capra, The Name Above The Title, 297.
45
Carney, American Vision, 306.
128 Chapter Four

are able to establish their mature identity or social consciousness. Jeff

Smith, an inspired leader of boy rangers who knows the speeches of
Washington and Lincoln by heart, is appointed a senator and accepts the
position with the eagerness and zeal of a contemporary Prometheus,
unaware of the fact that his appointment is the result of the political
mogul’s, Jim Taylor’s, search for someone who “would take orders” on
how to vote. John Willoughby is chosen by Ann to play the role of John
Doe for similar reasons: the embodiment of an American common man, a
handsome unemployed ex-baseball player that will do what he is told to
for the money he needs for his arm surgery which would allow him to get
back to the field. Despite the initial difference of moral attitude of both
the characters, there is at least one similarity between Smith’s and
Willoughby’s situation at the beginning of the movies: the moment they
say yes to the offered roles they become actors performing scripts written
by someone else.46 However, whereas Long John agrees to it with the
consciousness of a cynic interested merely in his own financial profit, Jeff
is oblivious to the fact that his appointment is designed to support the evil
political machine of the villains. He is a naive, inspired, Lincoln-like
figure whose reverence toward grand patriotic values are displayed in
almost his every movement and it just never occurs to him “that anyone
would misuse the tradition on which the country was founded.”47
Nevertheless, the fact that Long John’s decision to participate in the John
Doe publicity stunt was made consciously turns out to be insignificant,
since in the end he undergoes a transformation turning him into a real
believer in the John Doe ideology, and the fight for it will lead him
through the equally difficult purgatorial path as the one undertaken by
Jeff Smith at the very beginning. As in the case of Deeds, the maturation
process is needed for Smith and Doe to become full populist heroes.
We meet Mr. Smith for the first time after his miraculous coin-toss
elevation to the Senate at a “star-spangled banquet” held in his honour.
The scene’s pregnant symbolism indicates the patriotic idealism of the
newly appointed senator before he even has a chance to articulate his
promise not to disgrace the office of the U.S. Senate. As he rises to express
his gratitude for the appointment in a frail, low-key voice, Capra offers the
view of Smith’s figure against the image of the Capitol composed from
white flowers on the wall behind him. Subsequently, the scene of the
celebratory entrance of Boy Rangers carrying an American Flag, as
watched from the perspective of Smith, provides the direct view of the

46
See Carney, American Vision, 272.
47
Gehring, Populism And The Capra Legacy, 9.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 129

portraits of Washington (the symbol of America’s founding) and Lincoln48

(a martyred political hero of the U.S.A.). The significance of these
elements becomes even more transparent when connected to the actual
name of the protagonist: Jefferson Smith–the compound of the founding
father of democracy and the American Everyman. Mr. Smith is a pure
idealist with a naive faith in the purity of the realization of democratic
ideals within a governmental institution. This is the trait that both Deeds
and Doe lack. Deeds’ down-to-earthness and appreciation of common
sense make him intuitively distrust institutions from the very start; while
Doe, on the other hand, initially does not care whether the institution he
gets entangled with serves good or evil as long as he gets paid. At the
beginning of the film Smith is thus in a highly vulnerable position and
unprotected against the purgatorial and infernal experiences awaiting him.
Jeff’s coming to Washington recalls Deeds’ arrival in New York. Once
more Capra stresses the misplacement of his hero within big city reality.
Jeff reaches Washington in the company of his late father’s best friend,
Senator Joseph Paine, who is going to be Smith’s mentor and guardian in
Congress. However, the contrast between Paine’s sterility and Smith’s
fertility of ideological attitude is exposed very soon during the train
journey where the genuineness of Smith’s emotional involvement with
democratic ideals is juxtaposed with Senator Paine’s secret engagement in
dishonest projects of the villain. Capra does not let the viewer wait long
for further evidence of Smith’s romantic eccentricity and small-town
detachment from big city rules. As Deeds before him, Smith is driven by a
natural longing for the green world, which in Capra’s social comedies are
frequently exchanged for art. Deeds begins his search by means of escape
from the oppressive presence of institutional emissaries on the rainy
evening, resulting in his meeting Mary Dowson. Smith’s desire for the
green world, in this case incorporated in the form of architectural historical
monuments, turns out to be even stronger, since the mere sight of the
Capitol dome seen from the station window at the moment of his arrival to
Washington makes him walk towards it as if in a trance. In fact, Jeff makes
an all day long tour through the emblems of American history before he
finally gets to his office in the evening.
Similar attempts of romantic improvisation will be undertaken by Jeff
in the course of the story and its originality and incompatibility with the
fossilized social system will beget the opinion of Jeff being a naive
simpleton. However, as Carney accurately claims, “the comic disengagement

48
Stephen Handzo claims Lincoln to be the original Mr. Smith and Christ figure of
American politics. See Handzo “Under Capracorn,” 170.
130 Chapter Four

from society of Deeds, Smith, and Doe represents not stupidity but a form
of radical criticism, not naiveness but extreme idealism.”49
It is the same cherished green world ideology that makes Jeff think
about creating a national boys’ camp in Terry Canyon by Willet Creek for
the boys to come and be taught the wonders of nature and the values of
American democracy, thanks to which “every man is free to think and to
speak” (“Liberty is too precious a thing to be buried in books”). The
governmental loan drawn for the realization of the project would be paid
off by the contribution of the boys. However, the location proposed for the
camp happens to be the area of Jim Taylor’s fraudulent operations and, in
fact, the mogul has been purchasing the land under false names to be used
for his financial benefit after the Deficiency bill has been passed. Jeff’s
proposal of his camp bill in the Senate ignites the “Taylor machine”
designed either to bring into line or destroy any inconvenient
troublemaker. The innocent populist scheme of Smith constitutes a threat
of exposure of the political and financial corruption of Jeff’s state affairs
and the politicians standing behind it. For this reason Jeff is, of necessity,
introduced into the “man’s world,” as Senator Paine calls it. A dramatic
confrontation with Jim Taylor, in which he is informed about the fact of
the mogul’s being his state’s eminence grise pulling the strings and giving
orders to Paine, among others, is a heavy blow for Jeff. Smith refuses to
“compromise” in return for a proposed everlasting political career and asks
Paine for the confirmation of the bitter truth. The conversation takes place
at Paine’s office. It is an awkward moment in which the senior senator
explains to his junior colleague the tough rules of the “man’s world”.
However, the message of Paine’s lecture could as well remain unspoken as
it is indicated visually by means of Capra’s arrangement of the portraits on
the wall and the placement of the two main characters in the scene. The
scene is static and Jeff’s fevered emotions are displayed only in his facial
expression. The configuration of the two figures in the office makes the
existing hierarchy obvious: Senator Paine sits on his desk with the portrait
of Jim Taylor right above his head (Senator Paine symbolically portrayed
as a living prolongation of Taylor’s ideas), but Smith, standing in his usual
lanky pose, is at the same level as the mighty mogul’s picture. Such a
mise-en-scene suggests Jeff’s determination to oppose Jim Taylor’s world
order.
The discovery of the brutal status quo strikes Jeff with a double force
as he has to face a double disappointment: with the idealised American
political system and with his long admired and worshiped surrogate father,

49
Carney, American Vision, 309.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 131

Joseph Paine. It is perhaps the latter that Jeff accepts with more incredulity
as he has been brought up in the air of reverence for Paine, his idealist
father’s best friend and companion in heroic fights for “the lost causes” to
which Clayton Smith literally gave his life.
Joseph Paine is not, however, an unequivocal character. Unlike Taylor,
who beyond any doubt can be called a villain, Paine’s categorization is
more troublesome. With his past commitment to “lost causes” and a clear
sentiment for Jeff’s idealistic philosophy expressed already during the
train journey in his recollection of Jeff’s father, as well as in his gazing out
through the window as if in search of the lost ideals of the youth50 and,
finally, considering the fact that his political career brought him the
nickname of the Silver Knight,51 Paine cannot be treated as a plain villain.
It seems Paine would still represent Jeff’s morality, had he not consented
to James Taylor’s “tailoring”52 of his identity thirty years earlier. An
interesting triangle of relationships emerges from the above equation.
Poague interprets them in the romantic terms of the archetypal Faustian
relation: the hero-Smith–the good angel vs. the villain-Taylor–the bad
angel, and Paine–Faustus caught in the middle.53 Hence, the reverse of the
situation’s picture suggests that “Paine is [...] what Jeff could be were he to
lose his populist faith”54 and agreed to compromise to Taylor’s steamroller,
as Paine advises. It is conspicuous, however, that Paine is resentful
towards the pieces of advice he utters as a Taylor’s messenger and which
aim at transforming an idealistic populist activist into a political
marionette like Paine himself. Nevertheless, he yields to Taylor’s threats
of terminating his political career and dutifully gets down to the task of
destroying Jeff’s political veracity, notwithstanding the fact that “to
destroy Smith [...] is the last step between Paine and complete
damnation.”55 It is in the last sequence of the film that Paine finally can no
longer stand the responsibility for Jeff’s ideological crucifixion and
through a dramatic suicidal attempt he clears Senator Smith of the
allegations of fraud and misconduct and confirms Jeff’s statements
concerning the role and position of James Taylor within his state.

50
The motif of gazing out through the window is, according to Poague, the
frequent habit of Capra’s dreamers. See Poague, Another Frank Capra, 160.
51
During the conversation following Jeff's confrontation with Taylor, Paine admits
that he agreed to compromise thirty years earlier in order to be able to serve his
state well in a thousand honest ways.
52
Recall the symbolic meaning of tailoring Deeds’ attire.
53
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 183.
54
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 184.
55
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 183.
132 Chapter Four

Paradoxically, the sterile suicidal act allows Paine to become a fertile

character once more. Joe Paine is, therefore, Capra’s purgatorial version of
a villain-hero (a weaker Kirby, Sr. type) who, in the course of the story,
like a Dickensian Scrooge, undergoes the conversion of conscience and
regains the heroic features he had once possessed.
Jeff’s refusal to be absorbed into Taylor’s steamroller machinery leaves
him isolated in the arena of politics. The evidence of his owning the very
land on which the camp is designed to be located is fabricated in no time
and the accusation of fraud and corruption is claimed against Smith.
However, to be accused of using nickels and dimes belonging to the boys
from all over the country for his own profit is too much for Jeff, and
without a word spoken in his defence, like Deeds after learning about
Mary’s deceit, Smith decides to leave Washington and return to his home
town. The burden of disillusionment leads him first to the cherished
Abraham Lincoln memorial where, in an air of profound despair, he
contemplates the revered emblems of American democracy once more.
The feeling of Jeff’s uprootedness and otherworldliness is more
conspicuous in this scene than at any earlier point. Capra offers the
viewers the visual study of his hero’s struggle with emotional breakdown
and it takes merely two minutes to illustrate the acuteness of Jeff’s state of
mind by means of the shots of his facial expression entwined with the
pictures of patriotic symbols. This sequence of dramatic silence,
complemented only by music, in which he looks up at the Lincoln statue
as if in a prayer and then down at the ground with disappointment in his
eyes, is a significant moment in Jeff’s maturation process. The bitter
experience, which shakes the basis of his hitherto known world, allows the
childlike boy ranger to absorb Poague’s rule stating the necessity of
accurate perception and estimation of the problem and subsequent finding
an appropriate solution for it. Before he is ready to fulfil the latter,
however, he needs to face his own ideological doubts. He also needs to
establish whom he wants to be: a disillusioned boy ready to give up and
withdraw, thus confirming that the world belongs to Taylor-like dictators;
or a warrior who, like his father, fights for the lost cause in the name of
ideals, justice, freedom of the individual, and “plain, decent, everyday
common rightness.”
The short moment Smith spends at Lincoln’s feet is an infernal
sequence. The alienated, despairing and utterly unheroic hero has been
stripped of his main virtue–romantic ideology and faith in the essential
goodness of men. Like Longfellow Deeds in his infernal asylum, Smith
also rejects the chance to speak and defend himself. In fact, he remains
silent until Saunders finds him at the Lincoln Memorial. Similarly as in
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 133

Mr. Deeds the scene is dark and gloomy. The space is confined by the
pillars on either side and the wall behind Smith with the single window
higher up above his head. The scenery recalls the picture of Deed’s cell
and signifies the claustrophobic seclusion of the character within it. Once
more Capra presents the faceless silhouette of the hero sitting on his
suitcases (packed up for leaving) in the bent position of a folk carving with
his head buried in his hands.
Nevertheless, as it turns out later on, the scenography of the above
sequence can be understood twofold. For Smith, it is certainly an infernal
moment of internal breakdown and conviction of utter impotence and
helplessness. At a closer look, however, one can recognize the signs of
hope that Capra left for the viewers to discover. The choice of the Lincoln
Memorial for a place of Jeff’s contemplations is not incidental. He returns
to the place which on his first day in Washington impressed him so much
with the magnitude of its democratic message, and the figure of Lincoln
has long been the source of the young patriot’s inspiration. Now, in his
search for some clue of how to act, Jeff mistakes the cold solemnity of the
statue of Lincoln with indifference and deceit. However, the lit-up
window, the pillars supporting the monument’s edifice and, finally, the
father figure of Lincoln are all signs of hope, ideological strength and
fatherly protection. It is Jeff’s infernally clouded perception that makes
him unable to decipher their meaning. It takes Saunders (appearing out of
the blue and significantly from the side of light), his helper in the
purgatorial struggle, to translate the signs, revive Jeff’s romantic
inspirations and, consequently, drag him out of his infernal abyss.
Clarissa Saunders is a Babe Bennett type of character–a strong, self-
made woman getting along in a cynical urban world. Unlike Bennett, she
was brought up in the big city of Baltimore and therefore she lacks the
purity of small town perception of Deeds and Smith or small town
memories of Bennett. Nevertheless, as we learn in the course of the story,
her honesty and sentiment for ideological commitment, which come to
light later in the film, were probably passed on to her by her father, a
doctor, who “thought more of ethics than he did about collections.” The
years of solitary work in Washington, however, turn Saunders into a
Bennett-like cynic who cares only about her career and financial profits.
She accurately pronounces her credo within the conversation with Senator
Paine: “When I came here, my eyes were big blue question marks, now
they’re big green dollar marks.” As in the case of Bennett, the sterile
attitude undergoes a transformation under the influence of the fertile
romanticism of Mr. Smith. Her initial contempt for naivety of Jeff is
erased and, what is more, exchanged for admiration and a budding feeling
134 Chapter Four

of love, at the moment of their common work on preparation of the Willet

Creek camp bill when Smith verbally delivers an impressionistic picture of
the land’s beauty:

The prairies and wind leaning on the tall grass, lazy streams down in the
meadows, angry little midgets of water up in the mountains. Cattle moving
down the slope, against the sun. Campfires, and snowdrifts. You know,
everybody ought to have some of that sometime in his life. My dad had the
right idea. He had it all worked out. He used to say to me: "Son, don’t miss
the wonders that surround you. Because every tree, every rock, every
anthill, every star is filled with wonders of nature. [...] Did you ever notice
how grateful you are to see daylight again after coming from a long, dark
tunnel? Well, always try to see life around you as if you just came out of a
tunnel."56

Saunders, “a pure city dweller,” finds the words oddly inspiring and it
seems, as she listens with glossy tearful eyes (indicating her romantic
potential), the thought spoken the next day to her journalist friend, Diz
Moore (Thomas Mitchell), is born at this moment: “I wonder [...] if it isn’t
a curse to go through life wised up like you and me.”
This particular moment of attaining emotional unity between Smith
and Saunders will clearly determine the further chain of events. In fact,
Clarissa’s further actions bring to mind the confused conduct of Babe
Bennett after she recognizes that the zany otherworldliness of Deeds’ is
merely an expression of small town, green world authenticity. Deeds’
awkward rainy night proposal is the final element to make Babe decide to
quit her cynical “smart alec” pose, which brought about Longfellow’s
social crucifixion. Saunders, on the other hand, even though she is
partially responsible for bringing Jeff’s mocking pictures to the first pages
of the newspapers when he first arrives in Washington by allowing him to

56
Jeff’s poetic description of the land on which he hopes to build the boys camp
recalls Peter Warne’s visionary dream of the island in the Pacific. Both are the
romantic visions of the dreamers striving for the realization of desires of their
hearts. It is not insignificant that in both cases the heroes reveal their visions to
their female companions. The response coming from Ellie and Clarissa is alike and
for both the moment initiates a new phase in life. It allows Ellie to declare her
feelings for Peter openly, and thus establish her identity and her longings. For
Clarissa, who has never known a different life style then the one she leads, it is the
moment of reflection on the values and sense of her existence and it makes her
wonder if perhaps there is something more to life than her career and material
well-being. Capra intensifies the emotionality of both scenes by symbolism of light
and water. Light means hope and the tears in the eyes of Ellie and Clarissa signify
the fertile, romantic potential of both heroines.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 135

take part in an unofficial press conference, is not burdened with such grave
a guilt as Bennett. Saunders decides quite quickly she does not want to
participate in Jeff’s “murder”. She informs the ignorant senator of the
treacherous work of Jim Taylor and his associates and in a drunken despair
advises him to go home, since with his decency he does not belong in this
place. Subsequently, like Bennett, she declares that she is quitting her job.
The next time Saunders appears onscreen is in the role of Jeff’s
guardian angel within his film noir infernal sequence. As the scene
unfolds, it becomes clear that Clarissa’s conversion into a romantic
heroine has been completed and that Smith’s green world philosophy is
now closer to her heart than the cynical Dizz Moore’s assumption that
“dopes are going to inherit the earth anyway.” The most direct
confirmation of Saunder’s transformation is provided within the inspired
speech she delivers to the infernally desperate Smith on the steps of
Lincoln Memorial in response to Jeff’s conviction of his utter helplessness
in the face of powerful moguls’ politics:

Your friend, Mr. Lincoln had his Taylors and Paines. So did every other
man who tried to lift his thought up off the ground. Odds against them
didn’t stop them, they were fools that way. All the good that ever came into
this world came from fools with faith like that. You know that. You can’t
quit now. Not you. They aren’t all Taylors and Paines in Washington. That
kind just throw big shadows, that’s all. You didn’t just have faith in Paine
or any other living man. You had faith in something bigger than that. You
had plain, decent, everyday common rightness and this country could use
some of that. So could the whole cockeyed world. A lot of it.

Such inspired poetic rhetoric has been so far exclusive to Jeff Smith
and other Capra romantic heroes like Peter Warne or Longfellow Deeds.
Thus, through obtaining the skill of verbal articulation of the romantic
idealism, Saunders acquires the role of a “transmitter” of Jeff’s voice the
moment he is no longer able to provide it himself within his infernal
alienation. In fact, Smith and Saunders help each other mutually: Jeff
inspires Clarissa’s conversion into the fertile romanticism; Clarissa’s
transformation, on the other hand, becomes a vital element of Smith’s
maturation. Like in the case of Bennett and Deeds, it is Saunders’
declaration of faith in Smith and his ideology that enables Jeff to regain
his voice57 and equips him with strength to step onto the purgatorial path

57
Poague argues that Saunders’ role in Jeff’s regaining the ability to speak is even
more important. He claims her physical presence is, in fact, necessary for Smith’s
verbalisation of his visions. Whenever Saunders is absent from the Senate, Poague
states, Smith is quickly silenced and excluded from the privilege to express his
136 Chapter Four

of a warrior cultivating his father’s belief that an individual can make a

difference.
Hence, for Jefferson Smith, as for Longfellow Deeds, to be mature
means to be identity conscious and to face the assaults of reality within an
oppressive system. Saved from the pit of inferno, in a symbolic gesture of
salute to Lincoln Smith joins the pantheon of American heroes.
Jefferson Smith begins the following day in the Senate with a revived
spirit, combative mood, and a new voice. His harsh infernal experience
made him understand that in order to be heard in the sterile “men’s world”
he has to learn to translate the “language of desire [...] into public forms of
expression.”58 Hence, when he rises to speak, it is no longer with the
stuttering voice of an unskilful novice awkwardly proposing the bill for
the first time. It is the voice of a conscious grown up man convinced of the
propriety of his actions and determined to confront the allegations stated
against him with his head held high. Moreover, at the threshold of his
expulsion from the Senate, Smith is aware that, in all probability, it is his
last chance to speak his rights publicly and it is not merely his reputation
which is at stake, but the future of his state kept in the power of the
political and economic dictator (“The people in my state need permanent
relief from the crooked man riding their backs!”). As Carney suggests, “to
have the ideals and values and not to express them or make them count in
any significant public way would be to remain a Boy Ranger leader back
in Montana or to despair and go scurrying back there at the first evidence
of the difficulty of such public expression in the Senate.”59 Thus, Smith’s
almost twenty-four-hour-long filibuster performed on the floor of the
Senate is the act of the populist fight for social justice and human liberty–
the basic right of every individual guaranteed by the constitution of the
democratic country. It is “democracy in action”.
It is impossible for Jefferson Smith and Longfellow Deeds to avoid
entanglements in the net of social relations. In both cases the characters
sooner or later come to the conclusion that the only way to achieve
freedom and independence within the socially encoded and contextualised
reality is to “plunge deep into [the] system and to find a way to master [it].
The best way out [...] is through.”60 Having realized this, both Deeds and
Smith decide to act, which in both cases is expressed through the heroes'
public solo performances. As soon as Deeds wakes up from his infernal
silence and speaks in his defence during the climactic sanity hearing scene,

opinions freely. See his Another Frank Capra, 169.

58
Carney, American Vision, 337.
59
Carney, American Vision, 337.
60
Carney, American Vision, 311.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 137

the positive result of his performance is almost certain. Smith's

performance, however, although in large measure planned by collaborative
efforts of his and Saunders, is a battle on a much larger scale than the one
of Deeds and its victory can neither be predicted nor guaranteed until the
very end. Hence, whereas Deeds can be called a dramatic actor playing his
part in the local theatre, Smith is more a gladiator in a national arena.
In the course of the movie Jeff Smith is called many names by various
characters in the story: Daniel Boon, Tarzan, old honest Abe, and Don
Quixote among others. All of them indicate Smith’s link to heroic tradition
and in the light of his final act of one-man resistance their accuracy
becomes clear. Robert Willson attributes this mythic dimension of the
main character to the more serious (than in Capra’s earlier movies)
historical and political subject of the film.61 As Diz Moore announces at
the start of Jeff’s performance, Smith’s filibuster “is the most titanic battle
of modern times. A David without even a slingshot rises to battle against
the mighty Goliath, the Taylor machine crooked inside and out.” And
indeed, Jeff’s spurt may create the impression of an inspired Don
Quixote’s attempts to fight the windmills. However, Smith rises to this
battle with something more than his bare hands (and the flask he brings to
the Senate chamber as a comic prop for the play). He is, in fact, armed
with a strength-giving weapon of his Lincolnesque qualities of good-
heartedness and tough-mindedness, his idealism, and a strong conviction
that “fighting for a ‘lost cause’ is the closest [he] can get to heaven.”62 And
the outcome of his strenuous performance brings Smith as close to heaven
as it is possible for a purgatorial romantic hero. Moreover, the entire act
also acquires the meaning of the hero’s purgatorial struggle for achieving
the goal, which by Murphy’s definition can be attained merely partially or
remain on the verge of being achieved. Nevertheless, by no means does
the fact diminish the importance of the filibuster as an act of Smith’s social
and political protest. As Willson claims, it is “the key gesture by which he
forces the Congress to see how it has been diverted from its proper
function.”63 Thus, together with the conversion of Joseph Paine, it may be
stated that Jeff’s efforts are crowned with victory after all.
However, Smith’s actions do not manage to move the heart of the
villain. The aspect of villainy in Mr Smith is much darker than it was in the
case of Mr. Deeds and its intensity will reach its culmination in the third
part of the trilogy, Meet John Doe. Contrary to Deeds, who struggles

61
See Willson, “Capra’s Comic Sense,” 92.
62
Capra quoted in Carney, American Vision, 315.
63
Willson, “Capra's Comic Sense,” 92.
138 Chapter Four

against a rather impersonalised villain,64 i.e. an invalid oppressive system

of institutionalised entanglements, Smith’s and Doe’s enemies are twofold:
the vile system and the powerful executives within it. Smith and Doe have
to literally face the villains and stand up to them.
In Mr. Smith, Capra presents James Taylor's political machine within
which

[t]here are no permanent enemies and no dependable friends in this

impersonal world; there is only a network of shifting power relations to
which one either conforms, to be swallowed up by them, or that one bucks,
to be cast out of them.65

Taylor’s lack of any emotional and personal commitment within this

network allows him to invite new players into the game or get rid of any of
his pawns with regard to the need of the moment. According to Carney,
Capra indicates that Taylor “is a ghost in the machine that can never be
actually exorcised or erased.”66 The accuracy of the above suggestion is
proved by depiction of omnipotence of Taylor’s far-reaching tentacles
involved in organizing the anti-Smith campaign during Jeff’s filibuster
through which Smith hopes to reach the people of his state and make them
protest against Taylor’s corrupt politics. However, instead of the voice of
the populace, the viewer is provided with a hair-raising picture of the
setting in motion of the wheels of the dictator’s steamroller machinery
designed to smash any form of independent individual thought. In no time
at all Taylor manages to turn the media against Smith, making Jeff’s
efforts to communicate his populist message futile. Taylor’s aim to create a
national commotion (“Keep the hoi polloi excited”) is achieved: anti-
Smith assemblies and demonstrations are organized around the state,
newspapers and radio stations accuse Smith of lies and frauds, while the
Boy Rangers’ attempts to save their leader’s good name are quickly
repressed, and in a rather drastic manner. In the end, the mogul’s
propaganda results in delivering to Congress thousands of telegrams–
apparent transmitters of public opinion made to order–demanding the
young senator to yield the floor.
Taylor’s actions remind neither the business and family struggles of

64
Cedar, who is a legal representative of the institutionalised big city reality
threatening Deeds, cannot be treated as an equivalent of James Taylor and D. B.
Norton. Both Taylor and Norton hold real executive power over affairs of national
importance and thus constitute a serious threat not merely to one person, but to a
state or the entire country.
65
Carney, American Vision, 303.
66
Carney, American Vision, 317.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 139

Mr. Kirby, Sr., nor Cedar’s attempts to take over the control of Deeds’
fortunes. The villain of Mr. Smith is a profoundly evil character who, for
the sake of the consolidation of his position and achieving his goals is
ready to resort to criminal actions and does not falter in any circumstances.
Willson points out that “Capra revealed too much of the real viciousness in
[Taylor] to allow for a magical transformation of him in the end.”67 The
claim turns out to be appropriate also in the case of D. B. Norton.
Therefore, it may be stated that, whereas Capra’s villain-heroes like Kirby,
Sr. or Joseph Paine can undergo a transformation in the course of the story
since they possess a positive potential all along, Capra’s villains remain
vile and unchanged until the very end.
Smith fails to predict the enormity of Taylor’s power and, restricted by
the walls of the Senate during his filibuster, he cannot react to it in any
other way than verbally. The climatic final scene in which the frail and
utterly exhausted Smith is confronted with a public response to his
filibuster turns out to be the next cog in Taylor’s wheel and Jeff quickly
recognizes the fact. However, the scene of the final ritual humiliation of
the hero presents Senator Smith in a dramatic pose suggesting an “Ecce
Homo” reference.68 Having acknowledged that he has been deserted by the
people in the name of whom this battle was fought, with “Taylor-made”
telegrams in his hands, he stretches his arms and raises his head as if in a
silent question: “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?”69
However, the encouraging smile from the Vice President (Harry Carey)
lets Jeff know that he has not been abandoned, after all, and it gives him
the strength to carry on. After a short pregnant pause in which the anguish
in Jeff’s eyes reflects the drama of the hero’s emotions–disillusionment,
despair, the overwhelming feeling of loss–mixed with the unshaken
resolution of fight until the unknown end, Smith addresses Senator Paine,
beginning with the latter’s own words:

I guess this is just another lost cause, Mr. Paine. All you people don’t know
about the lost causes. Mr. Paine does. He said once they were the only
causes worth fighting for. And he fought for them once, for the only reason
that any man ever fights for them. Because of just one plain, simple rule:
"Love thy neighbour." And in this world today, full of hatred, a man who
knows that one rule has a great trust. [...] You all think I’m licked. Well,
I’m not licked. And I’m going to stay right here and fight for this lost cause
even if this room gets filled with lies like these, and the Taylors and their
armies come marching into this place. Somebody’ll listen to me.

67
Willson, “Capra's Comic Sense,” 95.
68
See Handzo, “Under Capracorn,” 171.
69
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 186.
140 Chapter Four

Smith faints after these words, but the duel between Don Quixote and
the Silver Knight is not over until Paine’s conscience makes him reveal
the entire truth after a failed suicidal attempt in the foyer of the Senate
chamber.
Smith’s ritual victory becomes a communal festivity confined to those
present in the building of the Senate and excluding its main actor who is
still unconscious and therefore unaware of his moral triumph. Handzo
suggests that “[t]he film ends ambiguously with the Senate in turmoil and
the fate of the political machine unresolved.”70 Nevertheless, Smith’s
victory should be treated not as much in terms of politics, but rather in
terms of morality and idealism.71 Andrew Bergman points out that
“[w]hen Senator Paine admits the truth, Smith is vindicated, but the end
[is] not unity, rather it [is] a reinforcement of faith in the emblems of
democracy.”72 Such a point of view provides the evidence for the theory
that Jeff’s filibuster is a purgatorial struggle and, thus, his moral triumph
is a purgatorial victory. Smith’s final address to Senator Paine proves that
he is now mature enough to realize that one cannot win a lost cause and
by that he “demonstrates his hard-won sense of realism.”73 Poague claims
that it is thanks to providence and a miracle that Smith can achieve his
victory.74 According to Graham Greene, the story is a fairy tale all along,
so it is only natural for the main hero to win in the end.75 Nevertheless,
even if Mr. Smith is a fairy tale, it must be stated explicitly that it is one of
the purgatorial type in which the hero is exposed to a strenuous uphill
struggle and a constant quest for achieving his aims. Carney considers
Smith’s actions in the category of modern heroism assuming the
unceasing effort of an individual to “make the difference that will make
the difference.”76 Therefore, although Capra leaves the question of
political problems of national importance open, Smith’s triumph denotes
the victory of romantic ideals and morality of an individual. It also

70
Handzo, “Under Capracorn,” 171.
71
Poague points out that in his social films Capra does not provide the recipe for
social or economic recovery. He claims that Mr. Deeds is not a political tract, but a
comedy of personal morality. Mr. Smith, although concerned with democratic
process and its corruption, focuses mainly on the emotional and moral issues of the
central character. See his The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 180.
72
Andrew Bergman, “Frank Capra And Screwball Comedy,” in Frank Capra,
Glatzer and Raeburn, 80.
73
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 186.
74
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 186.
75
Greene “A Director Of Genius: Four Reviews,” 116.
76
Carney, American Vision, 314.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 141

confirms the fact that one man can make the difference even if it seems
he fights the windmills.
With Mr. Deeds and Mr. Smith, Capra most certainly keeps the
promise to express his gratitude to America for the realization of the
American Dream in his life by means of singing the songs of praise of
common men: “long-shot players who light candles in the wind and
resent being pushed around because of race or birth.”77 In Meet John Doe
Capra continues the exploration of the subject; however, the construction
of the story is different than in the case of its social predecessors.
First and foremost, as Capra stated, “a significant change to the
protagonist was made: we started out not with an innately good man, but
with a drifter who didn’t give a damn whether he was good or bad.”78
Hence, Long John Willoughby starts from an entirely different position
than the solid, good-hearted Deeds and starry-eyed, idealistic Smith.
However, as I have already suggested, John is also the symbol of an
average man whom Capra places into the centre of a script written by
someone else. Thus, like Deeds and Smith, Willoughby exemplifies the
vulnerability of the common man “to the manipulation of power-hungry
plutocrats.”79 In fact, John is turned into a marionette in the very first
scene in which he appears in the movie as he is viewed and measured by
Ann and a managing director of the New Bulletin, Henry Connell (James
Gleason). As soon as he agrees to play the part of John Doe, he is
provided with a proper costume, a dressing room, a new name and a life
story. Soon, the appropriate words are put into his mouth and the only
element to link the character to his hitherto existing life is his cynical
companion, the Colonel (Walter Brennan), who constantly and
unchangeably opposes the whole John Doe business.
The process of tailoring the character’s identity, to which two other
trilogy heroes were also submitted, is much darker in the case of
Willoughby than in the previous films: Deeds resents it symbolically by
means of refusing to wear a tail coat, “the monkey suit” designed for him,
as well as by expressing his opinions towards managing his money
openly; Smith straightforwardly refuses to subordinate to Taylor’s
demands as soon as he learns about his fraudulent schemes. The case of
Willoughby is different, since it is assumed from the very beginning that
he is the archetypal "little man" with not much personality of his own.
And John accepts such an assumption without question. Richard Glatzer
indicates the bleakness of Capra’s implication that “the anonymous ‘little

77
Capra, The Name Above The Title, 240.
78
Capra quoted in McBride, Frank Capra, 431.
79
Willson, “Capra's Comic Sense,” 94.
142 Chapter Four

man’, so long as he remains anonymous, is little more than a moral blank

slate.”80 The new identity Long John acquires after his magic-wand
transformation into John Doe is not his own either, for “[h]is broadcast
body and amplified voice are, along with everything else about him,
products of the technologies of knowledge, the packaging and processing
of reality in the film.”81 Doe is thus a creation of the joint efforts of Ann
Mitchell providing the character with personality and idealism of her late
father, and D. B. Norton securing the financial resources for creating and
cultivating the myth of John Doe. In this respect Carney indicates the
irony of the film’s title: “Meeting John Doe is not only something that
never happens–it is something that can never happen. There is no John
Doe to meet.”82 Moreover, the moment John agrees to participate in the
charade, the person up until now bearing the name Willoughby also gets
erased and thus what is left is the character deprived of any possibilities
of self expression or attempts of individual performance greater than rare
occasions like a harmonica duet or imaginary baseball game played with
Colonel.
In Meet John Doe there is no space for individualism, improvisation
or creativity. There is a script written for John Doe’s every word and
movement. As the story unfolds, John’s role ceases to be a mere
agreement between the ex-baseball player wanting to make some money
for his arm surgery and the New Bulletin’s editor. It becomes a publicity
stunt of national importance; in fact, a crucial link in D. B. Norton’s
political machine. Long John remains oblivious to the double dimensional
nature of the stunt almost until the very end of the movie. However, at
some point he is made aware that his part in the show means the end of
his baseball career, since after the truth of his being a fake comes out, in
all probability he will be finished in baseball as well. Therefore,
practically right from the onset, John steps onto a one-way street at the
end of which, unless a miracle occurs, there can be not much more than
defeat. Both Deeds and Smith had their escape routes in case of failure:
Deeds could always get back to his idyllic, fertile Mandrake Falls, his
orchestra and his petty business back home; Smith had his own scrap of
heaven on earth in Montana and his Boy Rangers to return to. For John
Doe, however, there is neither of these prospects to escape to. As
Willoughby, he is the most alienated and devoid of any familial or
communal aspect of the three heroes, and stripped of Doe’s personality he

80
Richard Glatzer, “Meet John Doe: An End To Social Myth Making,” in Frank
Capra, Glatzer and Raeburn (ed.), 145.
81
Carney, American Vision, 351.
82
Carney, American Vision, 351.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 143

remains almost entirely decontextualised.

In comparison to Bennett and Saunders, Meet John Doe’s heroine,
Ann Mitchell, is constructed in a more complex way. She starts the movie
as Capra’s usual cynical reporter interested mostly in money making, and
following the pattern of Bennett and Saunders, she undergoes a vital
transformation from cynicism to idealism as the film unfolds. However,
the process of Ann’s transformation has a different source than in the case
of her two female predecessors, as she is converted not by the hero but by
her late father,83 who in the course of the story acquires the role of the
romantic opponent of the villain in Capra’s typical struggle between
fertile idealism and sterile cynicism.
Ann’s interests in gaining financial profits do not flow out of purely
egoistic motives, but of the poor material situation of her family: a mother
and two kid-sisters, of whom she is the only provider. The spontaneous
creation of the suicide letter from John Doe is, then, a desperate attempt
to regain her job after she, along with many other employees of the New
Bulletin, is made redundant by order of Norton, the new owner of the
newspaper. Nevertheless, she cannot predict either the enormity of public
reaction or the stunt’s further development, and most certainly, while
writing the letter she does not have in mind any vicious plots towards
which D. B. Norton’s involvement finally leads. The John Doe publicity
stunt acquires different meanings for everybody entangled in it: for Long
John it means the chance for the treatment of his bad arm; Norton expects
to gain public support in his political career; for Ann it is initially the way
out of her family's financial crisis and, subsequently, it becomes the
opportunity to promote her deceased father’s populist life philosophy,
which becomes the core of the series of John’s public speeches written by
Ann.
John Doe’s first radio broadcast becomes an anxiously awaited public
event. In the moment preceding the speech, however, Long John is torn
between the unwillingness to let Ann down and willingness to accept five
thousand dollars offered to him by the Chronicle for admitting publicly
that the whole story is a frame-up and he himself is a fake. Ann, who put
all of her heart into the speech into which she combined her journalistic
talent and her father’s idealism, though unaware of John’s dilemma,
induces him to stick by his role with her pleas to think of himself as the
real John Doe (for “he’s turned out to be a wonderful person”), to do his
best, and to “go out there and pitch.” Carney calls this action of Ann’s

83
See Maland, Frank Capra, 111.
144 Chapter Four

“emotional and imaginative blackmail,”84 and a very clever one, as she

intentionally refers to baseball knowing that this particular reference is
likely to reach John’s sense of pride. Thus, from such a perspective,
delivering Ann’s speech becomes a matter of principle and Long John
performs it convincingly, though as soon as he is off the air, he joins the
ever reluctant Colonel and resolves to back out of the whole John Doe
business.
John’s Sermon on the Mount-like speech85 creates a national
commotion and results in forming the chain of John Doe Clubs inspired
by the ideas of plain neighbourly kindness and aiming at changing the
world into a better place through the improvement of the relations among
the common people, the John Does of the earth. The speech urges people
to tear down the fences separating them from each other and create a
team. Subsequently, as a proof that realization of the above ideas does not
necessarily come to a merely unfeasible reverie, Doe refers to Christmas
and the unique spirit that Yuletide festivities bring about annually:

I know a lot of you are saying to yourselves: "He’s asking for a miracle to
happen. He’s expecting people to change all of the sudden." Well, you’re
wrong. It’s no miracle. It’s no miracle because I see it happen once every
year. And so do you. At Christmas time! There’s something swell about the
spirit of Christmas, to see what it does to people, all kinds of people. Now,
why can’t that spirit, that same warm Christmas spirit last the whole year
round? Gosh, if it ever did, if each and every John Doe would make that
spirit last three hundred and sixty five days out of the year, we’d develop
such a strength, we’d create such a tidal wave of good will, that no human
force could stand against it.86

This “Santa Claus socialism,”87 to use Poague's term, met with a vast
critical response of reviewers and scholars, who accused Capra of an
unacceptable vulgarisation of the New Testament theme, and called Meet
John Doe a simpleminded, childish and nauseating development of the
subject putting the viewer’s good taste to the test. 88

84
Carney, American Vision, 358.
85
See Otis Ferguson “The Business Of Promoting A Thesis. Four Reviews” in
Frank Capra, (ed.) Glatzer and Reaburn, 107.
86
The speech conspicuously echoes the populist message of Dickensian Christmas
Carol, which also highlights the unique power of this particular Christian festivity
to alter and transform human hearts and to make people sensitive to the needs of
the others.
87
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 196.
88
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 195.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 145

Nevertheless, upon careful scrutiny of Ann Mitchell and Long John

and their relationship, it becomes clear that the straightforward and
slightly simplistic message of Doe’s first speech, apart from its clear
populist implication, also serves a different purpose. Namely, the speech
becomes the moment within which both of the characters’ transformation
begins. Ann, in fact, gets converted already while writing the speech,
which is made evident in her announcement that she has actually fallen in
love with the John Doe of her speech, as well as in the tearful intense
looks fixed on John performing the role during the broadcast. Long John,
in spite of his act of physical withdrawal after the broadcast, also gets
hooked by the essence of Ann’s father's philosophy, which Capra
indicates by means of John’s ruminative pauses and accents, as well as his
gradually increasing engagement into the uttered words. Therefore, the
speech forms and expresses a romantic populist ideal which will have to
be incorporated into cynical reality and defended by the protagonists. The
main point of the speech then is to test Ann’s and John’s emotional
attitude toward the presented fertile idealism, and to instigate the process
of maturation of the hero and the heroine. Capra formulates his definition
of maturity quite clearly in his movies: to be mature denotes taking full
responsibility for one’s choices, actions and creations, and never to back
off from the task one undertakes in a cogent case. At this point, however,
Long John is still on the threshold of his conversion and hence uncertain
about where to locate his loyalties. Ann, on the other hand, is focused
slightly too much on her own aim’s success to be bothered about John and
how badly the stunt may affect him personally.
Meet John Doe heroes’ essential problem lies in the fact that, unlike
Bennett and Saunders who had the clear examples of the purely moral
behaviour of Deeds and Smith right before their eyes to follow, both Ann
and Long John are deprived of such guidance.89 Since it is only the ghost
of Ann’s father captured between the pages of his diary that helps them, it
is only natural that the characters are prone to commit mistakes at some
point.
The theme of fatherhood is a recurrent motif in Capra’s films. In fact,
Capra heroes are often fatherless in a biological sense and, if that is the
case, their actions are frequently determined by the ideological legacy
inherited from their fathers. This premise proves particularly adequate in
relation to Capra's purgatorial characters. Jefferson Smith’s system of
values is built on the idealistic philosophy of his deceased father, who
sacrificed his life for the sake of defending human rights against social

89
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 196.
146 Chapter Four

injustice. The late Dr. Mitchell plays a similar role in passing his romantic
ideology to Ann and subsequently to Long John. Furthermore, both Babe
Bennett and Clarissa Saunders at some point mention their fathers who,
as it turns out, were also the advocates of populist ideas and fertile
idealism. The power of such a populist inheritance proves to be strong
enough to awake its heirs’ desire to transform their life and even sacrifice
it in the name of noble ideals.
In Capra's purgatorial universe, however, the protagonists are
frequently exposed to the threat of being misguided by some false father
figures. Carney points out that “[i]n the temporary absence or abdication
of one father, there is always another father figure instantly ready to step
into his empty shoes and to assert his authority in place of the absent
one.”90 James Taylor plays the role of a father to his protégés;
nevertheless, he does not hesitate to destroy any of his subordinates if his
self-serving purpose demands it. Thus he is a false father figure, as is D.
B. Norton. The difference of this particular aspect in Mr. Smith and Meet
John Doe lies in the fact that whereas Jeff Smith never agrees to
participate in Taylor’s vicious schemes, Ann Mitchell consciously
chooses to conspire with Norton. In Meet John Doe reality is drawn with
gloomy shades–the story and its characters are more solemn and
undeniably darker than in the previous films in the trilogy. Hence, the
villain is also more villainous than before. D. B. Norton is “a vicious man
with a vicious purpose”, as we hear him called in the film before we first
see him on screen, and in his lust after naked power he surpasses the
financial greed of James Taylor and the city shysters of Mr. Deeds.91
Capra introduces the villain in a non-verbal way which does not leave
any doubts as to the figure’s character and aspirations. The scene presents
Norton on horseback watching the dangerous presentation of motorcycle
troops, marked D. B. Norton Motor Corps, performing solely for his own
purpose. Capra further indicates the magnitude of Norton’s ambitions by
placing on his desk an equestrian statuette of Napoleon in a similar pose
to Norton’s at the moment of his introduction. Subsequently we are
offered the scene during which Ann explains the details of her John Doe
stunt and what profits it may bring to Mr. Norton’s political career. At this
point Ann does not realize how dangerous conspiring with a tycoon like
Norton may be. D. B. Norton, however, appreciates Ann’s brightness,
directness and determination in heading for her goal. Therefore, he agrees
to provide financial patronage to John Doe’s first radio broadcast, and

90
Carney, American Vision, 48.
91
See Glatzer, “Meet John Doe,” 144.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 147

next to further the development of the John Doe movement. Capra,

however, does not let the viewer be deluded by pretences for a long time
and, as the story unfolds, we learn about the real motives of Norton’s
“charitable” activities, namely creating a John Doe party and gaining
support of the voters during the forthcoming presidential election.
Ann Mitchell remains deaf and blind to the “Hitlerian national menace
that D.B. Norton poses”92 until the day preceding the John Doe national
convention. John, on the other hand, like Jefferson Smith before him, is
oblivious to his role in aiding Norton’s totalitarian schemes even longer.
In fact, even after his return to the role of John Doe, Long John is a much
weaker character than any of the previous Capra heroes. Unlike Deeds
and Smith, in Carney's words:

Doe represents not youth, innocence or inexperience but a ‘doughiness’, a

plasticity, an availability for endless but impermanent deformation. He is a
drifter without any particular convictions or beliefs, willing to take the path
of least resistance.93

In Millville, he allows himself to be influenced by the common-good

experiences of the first John Doe Club’ members and gets back into his
role. Nevertheless, having acknowledged the fact of the movement’s
beneficial impact upon the improvement of neighbourly relations
throughout the country, he never stops to ask if there is something he
could do for the clubs apart from impersonating Doe and performing the
script written by Ann. He never questions the sincerity of D. B. Norton’s
attitude towards the movement. Furthermore, it never crosses his mind to
reflect on the morality of his own actions. It may be stated, then, that
John’s transformation from a blank amoral drifter to a romantic populist
instigated during his first radio broadcast and strengthened by the
Millville John Doe Club’s members declaring that there is no sense in his
jumping off any building, as he “can be mighty useful working around for
a while”, as well as his social and emotional maturation is going to be a
long purgatorial process. In fact, John’s transformation and subsequently
his maturation turns out to be a much more complex process than in the
case of Deeds and Smith, since both of his predecessors possessed a well
ordered and firmly established system of values and ideals. Hence, what
they lacked for the completion of their maturation was the
aforementioned ability to reconcile their romantic visions and idealism
with the rules and demands of big city reality. John, however, first and

92
Glatzer, “Meet John Doe,” 144.
93
Carney, American Vision, 357.
148 Chapter Four

foremost, enters the story as a cynical figure unable or rather uninterested

in learning to differentiate between good and evil, morality and
immorality. Therefore, in order to achieve his maturity, he first has to get
rid of his amoral, sterile cynicism and to establish his moral code.
Carney’s statement concerning Mr. Smith proves to be appropriate
also in reference to Deeds and even more so to Meet John Doe. He claims
that

in Smith the individual has been ‘dethroned’ [...] from the creation of value.
[...] Machines (in all senses of the word–political, journalistic, and
industrial), bureaucracies of relationship, and impersonal networks of
affiliation have replaced individuals as the authors of value and controllers
of interpretation.94

John’s case is again the gloomiest, since it exposes the character’s

indifference to the shape of reality within which he exists. Capra
intentionally juxtaposes Long John’s passiveness to John Doe’s social
commitment, highlighted already in the first series of newspaper
headlines: “I protest against the collapse of decency of the world”, “I
protest against corruption in local politics”, “I protest against civic heads
being in league with crime”, “I protest against state relief being used as a
political football”, “I protest against County Hospitals shutting doors to
needy”, “I protest against all the brutality and slaughter in the world.”
Deeds and Smith tried to fight against and overcome the oppressive
machines threatening freedom of an individual, Long John accepts the
shackles put on him without a word of protest and remains in such
ignorance for more than half of the story. When Smith first came to the
Congress he did not know he served as a stooge in Taylor’s machine;
John, however, is aware of the fact that he is an actor and that he is
playing a role. Nevertheless, he does not mind being told what to do and
how to do it even after he gets converted to believe in Doe’s ideology.
The drama of John’s situation lays in the fact that in Capra’s
purgatorial comedies “[i]ndividuals are all already inscribed in the
system, speaking its discourse, heaped with history, relationships, and
obligations.”95 On the other hand, the conversion that each of the
purgatorial heroes has to undergo and their initial attempts to test newly
acquired knowledge within the oppressive reality at some point leads
them to face the uncertainty of their actions’ legitimacy and finally results
in the protagonist’s identity crisis. Once more, John Doe’s case is the

94
Carney, American Vision, 301.
95
Carney, American Vision, 348.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 149

darkest one. The lack of a strong personality of his own explains John's
susceptibility to the confusion of his identity. The inevitability of this part
of the maturation process strikes the viewer with double strength when he
realizes how powerful the driving force standing behind the John Doe
machine is.
John’s confused identity is most conspicuous in a “crazy dream” he
describes to Ann during his John Doe tour. The dream is a muddled story
picturing Ann as a child running away from John impersonating her father
and growing up in the course of her escape. Subsequently, the scene is
changed into Ann's marriage ceremony with Ted Sheldon, D. B. Norton’s
nephew. John’s role in this sequence is also changed from that of her
father to the Justice of the Peace. Nevertheless, at the climactic moment
both the figures; Ann’s father and the Justice of Peace are present, and
John represents both of them:

Here’s the funniest part of all. I was the fellow up there doing the
marrying–you know, the justice of peace. [Anne: I thought you were
chasing me.] Well, I was your father then. But the real me, John Doe, that
is, Long John Willoughby, I was the fellow with the book, you know what
I mean. Well. I took you across my knee and I started spanking you. That
is, I didn’t do it. I mean, I did do it. But it wasn’t me. I was your father
then.

It may be argued that John’s dream is one of the rare moments of his
attempts of free expression of the self; however, what is more evident in
the above quotation is the hero’s dramatic helplessness and inability to
distinguish his identity any longer. What is more, the dream reflects
John’s confusion on several levels simultaneously: social, emotional and
psychological. Poague claims that the dream is, in fact, It Happened One
Night in miniature and chooses to interpret it in terms of John’s moral and
sexual maturation:

It is comically immoral for Ellie to wed King Westley, and it is just as

immoral for Ann to marry Ted Sheldon. John is both Ann’s father and the
justice of peace in the dream, and hence he represents both sexual and
moral authority.96

Therefore, Ann’s sexual choice is also a moral one which would

signify her conversion and maturation. Like other Capra’s heroines, Ann
must choose between sterility symbolised in the dream by a rich
prospective husband, Sheldon, with his cynical rich man’s world and

96
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 197.
150 Chapter Four

fertile morality professed by her dead father in a diary and absorbed by

John now.
If the dream and John’s rumination on it is to be treated as his attempt
at a free expression of himself (and hence the subsequent phase of his
maturation), there is one aspect which should be indicated in particular,
namely the ideological consciousness acquired in the process. As I have
already stated, the dream first and foremost depicts the portrait of John’s
social, emotional, and psychological confusion; nevertheless, its
subsequent part proves that he has achieved stability on an ideological
level at least. The three figures of John Willoughby, John Doe, and Dr.
Mitchell finally merge in John’s mind and he becomes the romantic
knight armed with Ann’s father’s idealism: “The man you marry has got
to swim rivers for you! He’s got to climb high mountains for you! He’s
got to slay dragons for you! He’s got to perform wonderful deeds for
you!” These exclamations are the same kind of romantic visualisation that
most of Capra's chivalric characters deliver at some point. It is enough to
recall Tony Kirby’s youthful plans to save energy from the grass, Peter
Warne’s dream of an island in the Pacific, Deed’s depiction of his
imaginary perfect girl in the idyllic Mandrake Falls, or Smith’s
impressionist vision of the land of Willet Creek. Therefore, John’s use of
such a verbal stylistic device brings John closer to Capra's other
romantics. The dream indicates his sexual attraction to Ann but, what
seems more vital, it reflects the alteration that has undergone within him.
His ideological metamorphosis is underlined.
The theme of John’s maturation is extended to the next scene. John
and Ann are at an airport restaurant and John delivers another speech. The
subject is entirely different than on the previous occasion; nevertheless, as
in the earlier case, the intercourse leaves Ann almost speechless. John
talks about people and his attitude towards them:

I never thought as much about people before. They were always just
somebody to fill up the bleachers. [...] Lately I been watching ‘em when I
talk to ‘em. I could see something in their faces. I could feel they were
hungry for something. [...] Maybe that’s why they came. Maybe they were
just lonely and wanted somebody to say hello to. I know how they feel. I've
been lonely and hungry for something nearly all my life.

The quotation serves as further evidence of the progression of John’s

maturation’s progress. Capra makes the collapse of John’s ego explicit.
He has ceased to think of people in terms of a mere faceless crowd. All of
a sudden they became real humans: unique individuals with their dignity
and their need for neighbourly love of the John Doe ideology. The
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 151

sequence, therefore, contributes to the first rung of John’s social

maturation. John’s growing feeling of responsibility for the people he
talks to during his tour was born and the sudden realization of his
transformation makes Ann feel guilty and uneasy. John has turned into a
genuine believer in her father’s ideals and what she has been paying him
with so far were cunning tricks and indifference. There are, however, no
words at the moment she can offer him during any of John’s revelations
and hence Ann’s replies are limited to upset glances, pregnant pauses and
monosyllables. Nevertheless, these nonverbal replies are the promise of
Ann’s consequent maturation. In fact, she will be able to talk to John in
the very next scene they are presented together.
In the meantime, John decides to propose to Ann. The act of proposal
in the Capra universe usually constitutes a most unconventional
ceremony, a ritual of an individual’s creative self-expression. Tony Kirby
proposes to Alice in between the jokey lines of the “report” of his parents’
reaction to his announcement that he is in love with his secretary; Peter
Warne, in fact, never has a chance to pop the question since Ellie settles
things in her own zany way; Longfellow Deeds chooses a poem to
express what he does not have the courage to say out loud. Nevertheless,
no matter how original the proposals of Capra heroes are, John Doe is the
only one who does it via the mother of his beloved. The fact highlights
his continuous lack of self-confidence and the sense of his inferiority in
reference to John Doe who is “pretty tough competition”. John’s proposal
is one more piece of evidence of how complicated and how sombre things
have become in Meet John Doe. The scene is the first personal initiative
of the protagonist; yet he finds himself unable to speak. Standing in front
of Ann’s mother all he finds strength to do is to utter allusive pieces of
information suggesting a clue as to the purpose of his visit. He lacks a
script and at the moment, although he is a bit stronger than at the
beginning of the story, it is still a purgatorial path he treads upon and he is
still too weak and too confused to speak for himself and express his own
feelings in such an important matter as marriage, which, additionally, is
entirely a separate subject from the John Doe stunt.
In the nearest sequences of the story, however, John’s attention is
diverted from his love affair and the subsequent events evoke the
necessity of the hero’s accelerated maturation. The John Doe national
convention is about to start and several meaningful events coincide.
While Ann participates in a private meeting of the political tycoons held
in D. B. Norton’s mansion, Connell decides to inform Long John about
the real motives of Norton’s support to the John Doe organization and
hence about the factual role that John plays in the entire enterprise.
152 Chapter Four

Connell begins with words of praise for American democracy. The

exposition he utters could be, in fact, spoken by a romantic patriot like
Jefferson Smith, and for this reason Connell’s speech genuinely
astonishes viewers with the discovery that the John Doe movement has
also managed to convert a confirmed cynic like him who, in addition, has
been involved in organizing the publicity stunt from its very onset. “Say,
you’re sold on the John Doe idea, aren’t you?” he asks John, “I don’t
blame you, so am I. It’s a beautiful miracle. A miracle that could only
happen right here in the good old U.S.A.” His speech aims at enlightening
John as to the gravity of the task he carries on his shoulders:

I’m a sucker for the Star Spangled Banner, and I’m the sucker for this
country. I like what we got here! I like it! A guy can say what he wants and
do what he wants without a bayonet shoved through his belly. [...] And we
don’t want anybody coming around changing it, do we? And when they do,
I get mad! I get boiling mad! And right now, John, I’m sizzling! I get mad
for a lot of other guys besides myself. I get mad for a guy named
Washington! And a guy named Jefferson, and Lincoln. Lighthouses, John!
Lighthouses in a foggy world! [...] Now, supposing a certain unmentionable
worm, whose initials are D.B., was trying to use [the John Doe clubs] to
shove his way into the White House. So he could put the screws on, so he
could turn out the lights in those lighthouses. What would you say about
that?

John refuses to believe Connell’s words until he sees the speech that
he is supposed to read during the convention. Blind with the
disillusionment with Ann of whom he was assured no one can make her
write anything that would be against the John Doe ideology, he rushes
angrily to Norton’s house in order to gain further confirmation of
Connell’s accusations. He gets there in time to hear with his own ears
Norton’s plans of creating “a new order of things”. The villain addresses
the heads of the political world gathered together for the occasion of a
scheduled creation of the John Doe party: “There’s been too much talk
going on in this country. Too many concessions have been made! What
the American people need is an iron hand! Discipline!” Subsequently,
Norton proposes a toast to Ann Mitchell–“the brilliant and beautiful lady
who is responsible for all this.”
The entire encounter finally brings Ann to her senses and she wakes
up to realize the peril of D. B. Norton’s fascist scheme. She listens to the
political tycoons’ conversation first in anxious amazement, and next with
a growing sense of panic, and her non-verbal reaction proves that, as she
assures John a moment later, until now she has really “had no idea what
was going on.” Poague points out it is indeed true–she had no idea
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 153

because she chose to ignore Norton’s real intentions. However, in a while,

she will have to make her moral choice between her father’s idealism,
now truly incorporated within John Doe whom Long John finally
becomes, and D. B. Norton.97
Meanwhile, having learned the bitter truth, John resolves to stand up
to the villain and refuses to act according to the script any longer, which
he demonstrates by the act of tearing up the speech. Now that he is aware
of all the dimensions of the stunt, like Smith before him, he is ready to
fight for the cause and even die for it if needed. He declares he is going to
announce the truth about Norton’s political plotting during a John Doe
rally, but the villain immediately replies with a reproach that John is a
fake, whereas he and the assembly of his political colleagues at least
believe what they do, and he threatens to kill the John Doe movement
“deader than a doornail” should he be unable to use it for his purpose.
The violent intercourse continues and John delivers an emotional
manifesto expressing his new populist credo, ending with an exclamation:
“You go ahead and try it [killing the John Doe movement]! You couldn’t
do it in a million years, with all your radio stations and all your power!
Because it’s bigger than whether I’m a fake! It’s bigger than your
ambitions!” A range of inspired emotions and her growing affection
become transparent on Ann’s face during the verbal struggle between
John and Norton and it is clear that she has finally made her choice.
John’s daring confrontation with Norton confirms the hero’s
metamorphosis into a romantic warrior. Thus, in the spirit of romantic
tradition, he is determined to kill the evil figure98 jeopardizing the newly
conceived harmonious integrity of the innocent creation as John Doe
Clubs or sacrifice his life in the process.
Along with the development of the plot, Capra provides the viewer
with visual evidence of his protagonists’ transformation. Beginning with
the scene of John’s half-proposal, throughout the confrontation with
Norton and further on during the convention, all the events happen in the
pouring rain. We hear John mentioning rain at Ann’s place; next, heavy
rain seen from the window in Norton’s mansion accompanies John’s
romantic manifesto; and finally, the entire convention sequence is blurred
by rain coming down in torrents. Capra’s frequently used symbol of
fertility performs its function in Meet John Doe as well. It is true that
each of the above-mentioned occasions constitute John’s first awkward
attempts to express himself as an independent individual and ultimately

97
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 200.
98
Lesley Brill’s concept of romance discussed in the second chapter.
154 Chapter Four

with rather poor effects. He never proposes to Ann, in fact, and even
though he stands up to Norton in the villain’s mansion, he fails to oppose
Norton’s machine during the convention, and thus he ends up being
deprived of the chance to talk to people and convince them about the
purity of his intentions. Nevertheless, Capra symbolism of rain
accompanying the hero in his one-man fight provides a clear indication
that John’s struggles, no matter how awkward, are not utterly futile. The
rain, therefore, signifies John’s and Ann’s transformation (Ann realizes
that she has finally fallen in love with the real Long John); moreover, it
also brings a tiny sparkle of hope that, against the bleakness of the facts,
the final score is not settled yet.
The full maturation is still ahead for both John and Ann, for they will
have to repent for their cunning stunt. For Ann, who is kept under arrest
by D. B. Norton’s order throughout the whole convention and hence is
unable to provide any kind of help to John, the course of the hero’s
dramatic ordeal, which she witnesses over the radio, becomes the time of
her profound remorse and reflection upon the shameful discrepancy
between her father’s ideology and her own deeds. Ironically, Norton’s
words accusing John of being a fake turn out to be true for Ann as well as,
in the course of promoting Dr. Mitchell’s philosophy, she forgot to apply
it within her own life. Therefore, now she will have to face the
unexpectedly solemn consequences it brought upon them. John, on the
other hand, has a bleak infernal experience lying ahead of him and he has
to face it on his own.
John rushes to the baseball field where the convention takes place99
like Smith, in the spirit of Don Quixote, ready to fight at windmills. He
gets to the stage and, amidst the cheers of the fifteen thousand John Doe
believers, he attempts to reveal the truth. The task is impeded by all sorts
of difficulties: noise, rain, technological devices, and at last it is delayed
by a priest’s suggestion to say a prayer before the event starts.
Consequently, when John is finally about to start his revelation, it is just
in time for D. B. Norton and his troops to interfere. The quickly paced
sequences which follow recall James Taylor’s actions in Mr. Smith and
prove that Norton’s machine is equally well organized and as effective.
Thousands of newspapers accusing John Doe of being a fake are handed
out to the convention’s participants, Norton’s troopers take care of raising
a rebellious commotion among the people, and Norton himself is shouting

99
Carney points out to the irony of the fact that it is the only baseball field on
which we see Long John during the story. Nevertheless, the familiarity of the place
and its rules does not help him to win the audience during this “match.” See his
American Vision, 372.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 155

out his allegations against John through the loudspeakers stating that John
never had any intention to jump from the building. Subsequently, he
skilfully manoeuvres John to admit that he never wrote the letter to the
New Bulletin and, next, asserts they have all been taken for a ride by the
man interested solely in gaining financial profit for himself. John’s
attempts to explain the truth come to naught as Norton’s subordinates
disconnect the sound system by means of cutting the wires. Soon the
disappointed crowd becomes hysterical and John is removed from the
stage in incredulity and despair.
The convention initiates John’s infernal experience. It is the first time
that the character is left all alone with no support and dependent utterly
on his own strength. The critics are in agreement that the scene is one of
the bleakest moments in all of Capra’s movies as the director
methodically exposes the helplessness of John’s situation. The hero’s
attempts to become an independent individual are doomed to failure
practically from the beginning since, paradoxically, he now exists only as
a part of the John Doe institution and he is no one outside of it. It seems
the John Doe ideology is for other individuals to perform but it ceased to
be the privilege of its titular leader long ago. At the moment all efforts to
perform out of the script will be treated by people as treachery. Thus, in
Meet John Doe, Capra once more points out the “displacement of the
individual in an institutional universe.”100
John Doe has been produced and promoted by technology and the
same force is used to destroy him. The recurrent subject of the character’s
loss of voice returns. The viewer is offered a chance to witness John’s
desperate struggle to speak to thousands and be heard by them. The film
noir scenes that follow present the gloomy visions of the hero’s social
crucifixion. Carney notices that “Capra’s close up on the wire cutting
makes it almost as tangible and painful as if we were watching John’s
vocal cords being cut before our eyes.”101 John is then deprived of his
voice and the right to defend himself, which highlights the significant
difference in narration of Meet John Doe. In Mr. Deeds it was
Longfellow’s choice to remain silent throughout his sanity hearing and he
was allowed to use his voice again at any moment he wanted. Similarly,
Jefferson Smith had the power to use his voice as a weapon before and
during his filibuster. John’s voice, however, as his entire media
personality, no longer belongs to him and therefore can be extinguished
by Norton’s technological devices as quickly as they were conceived.

100
Carney, American Vision, 372.
101
Carney, American Vision, 374.
156 Chapter Four

McBride points out that one of the vital aspects of Meet John Doe is
“showing that people can become mobs [...] when they become
disillusioned.”102 The convention sequence provides plenty of examples
proving the accuracy of this observation. All of a sudden, the John Doe
“love thy neighbour” attitude loses its meaning and is replaced by
aggression and hostility showing that Norton has successfully achieved
his aim. Capra illustrates this fact by presenting the picture of a confused
and despairing John with tears in his eyes as he bitterly acknowledges
that only a small group of people standing next to him can actually hear
him. He realizes his failure as even this small group refuses to listen to
him anymore. The hero’s ritual humiliation is fulfilled by further acts of
the angry mob as he is booed, sneered, and pelted with wet newspapers
and all sorts of other missiles. The bitter irony of the convention’s final
sequence is that John is deserted by everyone who so enthusiastically
declared his commitment to the “love thy neighbour” philosophy just a
while ago. There is, however, one person who sticks with him, the
Colonel, a cynic who once professed that “the world’s been shaved by a
drunken barber” and refused to have anything to do with the John Doe
movement from its very start. Witnessing the scene of John’s humiliation,
he makes his way through the crowd and helps him to leave. “The fact
that only a cynic ‘loves his neighbour’ [...] throws a dark shadow over the
whole film”,103 as Maland notes.
John manages to leave the convention safely, but his infernal ordeal is
by no means finished as the real inferno remains within him. The sounds
of the conventioneers’ accusatory voices and the mirage of their
disappointed faces stuck in John's memory linger on and the hero broods
upon them unceasingly. Meanwhile, Capra provides us with evidence of
Norton’s final steps towards killing off the John Doe Clubs. The
newspaper collage present a series of headlines informing that John Doe
has been proved a fake and the clubs are being disbanded across the
country. A scrap of John’s picture floating down the gutters symbolically
signifies the end of the John Doe movement.
It is at Christmas Eve, the night John Doe was supposed to jump off
the roof, that the viewers witness Long John heading towards the City
Hall as if in trance. The recent events instigate the idea that the only
possible way to prove his sincerity and to make John Doe Clubs start all
over again is to commit suicide the way he was supposed to. John has
ultimately reached the culmination of his romantic metamorphosis and at

102
McBride, Frank Capra, 433.
103
Maland, Frank Capra, 111.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 157

this point he is ready to fulfil his Smithian desire to victimise himself for
the righteous cause. Therefore, as in the case of Joseph Paine, John’s
mere will to commit a sterile deed like suicide is the most tangible proof
of his fertile transformation. The scene’s potential fertility is intensified
by nature. It is one of the rare occasions when we see Long John
outdoors, and it is for the first time (excluding a short moment of Ann
chasing the taxi after John’s confrontation with Norton) that the hero and
the heroine are presented outdoors together. Until now all interactions
between Ann and John have happened inside offices, penthouses, hotel
rooms, or D. B. Norton’s chambers. The only scenes showing John in
natural surroundings were those shared with the cynical-but-nature-loving
Colonel. Thus, Ann’s appearance on the City Hall roof makes a
significant difference. Ann delivers an emotional speech in an attempt to
persuade John not to jump and arguing they are still able to resurrect the
John Doe movement and build it on honesty this time. Heavy snow is
falling around the heroes as well as the sound of bells chiming to
commemorate the birth of Christ, the first John Doe, together with Ann's
fervent plea suggest the characters’ breaking up with institutional
shackles and passing to the fertile side. Within her desperate appeal, Ann
refers to four ethical pillars: family, Christianity, populism and
resistance.104 She professes her love for John openly (something she was
unable to do before her final maturation) and even declares her will to die
with him, should his intentions remain unaltered. As in John’s first radio
broadcast, she refers to the spirit of Christmas and points out that there is
no necessity for him to die, since someone has already died for this cause
two thousand years before. Hence, all they need to do now is to make
sure that the villains of the world are always fought against. Ann faints
from fever and exhaustion, but by this moment the others are present to
witness the scene: Norton and his associates, who have been present there
all along, and the Millville originators of the first John Doe club join in
the middle of Ann’s speech.
Thus, two opposing archetypal powers of good and evil confront each
other at the climactic scene of Meet John Doe. Ann’s address, and the
subsequent arguments of the Millville club members stating that it would
be a lot easier to start the John Doe ideas again with John, achieve a
positive result in the end as John realizes that he has a chance to
accomplish more by staying alive than by dying. So, with Ann in his arms
and accompanied by Colonel, Connell and his loyal Millville John Does,
he heads towards the exit. Ann’s speech and John’s final decision to

104
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 203.
158 Chapter Four

abandon his suicidal intention are the signs of both characters’

maturation. They are now aware of the multidimensionality of reality and
their mistakes within it. They are also ready to undertake the task with all
the responsibility it requires. D.B. Norton and his “fine-feathered
friends”, on the other hand, are left behind in literal darkness. The villain,
as James Taylor in Mr. Smith, remains unmoved and does not become
transformed till the event of the very end.
It is questionable whether the conclusion of Meet John Doe can be
called the hero’s ritual victory. We can talk rather about a purgatorial type
of komos-like ending which, as I have indicated at the beginning of this
chapter, is quite distinct from the paradisal understanding of the term.
Ann does not regain her consciousness before the end of the rooftop
finale and, thus, as Smith in the final minute of his battle, she is unaware
of the ultimate outcome of her dramatic plea. Nevertheless, the heroine in
the arms of her beloved knight is a picture strongly reminiscent of the
fairy tale ending of Snow White, where the romantic hero is about to wake
his princess with a kiss. Longfellow Deeds finds the motivation to fight
and win in Babe Bennett’s confession of love; for Jefferson Smith,
Clarissa’s profession of love written on a scrap of paper and put into the
copy of the U. S. Constitution rejuvenates his strength and will to fight
during his filibuster. Similarly, the power of Ann’s love offered freely was
strong enough to persuade John not to jump, while it was John’s romantic
conversion that formerly liberated Ann from cynicism and sterility.
Therefore, Capra relationships are built on complementarity and are able
to develop positively because of the characters’ mutual transformation
and maturation. As Charles Wolfe notices, the mere arrival of the
Millville club would not provide sufficient motivation to give up his
suicidal idea.105 Hence, what Capra once more highlights in Meet John
Doe is the healing power of love.
The ending of Meet John Doe turned out to be a problematic case and
a great directorial challenge. As a matter of fact, Capra himself lacked the
idea of how to end the story convincingly and therefore he tried five
different conclusions. The one chosen finally as the official version was
suggested to the director by a fan, in a letter.106 Over two decades later
Capra reminisces in his autobiography:

The last ending was the best of the sorry lot, but still it was a letdown. Was

105
See Charles Wolfe, “Meet John Doe: Authors, Audiences, And Endings,” in
Meet John Doe: Frank Capra, Director, (ed.) Charles Wolfe (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1989), 19.
106
See Capra, The Name Above The Title, 305.
 From Innocence to Experience: Experience 159

an acceptable ending ever possible for John Doe? I still don’t know. [...]
We had shown the rise of two powerful, opposing movements–one good,
one evil. They clashed head on–and destroyed each other! St. George
fought with the dragon, slew it, and was slain. What our film said to
bewildered people hungry for solutions was this, ‘No answers this time,
ladies and gentlemen’.107

Indeed, the miraculous ending of the You Can’t Take It With You kind is
not provided in Meet John Doe and, as Poague claims, the biggest miracle
Capra could achieve was to stop John from committing suicide.108 Carney
suggests a gloomier interpretation of John’s situation at the end of the
movie. He points out that

[e]very possible ending to Doe represents a form of suicide for John. [...]
Even [the act of physical] suicide is superfluous or redundant insofar as
‘John Doe’ has never lived, and ‘Long John’ Willoughby has already
committed suicide by an act of self-erasure long before.109

However, the fact that, much as in Mr. Smith, at the end of John Doe
the problem remains to a large extent unresolved and the result of John’s
and Ann’s mission uncertain, Carney’s thesis seems nonetheless to be
overly pessimistic. John’s transition into a romantic impersonator of Dr.
Mitchell’s populist idealism proves that Long John must have been a
quest hero with a concealed arete,110 and his romantic potential was
waiting to be awoken all along. John's withdrawal from the City Hall’s
roof symbolises the hero’s exodus from an infernal realm, the dark power
of which deluded him into believing that sacrificing his life in the act of
his physical suicide is the only way to instigate the rebirth of the John
Doe movement. Nevertheless, even the ultimate uncertainty about future
success does not signify a looming disaster. Moreover, in the light of the
thesis that John is a purgatorial character, the fact of the finale’s uncertain
result ceases to be surprising. By definition, as it was already recalled, the
purgatorial character at the conclusion of the story is usually on the verge
of achieving its purpose. Furthermore, the presence of the Millville club
on the City Hall’s roof prophesies–at least to some extent–a future
resurrection of the John Doe movement rather than John’s suicide in
Carney’s aforementioned understanding of the term.
Numerous suggestions of interpreting Capra’s populist heroes:

107
See Capra, The Name Above The Title, 305.
108
See Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 190.
109
Carney, American Vision, 375.
110
W. H. Audens concept of the quest hero’s arete was discussed in Chapter Three.
160 Chapter Four

Longfellow Deeds, Jefferson Smith and John Doe as Christ figures are to
be found in critical literature, and the vivid polemics about the legitimacy
of the approach has taken place among the scholars. However, it is hard
to deny Capra’s Christianity-related parallels in the plot formula of the
three movies. As a matter of fact, the motif of the main hero’s crucifixion
is mentioned explicitly in each of the three films. Therefore, despite the
protagonist’s eleventh hour victory, it seems plausible to read them in
terms of Christian symbolism. As Dwight Macdonald observes, “there is
something very American in the idea of an uncrucified Christ.”111 Deeds,
Smith, and Doe are the romantic missionaries bringing the populist
idealism into a sterile reality. They are the chosen ones aiming at
deconstructing the cynical status quo of fossilized human relations.
In his social comedies Capra explores the subject of “little men”.
Deeds, Smith, and Doe, as Schickel puts it, “became archetypes which
reflected back to us our best qualities–common sense, down-to-
earthiness, idealism, patriotism, fidelity to family values.”112
Nevertheless, apart from these common-man features, the purgatorial
experience of the romantic quest equipped them with heroic strength and
mature awareness of complex responsibilities that the undertaken tasks
entail. The trilogy presents the main protagonists’ movement “from
innocence to experience and from victimisation to victory, as if the films
were enactments of ritualistic pilgrim’s progress.”113 However, contrary
to Capra’s paradisal heroes, the final glory of Deeds, Smith, and Doe is of
a purgatorial sort and hence darkened by the shadow of preceding
experience.

111
Dwight Macdonald quoted in Handzo, “Under Capracorn,” 172.
112
Schickel, The Men Who Made The Movies, 57.
113
Carney, American Vision, 281.
 CHAPTER FIVE

INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE:

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE

Paradise, Purgatory, Inferno: Spatial and axiological

organisation of It's a Wonderful Life romantic reality
In two previous chapters I have discussed Murphy's Dantean division
of the comic reality and how the films of Frank Capra can be interpreted in
the light of this concept. For the sake of my book I have decided to narrow
down the three levels enumerated by the scholar to the two categories of
“innocence” and “experience”, and I have discussed three movies chosen
to represent each category respectively, more in line with Frye's concept of
the romantic narrative mode.
This chapter will be devoted to It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), the film
which is considered by many critics to be Capra’s most important
cinematic achievement. The film constitutes a particularly interesting case
for reasons of its multilevel structure and the complexity of its main
character. Thus, in this chapter, I will adapt Dante's original division of the
comedic world into three levels and indicate that paradise, purgatory and
inferno can be found in It’s a Wonderful Life both on a spacial and
axiological level.1
As in the previous chapters, my primary aim is to prove the romantic
nature of the movie. The analysis of each level of the film will allow us to
witness the subsequent stages of the protagonist’s journey from innocence
to experience and eventually, his passage from the depth of experience to
the hero’s ultimate rebirth. The complete life cycle, as it is presented in the

1
Among the critical literature concerning Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life a
number of references to Dante's Divine Comedy are to be found. See, e.g. D. J. M.
Saunders, “Capra's Corn?,” Bright Light Film Journal, No. 46 (November 2004).
Online on January 16, 2013 at: http://brightlightsfilm.com/46/46capra.php; Barbara
Bowman, Film Images Of Capra, Lubitsch, Sternberg, And Wyler (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1992), 20-29.
162 Chapter Five

film, constitutes a proof to the thesis that It’s a Wonderful Life is a romance
since, as I have already mentioned, according to Northrop Frye, unlike in
the case of the mode of tragedy, romance is based on the second half of the
mythic cycle, and moves from “death to rebirth, decadence to renewal,
winter to spring, darkness to a new dawn.”2 My analysis of It’s a
Wonderful Life aims at presenting and examining the spectrum of romantic
reality as created by Capra.
Before I begin my analysis, let us review the general background of the
movie. It’s a Wonderful Life is based on an idea drawn from a short story,
The Greatest Gift, initially distributed as a Christmas card by its author
Philip Van Doren Stern. The plot of the film revolves around the small
town hero, George Bailey (James Stewart), who spends his life dreaming
about big deeds and great travels and adventures, but his sense of duty
towards his family, friends and community forces him to give up his
dreams and remain in the “crummy little town” he hates. As the plot
unfolds, on the brink of suicide, Bailey is given a chance to see what the
world would have been like had he never been born. Capra recalls:

It was the story I had been looking for all my life! Small town. A man. A
good man, ambitious. But so busy helping others, life seems to pass him
by. Despondent. He wishes he’d never been born. He gets his wish.
Through the eyes of a guardian angel he sees the world as it would have
been had he never been born. Wow! What an idea.3

Despite the gravity of the subject and the rather dark mood presiding
throughout most of the story, ultimately the film delivers an optimistic and
hopeful message that “each man’s life touches so many other lives [a]nd
that if he isn’t around it would leave an awful hole.”4 Nevertheless, for
more than half of the film Capra pictures George Bailey’s life and his
struggles within a small town of Bedford Falls often in a gloomy and noir-
like fashion, which probably became the reason why the audience, tired
with the recent war experience, did not respond to the movie as
enthusiastically as Capra had hoped for. The movie received five Oscar
nominations but failed to win any of them, and it had eventually sunk to
oblivion before it was finally rediscovered by television three decades
later. Presently it is certainly hard to imagine a Christmas season without
It’s a Wonderful Life, and the classic never ceases to top the lists of

2
Frye, A Natural Perspective, 121. The subject of romantic mode was discussed in
detail in the second chapter of this book.
3
Capra, The Name Above The Title, 376.
4
Capra, The Name Above The Title, 383.
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 163

Hollywood most beloved films.5

Bedford Falls and Beyond: The Paradisal and Purgatorial Level

The world presented in It’s a Wonderful Life is a multi-level one. The
film’s spacial division is indicated clearly in the first scene in which the
picture of Bedford Falls, is quickly followed by the insight into the level
of paradise.6 It is a snowy Christmas evening and through the voices of
people praying to God for George Bailey we learn that the main character
is in trouble. The opening exposes typical features of an American small
town: its tree-lined streets and local houses and buildings. Next, the
camera slides upward and the viewer is offered the vision of a starry
firmament. We hear heavenly voices speaking and the stars sparkle one by
one whenever the voice is heard. The discussion concerns George and in
the celestial intercourse that follows we are informed about the resolution
to provide help for the benefit of the hero. Clarence Odbody (Henry
Travers), a “second class” angel who has not yet earned his wings, is to be
sent down to earth in order to prevent George’s suicide attempt. Before the
mission begins, Clarence and the audience are provided with a
retrospection of the most significant facts and events from George’s life.
Thus, we are transferred from the paradisal realm to purgatorial level of
Bedford Falls, at which we will now have a detailed look.7
The retrospective sequence is constructed in cinematic fashion and it
presents a selection of scenes from George’s childhood as well as his adult
life, even freezing the frame when an additional commentary is necessary
for Clarence to gain a better understanding of the whole story.8
It has been claimed by critics and reviewers on several occasions that,
contrary to the film’s title, in some ways George Bailey’s life was not

5
In 2006 American Film Institute recognized It’s A Wonderful Life as number one
on the Cheers list (America’s Most Inspiring Movies), and on a 2008 Top 10 list it
occupies the third place in the genre of Fantasy.
6
The subject of the divison of the world presented in It's A Wonderful Life into
three Dantean levels has been previously discussed by Barbara Bowman in her
Film Images Of Capra, Lubitsch, Sternberg, And Wyler, 20-29.
7
James Walters claims there are two spatial levels in It's a Wonderful Life: the
human world of Bedford Falls and cosmic heavenly level as it is introduced at the
beginning of the movie. See his Alternative Worlds In Hollywood Cinema:
Resonance Between Realms (Chicago: Intellect, 2008), 115-118.
8
Robert Ray argues that by means of introducing a frozen frame into the body of
the film, Capra intentionally departed from the formal paradigms of traditional
invisibility of cinematic aparatus in the movie. See his A Certain Tendency Of The
Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1980 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 204.
164 Chapter Five

wonderful at all. According to James Agee's of the 1947 review, it is a

story about “a local boy who stays local, doesn’t make good, and becomes
at length so unhappy that he wishes he had never been born.”9 The facts
seem to confirm the above assumption. As a boy George rescues his
younger brother from drowning; a heroic deed that costs him the loss of
hearing in his left ear. The same year he saves the druggist from certain
disaster by means of not delivering poisoned pills to a child, for which,
before he has a chance to explain the matter, he gets slapped in the face.
George dreams about exotic travels, building bridges and skyscrapers;
about getting out into the world and getting to know things. But none of
these ever happen. George’s long-awaited journey to Europe is cancelled
as his father (Samuel S. Hinds) dies of a stroke the night before he was to
set off.
As the story unfolds further disappointments mount. George does not
go to college. His sense of duty and loyalty to his deceased father makes
him stay and run the Bailey Building and Loan, the financial organization
helping people to improve their living conditions by means of providing
them with the possibility to own a house. The institution is threatened by a
local robber baron, Henry F. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), who urges its
dissolution on an account of it being unprofitable and detrimental, since it
supports the “discontented lazy rabble,” as he calls the people of Bedford
Falls. George sends his brother Harry (Todd Karns) to college and waits
another four years for his own turn until the latter returns and takes over
the family business. However, when Harry finally does come to Bedford
Falls, it is with a young wife by his side and a promise of a lucrative job in
Buffalo offered to him by his father-in-law. Having realized that his last
chance to leave is lost, George throws away the travel brochures he
constantly carries with him and by this symbolic act he bitterly parts with
his dream.
Soon afterward George marries the local girl Mary Hatch (Donna
Reed) with whom he has been in love with for a long time but never
admitted it even to himself for fear of being tied down forever.
Nevertheless, it is still not the end of George’s miseries. The scheduled
honeymoon journey of the newly-wed couple is interrupted on their way to
the train station by the news of the Great Depression and a run on the
Building and Loan. George and Mary devote their honeymoon money to
save the business and to prevent Mr. Potter from taking control of the
whole town. Thus, the Baileys never leave Bedford Falls and end up

9
James Agee, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” in Frank Capra: The Man And His Films,
(ed.) Glatzer and Raeburn, (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1975),
157.
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 165

spending their wedding night in an old dilapidated house about which

George once said he “wouldn’t live in it as a ghost”, and which, ironically,
would eventually become a home for him, Mary and their four children. In
the end, George remains in his hometown and his life revolves around the
Building and Loan while constantly struggling against Potter’s greedy
ambitions. Condemned to watch his brother and friends attaining all that
the world has to offer-education, adventures, career, experience, and
honours-his frustrations over the lost opportunities accumulate.
Because of his bad ear George even misses the opportunity to leave
Bedford Falls when the war breaks out. Instead he remains in his home
town and engages in any possible local form of supporting the army.
Meanwhile, on Christmas Eve 1945, the day that is to become a crucial
one in George’s life, Harry Bailey, previously announced as a war hero, is
to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour. Overjoyed at the news,
George’s absentminded uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell), his Building and
Loan associate, misplaces the company’s eight thousand dollars he was to
deposit in a bank that day. Accidentally, the money falls into the hands of
Potter, who literally grabs the chance of destroying George as the only
obstacle separating him from gaining absolute power in town. Desperate
and in a state of a nervous breakdown, George abuses his family and
leaves the house without any explanation as to the reason for his furious
behaviour. When he turns for help to Potter the latter accuses him of being
a miserable fraud and states that, with the equity of his five hundred
dollars life insurance, George is worth more dead than alive. George
proceeds to the bar where he prays for a solution. Almost at once he’s
punched by the husband of his daughter’s teacher, whom he had earlier
offended over the phone. Subsequently, he gets into the car and, in
consequence of a drunken ride, hits a tree. Finally, George gets to the
bridge and looking down into the depths of the river he contemplates
throwing away "God’s greatest gift" and taking his own life.
George Bailey’s world is a gloomy, purgatorial reality of constant
disappointments and relinquishments. He is always stopped on the verge
of achieving his aims and never succeeds in realizing his ambitions and
desires, which reach far beyond the social and economic boundaries of
Bedford Falls. Throughout his life George is constantly obliged to make
moral choices and his ultimate decisions always display his commitment
to the common good of the society he lives in. In consequence, the hero is
forced to repress his ego and resign from his own aspirations for the
benefit of others. Despite the fact that, thanks to his altruism, George has
become the pillar of Bedford Falls’ society, the succeeding resignations
from his dreams lead him to a mistaken conviction that his life is a
166 Chapter Five

failure.10
At first glance, the retrospective story presented in the movie seems to
confirm Robert Ray’s assumption that It’s a Wonderful Life is a film about
possessing all that the American Dream promises (a job, a house, a wife,
children, and friends) and still being unhappy.11 Nevertheless, a more
profound examination of the film makes it clear that Capra’s ultimate
message is quite the opposite, as the director points out that in spite of
difficult experiences that may befall us, “no one is a failure who has
friends.” However, George is too preoccupied with mourning for the lost
opportunities, which the world outside Bedford Falls had always promised
and seduced him with, to discover and accept the truth of the above
statement. Disappointment, fear of a monotonous and meaningless life and
the sense of being an utter failure poison George’s mind, cloud his
perception, and succeed in trapping him in an axiological purgatory which
he will be able to overcome only after he experiences the underworld
infernal reality.
Charles Maland states that no other Capra hero “was as deeply divided
internally as George Bailey.”12 He is torn between the sense of moral
responsibility for his family, friends, and community and the
overwhelming and ever-present desire for travel, adventures, and success.
George’s problems seem to be rooted in three basic oppositions, which
according to Ray are seminal to American culture and in particular to the
American post-war mood: “adventure/domesticity, individual/community,
and worldly success/ordinary life.”13 George pronounces his desires
lucidly already in the childhood scenes. He enters the drugstore with the
words: “Wish I had a million dollars” (the habit that will remain until his
adult life) and shows Mary the new copy of The National Geographic
magazine announcing proudly that he is going to be an explorer some day.
Next, in the first scene presenting George as a young adult, the viewer
watches his preparations to leave Bedford Falls for a trip to Europe and for
college. He is choosing a suitcase and his demands: “I don’t want one for
one night. I want something for thousand and one nights,” indicate that his
childhood dreams have never ceased to exist nor even to be diminished.
The same day he tells his father: “I couldn’t face being cooped up for the

10
Charles Maland claims that George's sense of entrapment results from two sorts
of conflicts present in his life: external–between George and his Bedford Falls
adversary, Mr. Potter, and internal–between the sense of moral responsibility and
his own desires. See his Frank Capra, 140-141.
11
Ray, A Certain Tendency Of The Hollywood Cinema, 192.
12
Maland, Frank Capra, 140.
13
Ray, A Certain Tendency Of The Hollywood Cinema, 183.
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 167

rest of my life in a shabby little office. [...] I want to do something big and
something important.” Later that day, after Harry’s graduation party, he
enthusiastically recites to Mary:

I know what I’m going to do tomorrow and the next day and the next year
and the year after that. I’m shaking the dust of this crummy little town off
my feet and I’m going to see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the
Coliseum. Then I’m coming back here and go to college and see what they
know... and then I’m going to build things. I’m gonna build air fields. I’m
gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high. I’m gonna build bridges a
mile long.

However, it turns out to be one of the last times that George’s imaginative
desires are expressed verbally. As the subsequent impediments to the
realization of his dreams arise, his initial hopeful enthusiasm gradually
fades away and the pain resulting from the bitter feeling of unfulfillment
and resignation is revealed only by disappointed stares, blank glances into
the distance, and occasional shivers at the sound of a train whistle.
The motif of sinking into silence or temporary inability to articulate
ones desires is a recurring motif of Capra’s films, as discussed in the
previous chapter. Capra’s heroes usually retreat into silence in reaction to
an oppressive reality and such a state signifies the characters’ profound
despair and alienation. On the other hand, “a condition of American
alienation”,14 Carney argues, is a state deeply rooted in American culture
and tradition, and it constitutes a mode of freedom which allows the hero
for imaginative creativity and to remain an individualist: “a last-ditch
strategy of self-preservation”.15 George’s silence and alienation is much
more dangerous than in the case of Capra’s earlier characters like Mr.
Deeds, Mr. Smith, or John Doe. Retreat into silence was for Deeds,
Smith, and Doe the last act of protest against their own helplessness and
futility of their struggles; but even in the state of deepest despair they
were all convinced about the righteousness of their causes. George Bailey,
however, is unceasingly torn between the sense of moral duty and his
own dreams and longings. He accepts his fate silently as he knows his
choices are for the benefit of others; nevertheless, he hates his role and
his frustrations over staying in his home town, dealing with the “small”
affairs of everyday life and the constant suppression of his desires
accumulates and eventually bursts out.

14
Carney, American Vision, 420.
15
Carney, American Vision, 294. The problem was earlier mentioned in the
previous chapter in the case of Longfellow Deeds.
168 Chapter Five

Ray discerns the source of George’s problems in “the latent American

preference for values, lifestyles, and attitudes that [have] no place in
ordinary life.”16 Nevertheless, the question that arises is if George
Bailey’s life is really ordinary? And furthermore, is it correct to call
George a common ordinary man? Such a view is oversimplified and,
ironically, the one that George himself wrongly assumes to be right before
Clarence’s divine intervention. The initial version of the script contains
George’s following statement: “I was a 4-F. In my case it didn’t stand for
Four Freedoms, it meant Four Failures. Failure as a husband, father,
business[man]–failure as a human being.”17 This declaration eventually
does not appear in the film, but still, George’s strong conviction of the
truth of the above statement is implicit. Although George’s presumption is
obviously untrue. Nevertheless, some of the critics appear to have been
deceived as well and in their articles we find statements like: George is in
fact “the most ‘common’ of all, without the eccentricities of Deeds,
Grandpa Vanderhof, Smith, or even Doe,”18 or “Bailey [is] a Deeds who
never got rich, a Smith who never got appointed to the Senate, a Doe who
remained obscure–who just got old.”19 A direct contradiction to these
opinions can be found in American Vision, in which Carney perceives
George Bailey as a hybrid of Capra’s earlier characters and states:

George is one of the supreme creations of American film: both the greatest
and most idealistic dreamer in Capra’s entire gallery of American dreamers
and the figure in his work most unremittingly embedded in the structures
of society and social discourse, most hedged round with responsibilities.
He brings together in one performance all of the different manifestations
from the earlier films of the ability of the imagination to avoid or break
free of entrapping systems that would limit its free movements.20

Throughout the film Capra presents George Bailey as an exceptional

man who sacrifices his own dreams and financial resources for the sake
of helping his neighbours. Thus, the story of his life is not the story of
staying behind and being a failure but about the heroism of staying in
Bedford Falls and helping people to have a better life. As it is said at
some point of the movie, all of his life George “fought the battle of
Bedford Falls”. And this local “battle field” turns out to be extremely
demanding, strenuous, and harsh.

16
Ray, A Certain Tendency Of The Hollywood Cinema, 186.
17
McBride, Frank Capra, 519.
18
Willson, “Capra’s Comic Sense,” 96.
19
Handzo, “Under Capracorn,” 173.
20
Carney, American Vision, 389.
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 169

As in many of Capra’s movies–albeit only for part of the film–the

motif of a missing or deceased father is also present in It’s a Wonderful
Life, with Peter Bailey performing a similar function to other father-
figures in the earlier films. As Smith, Sr. and Dr. Mitchell before, he is a
transmitter of romantic idealism and a philanthropic philosophy. George
understood the nobleness of his father’s ideology even as a young boy
and from the very beginning was ready to defend it against all the odds.
Such an uncompromising attitude is displayed on several occasions in the
film. First, in the 1919 scene of Peter Bailey’s confrontation with Mr.
Potter in the Building and Loan office, where young George comes to ask
his father for advice. George witnesses the interchange of opinions
concerning the dilemma of people who cannot afford to pay their
mortgages. As one (and probably the darkest) of Capra’s examples of bad
capitalists,21 Potter expresses his indifference and contempt for financial
losers and calls Peter Bailey a miserable failure if he allows himself to
worry about such losers. George finds it unjust and deeply offensive and
reacts to it with an exclamation: “He’s not a failure! You can’t say that
about my father!,” and to his father: “You’re the biggest man in town!”
The next sequences of the film provide us with more evidence of
George’s faith in his father’s ideals and respect for them. In the last
conversation with his son, in answer to George’s declaration of his urge to
do something big and important in his life, Peter Bailey pronounces his
credo:

I feel in a small way we are doing something important. Satisfying the

fundamental urge. It’s deep in the race for a man to want his own roof and
walls and fireplace, and we’re helping him get those things in our shabby
little office.

These words of his father have a great impact on George, which is proved
in the scenes succeeding Peter Bailey’s sudden death. George’s journey to
Europe is cancelled, as he has to remain in Bedford Falls in order to take
care of the formalities and on the day of his planned departure for college
he addresses Potter at the very same Building and Loan office that he had
scolded the mogul back in his childhood. Potter, as usual, demands
dissolving the institution on account of its being useless and unprofitable
and even socially harmful as it fills people’s heads with “impossible

21
It’s A Wonderful Life, as many of Capra’s other movies, stresses the opposition of
a good capitalist (George Bailey) vs. bad capitalist (Mr. Potter). The Baileys
Building and Loan was preoccupied with helping people, while Mr. Potter was
interested solely in his own financial profit.
170 Chapter Five

ideas”. George’s answer is equally emotional as in his childhood defence

of his father and, basically, the scene seems to be the extension of the one
commenced in 1919. With the picture of Peter Bailey placed directly
behind him, highlighting the continuum of his father’s ideology, George
expresses his point of view:

Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about... they
do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.
Well, is it too much to help them work and pay and live and die in a couple
of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn’t think so. People
were human beings to him, but to you, a warped, frustrated old man,
they’re cattle. Well, in my book [my father] died a much richer man than
you’ll ever be!

The above speech brings to mind similar romantic performances of

Capra’s other populist heroes like Deeds, Smith, Doe, and especially Tom
Dixon (Walter Huston), the protagonist of American Madness (1932), a
banker who granted bank loans on base of his appraisal of personality and
character of a person.
As an heir to his father’s romantic idealism and understanding of
basic human needs, George succeeds in convincing the Building and
Loan board to keep the institution functioning.22 However, this victory
costs George the loss of another dream. To fulfil the board’s condition, he
has to stay in Bedford Falls and take over his father’s duties as executive
secretary of the company. George accepts the post with horror and
despair, as the realization that he is about to lose his last chance for a
college education hits him hard and overwhelms him. Capra makes the
viewer experience the sense of George’s inner drama almost tangibly by
means of depicting George’s terrified facial expression in a close up and
illustrated with a dramatic musical score. This shot nonverbally expresses

22
In her article Barbara Dafoe Whitehead highlights the importance of thrift and
home-building institutions like the Bailey Building and Loan in post-war America
and the impact they had on restoring and maintaining American small towns'
prosperity. She notes: “Everyone understood that thrift was socially constructive,
for through the accumulation of individual savings everyone benefited from rising
prosperity, better education and hope for a brighter future. What war bonds had
been for national security, thrift and home-building institutions were for family
security. The social capital created through thrift institutions limited social
polarization and marginalized the depredations of greed, so the real small towns of
America never decayed into Pottervilles.” See her "A Nation In Debt," The
American Interest, vol. 3, No. 6 (July-August 2008). Online on January 16, 2013
at: http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=458.
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 171

the profoundness of the hero’s dilemma. As usual, George parts with his
dream for the sake of higher good; however, the remorse over another lost
opportunity evokes his doubts as to the propriety of his moral choices and
resolutions.
To make matters worse, the above events are not the end of George’s
torments as, in the end, George never leaves Bedford Falls and the
Building and Loan. Even the chance of leaving the town temporarily for a
honey moon trip eventually comes to naught by the social hysteria of the
Great Depression and a run on a local bank as well as the Bailey’s
institution. George and Mary are stopped on their way to the train station
by the sight of the crowds of people storming the gate of the Building and
Loan.23 In a desperate attempt to save the Building and Loan from being
taken over (like almost everything else in town) by Potter, George and
Mary sacrifice their own honeymoon money and eventually have to
cancel their plans. Once again, George lives up to the demands of the
moral values seeded within him by his father. George does not forget
about this idealistic heritage even for a moment and, even at a critical
juncture like this, he examines the portrait of his father as if in search for
advice, some clue or confirmation. By now, Peter Bailey’s portrait, a
reminder of the essence and value of the Building and Loan cause, is
complemented by the inscription “All you can take with you is that which
you’ve given away” added beneath.
The motif of a deceased father and living up to his romantic populist
ideals frequently recurs in many Capra's movies. Jefferson Smith and Ann
Mitchell both build their lives on base of their fathers’ ideology. Even
Babe Bennett and Clarissa Saunders at some point of their transformation
recall the ideals their fathers cherished and lived by, and the heroines
allow these memories to influence their future actions. The shadow of
Peter Bailey is similarly ever present in each decision of George. The
memory of his father’s commitment to each case being dealt with by the
Building and Loan, together with the inscription from beneath the picture,
which not by coincidence happens to be the precise reflection of Grandpa
Vanderhof’s philosophy of life, never cease to be a driving force of
George’s decisions. Thus, George manages to save the Building and Loan
from Potter; however, once again he has to pay for it with another of his
plans. In the end, the newlyweds remain in Bedford Falls and spend their
wedding night in the old run-down Granville House which, while George

23
Capra dealt in detail with the subject of The Great Depression in American
Madness. The shots presenting the crowds of angry people storming bank
entrances have become an often recurring symbol of social problems of the late
1920s and early 1930s.
172 Chapter Five

is struggling against the run on the Building and Loan, Mary transforms
into a substitute of their bridal suite.
In spite of the fact that George’s sacrifices and efforts result in
creating Bailey Park, Bedford Falls’ residential area built solely thanks to
endeavours of the Building and Loan, George is still haunted by remorse
over his unfulfilled desires. The daunting feeling of being a failure as well
as his conviction that his life consists of a chain of perpetual purgatorial
ill-luck build up over the years and are intensified by pictures of George’s
Bedford Falls friends’ and companions’ accomplishments in the fields of
education and professional careers. However, George is too pure a
character to be unhappy about others’ achievements. He delights in each
piece of news reporting Harry’s success in college and later in the army
during the war. He is also proud of his schoolfriend, Sam Wainwright,
who had left Bedford Falls right after high school and succeeded in
making a fortune and a great career in business. Nevertheless, the contrast
between his own life and the lifestyle of his more (in George’s opinion)
successful friends turn his youthful hopefulness and liveliness into
bitterness and disappointment.
The case is particularly conspicuous in the scene presenting George
and his wife hosting a house-warming celebration in front of a new
Martinis’ house built in Bailey Park. George and Mary greet the happy
owners of the house at the threshold with traditional bread, salt, and
wine௅the signs of prosperity and life flavour. The short ceremony
constitutes an important social ritual and manifests George’s profound
humanity and social devotion. The scene serves as a proof that George’s
sacrifices were not in vain, and shows clearly that to the families rescued
from Potter’s “slums” and degrading conditions, George’s painful
decisions in the past were of priceless value. The Bailey Park sequence
also proves that, against his own lack of appreciation for his
accomplishments, George is not a common man at all. Among the citizens
of Bedford Falls he is respected and admired, and without quite realizing
it, he has taken over his father’s status of the local benefactor and, as
such, is “the biggest man in town”. However, George's perception is
blinded by the unfulfilled desires of his imagination and at this point in
the story he is not ready to appreciate the meaning of his daily choices
and struggles. The inner conflict of George is depicted by means of his
nervous reaction to Sam’s presence at the Martini’s house warming
celebration. Sam stops at Bailey Park on his way to Florida, arriving in a
luxurious black limousine with a chauffeur and his wife beside him. He is
the epitome of a successful businessman and, together with his wife, an
attractive and stylish lady dripping with furs and jewels, draws a sharp
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 173

contrast to George and Mary and their standard of life. As Carney points
out, Sam “is a millionaire world-traveller and industrialist who lives the
dreams of travel, glamour, romance, and wealth about which George only
reads and dreams.”24 The company parts after a while and George stands
gazing after the vanishing vehicle longingly. Subsequently, he and Mary
get back to their own old shabby car. George studies it with a desperate
look before he closes its door with an angry kick, and the gloomy
purgatorial mood intensifies almost physically in spite of the fact that not
a word is spoken out loud.
First and foremost, George’s special place in Bedford Falls’ community
and his uncommonness become conspicuous when we examine his
relations with Mr. Potter and his unique abilities to rescue Bedford Falls
from becoming a soulless place built on cruel economic rules and human
misery under Potter’s dictatorship. George is the only person in town
who, in the manner of a Don Quixote, dares to oppose Potter. As Leland
Poague notices: “George is moral, in the same way his father is moral,
and he never lets his desires get in the way of his morality.”25 In the scene
succeeding Martini’s ceremony, he even finds strength to resist the
temptation of improving his financial status when Potter offers to buy him
off for the salary of $20,000 a year. Having in mind his father’s
philanthropic ideology, he gets back to his toil at the Building and Loan,
which in truth he detests almost as much as Potter, as the latter himself
remarks.
Mr. Potter is an ever-present infernal element in the level of Bedford
Falls reality and is the factor that changes the life of its inhabitants into
one of purgatory. Peter Bailey at some point describes Potter as a sick
man: “[He is] frustrated and sick. Sick in his mind, sick in his soul, if he
has one. Hates everybody that has anything that he can’t have.”
Interestingly, Poague understands Potter’s behaviour as frustration
resulting from “the same kind of romantic extremism that plagues
George. Potter cannot be happy short of having everything he desires.
Likewise, George cannot be happy short of seeing everything he wishes
to see.”26 Thus, the picture that emerges from such an interpretation of the
conflict between George and Potter provides us with the clear examples
of two archetypal romantic characters: George–a romantic hero, fighting
for his ideals in the name of higher good; and Potter–a romantic villain,
ready to engage himself in any ploy that can lead him to victory over his
adversary. The battle between the two characters is fierce throughout the

24
Carney, American Vision, 385.
25
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 209.
26
Poague, The Cinema Of Frank Capra, 209.
174 Chapter Five

entire movie. With his hard-boiled politics, Potter gradually succeeds in

annihilating George’s youthful dreams over the years. On the other hand,
George has always been “a boil on [Potter’s] neck,” as Potter himself
states. In fact, George and the Bailey Building and Loan is the only
obstacle standing in Potter’s way of gaining total control over Bedford
Falls and that is the reason why, having unsuccessfully tried to destroy
Building and Loan, Potter finally decides that the only way to defeat
George is to employ him.
It has been noticed by numerous critics that Henry F. Potter is a purely
nineteenth century character and, as such, bears striking resemblance to
Dickens’s Ebenezer Scrooge.27 The assumption seems to be quite
convincing when we consider the way Capra presents and develops the
villain. The first time we see Potter in Bedford Falls it is through the eyes
of young George in one of the retrospective scenes from George’s
childhood. George with a group of his peers is walking along the street as
they are passed by an elaborate horse drawn carriage, distinctively
outstanding in its lavishness from the 1919 main street surrounding. The
boys stop for a while and watch it in wonder, and the viewer is offered a
comment from the celestial level: “Who’s that–a king?” “That’s Henry F.
Potter, the richest and the meanest man in the county.” Next, we see
Potter in several scenes from past and present in which the wealthy mogul
demands the overdue mortgage payments from people who were unable
to pay it on time, dissolving the Building and Loan, or we see him
thriving during the Great Depression, which for Potter becomes a golden
opportunity to benefit financially from the country’s economic crisis. At
one juncture we witness the conversation between Potter and Peter Bailey
in which George’s father argues against foreclosing on mortgages since
the recent rate of unemployment has left people hard up and they have
children to take care of, to which Potter replies: “They’re not my
children. [...] Are you running a business or a charity ward?” The above
statement recalls a similar answer delivered by the original Scrooge in
similar circumstances, namely to the gentlemen collecting funds for
charity on the day of Christmas Eve:

I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the

establishments I have mentioned [prisons, Union workhouses]–they cost
enough; and those who are badly off must go there. [...] If they would
rather die [...] they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.28

27
See Ray, A Certain Tendency Of The Hollywood Cinema, 197.
28
Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol,” in The Christmas Books (London:
Penguin Books, 1994), 12.
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 175

However, A Christmas Carol tells the story of change and positive

transformation, whereas in It’s a Wonderful Life the villain never changes
and never even repents of his vile deeds.29 Martin Schneider accurately
points out that Dickens presents not one but three Scrooges in his story:
the idealistic young one, the grumpy and stingy one as we meet him on
Christmas Eve, and the joyous one transformed after the visits of the three
ghosts. Thus, Potter can be considered to be the middle incarnation of
Scrooge, but devoid of his previous and subsequent positive sides and
hence he is “far blacker and more malignant that Scrooge could ever hope
to be.”30 Such a portrayal allows for the assumption that Potter constitutes
a quintessentially romantic villain. As Lesley Brill points out, romantic
villains “reek of carrion and the smoky fires of hell”,31 and the quotation
seems to be the accurate description of Potter's diabolic nature.
Potter has no family to care for or to worry about, has no friends, and
as he himself declares: “most people hate [him], but [he] doesn’t like
them either, so that makes it all even.” The statement, which confirms
Potter’s approval of such a status quo, simultaneously depicts the broader
prospect of his philosophy of life. He is neither interested in improving
his reputation among his fellow citizens, nor cares about treating people
with respect and simple human compassion. Just as D. B. Norton before
him, who used to perceive people as “hoi polloi”, Potter sees in them
“lazy rabble”, “garlic eaters”, and “riff-raff”; in fact, all he loves and
respects is money and the power it provides to him.
Devoid of familial or any other human bonds, Potter becomes the
symbol of greedy capitalism and human oppression. Additionally, in the
purgatorial reality of Bedford Falls, he also acquires the meaning of a
local emissary of evil who continuously occupies himself with plotting
against those who obstruct the completion of his goals, i.e. George and
the Baileys’ institution. In fact, when we reflect upon it, Potter’s idea to
employ George is as surprising as the scene itself. The meeting takes
place in Potter’s own realm, his lavishly furnished office. Potter sits
behind his desk in his usual throne-like exquisite chair, and his impassive

29
It is worth recalling that Capra explored a Scrooge-like character earlier in his
career in You Can't Take It With You. However, Kirby, Sr, following the pattern of
the original Dickensian Scrooge, becomes transformed in the end. Perhaps in the
case of post-war It's A Wonderful Life Capra decided it was time to present a
somewhat exaggerated version of a real diabolical romantic villain.
30
Martin Schneider, “It’s A Wonderful Life. Youth Is Wasted On The Wrong
People!,” Metaphilm. See through Cinema. Online on January 16, 2013 at:
http://metaphilm.com/philm.php?id=216_0_2_0.
31
Brill, The Hitchcock Romance, 6.
176 Chapter Five

valet is standing behind him.32 Potter’s portrait, hung in a place visible

from the mogul’s chair, highlights the sense of Potter’s megalomania. In
addition, on the desk beside him we find the bust of Napoleon, a frequent
requisite of Capra’s villains, which was also to be found in D. B. Norton’s
office before. George is invited to sit in a chair which, despite the hero’s
height, makes him look small and insignificant and enables Potter to look
at his interlocutor from above. George sits at the edge of a vast chair in a
position that resembles the pose of a humble school boy waiting to be
scolded by his headmaster and waits for an explanation of the reasons
behind Potter’s invitation.
The sequence that follows proves the ingenious shrewdness of
Potter’s evil mind. The perfect strategy designed to destroy his adversary
in white gloves exposes George to a dangerous trial of honesty and
strength of character. Potter begins his tirade in a peculiarly friendly sense
of camaraderie by boosting George’s ego through the means of admitting
he has failed to defeat George throughout the years and, in fact, George
has managed to beat him. Subsequently, he presents the facts of George’s
life and reminds him how many of his dreams George has had to deny
himself in order to save the Building and Loan and, with cold
purposefulness in disguise of concern, Potter points out that George has
been trapped in this town against his will and his life so far has practically
been a failure and a loss of precious time and talent. George listens to
Potter in confusion and with painful realization that the words of his life-
long enemy are a perfect reflection of his own thoughts and convictions.
The silent vexation of the hero is depicted through his nervous glances
and the intense look on his face turning from confusion to anger. Having
achieved the intended aim, Potter proceeds with seducing George with an
offer of $20,000 a year–a substantial sum at that time–if he agrees to
merge with him, and challenges him to accept it. Just to make sure his
offer is perceived clearly, he visualises the prospective profits coming out
of it: “You wouldn’t mind living in the nicest house in town, buying your
wife a lot of fine clothes, a couple of business trips to New York a year,
maybe once in a while Europe. You wouldn’t mind that, would you,
George?”
George’s astonishment is expressed in his facial expression, clumsy

32
There are several occasions in the movie that we see Potter's butler whispering to
his ear. In his article Mathew Costello points out the significance of this fact, as it
is believed in culture that “the devil always speaks in the left ear, in which,
significantly, George is deaf.” See his “The Pilgrimage and Progress of George
Bailey: Puritanism, It's A Wonderful Life, And The Language Of Community In
America,” American Studies, vol. 40, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 46.
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 177

movements when he can no longer sit down calmly and jumps to his feet
dropping the cigar he was nervously holding between his fingers
throughout the encounter. Potter’s offer results in igniting George’s hopes
and desires for his family’s financial improvement and for a short while
he is willing to jump at this unexpected chance. And, indeed, he comes
very close to making a pact with Potter, which is signified by the
symbolic handshake. However, through the revulsion at physical contact
with Potter’s greasy palms, George realizes that by such a union between
them Potter cannot mean anything more beyond treachery and deception.
To merge with Potter would be to betray his moral code and to stand
against everything George and his father have ever believed in. It takes
him a mere few seconds of epiphany to see the picture clearly-that, as
usual, Potter is playing his own mercenary game, just as he was during
the bank run earlier in the movie. He is not selling or giving anything
away; he is buying,33 and this time George’s soul is at stake. As such,
he examines his hands with a shudder and with an infuriated glare refuses
to join Potter in an angry performance that makes Potter drop the veil of
false friendliness from his face and for once leaves him speechless: “You
sit here and you spin your little webs and you think the whole world
revolves around you and your money. Well, it doesn’t, Mr. Potter! In the...
in the whole vast configuration of things, I’d say you were nothing but a
scurvy little spider.”
From this battle George emerges victorious. However, even though
once more he confirms the strength of his ethical code and succeeds at
resisting temptation of exchanging his ideals for material comfort, his
victory does not bring him much satisfaction. Potter’s words manage to
poison his mind with visions of a better and more interesting life than the
one he and his wife live within the confined space of Bedford Falls. In his
head he recalls all of the lofty plans and dreams he used to have and in
the end was forced to abandon, and again he begins to doubt the
reasonableness of his actions. Nevertheless, in his fervent address to Mr.
Potter, George expresses his subconscious conviction about the world
order and belief in his place and meaning within the universe. In the
whole vast configuration of things and matters assembled within the
purgatorial level of Bedford Falls, George has been appointed to do a task
the importance of which he does not quite grasp yet, but he will see and
understand it in its fullness later on in the movie.

33
During the Great Depression scene on the day of George’s wedding he explains
to the panicky crowd of people that by means of his offer to pay half price for each
share, Potter “is not selling, he’s buying,” which, if they do not stick together, may
result in Potter’s taking financial control over the whole town.
178 Chapter Five

From the subsequent montage sequence of war events we learn about

important operations and achievements of George’s brother and friends
on the battlefields of Europe. Since George is forced to remain in Bedford
Falls on account of his ear, he engages in local war activities which, alas,
in George’s eyes are merely substitutes and, as such, not only do not
guarantee him the feeling of proper fulfilment of his duties but fill him
with more bitterness and a deeper conviction of failure. The culmination
of George’s despair and disappointment with life strikes at the moment of
George’s realization that uncle Billy’s absent-minded misplacement of the
Building and Loan funds will inevitably lead him to jail and his family to
financial and social ruin. It is interesting, as it has been noticed by some
critics, that George automatically assumes that he is the one responsible
for the loss of the money and takes the blame entirely on himself.34 This
attitude must derive from George’s innate instinct and intrinsic need to
protect weaker individuals. In fact, at this point George’s behaviour
should no longer surprise the viewer since, at a closer look, this case is
not so different from any other situation in George’s life. As a young adult
George assumed the responsibility for the Building and Loan and hence
for a vast number of Bedford Falls citizens with the same heroic sacrifice.
Ironically, for his heroism George has to pay the high price of axiological
freedom in the former case and prospective physical imprisonment in the
latter one.
The scene of George’s eventual outburst of rage in front of his family,
according to Sam Girgus, belongs to “the most moving and powerful in
American film history.”35 We are offered the dramatic sequence in which
George verbally attacks his children preparing for the celebration of
Christmas. In fury he destroys the models of architectural constructions
he had once dreamt of building in real life, and, subsequently, with horror
over his outrageous behaviour, he undertakes a futile attempts to alleviate
the situation, which results in more tears and the utter confusion of the
children. The scene, Girgus continues, may also be “one of the most
important in its suggestiveness about the impending collapse of the
American family in the face of accumulated pressures involving
economics, security and gender.”36 However, it also indicates the perils
lying behind the constant suppression of individual imaginative
aspirations and the inability of self-realization. Capra has dealt with the

34
Leland Poague provides this example of George’s behaviour in his discussion
concerning incongruities in It’s A Wonderful Life. See his Another Frank Capra,
218.
35
Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance, 100.
36
Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance, 100.
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 179

subject in a number of his earlier movies. Broken down and discouraged

with painful disappointment upon the discovery of their apparent inability
to make a difference, Smith and Deeds resolve to withdraw and return to
the safety of their own small town asylum. George is perhaps the most
tragic character.37 The years of constant resignations and disappointment
with life and himself make him fall prey to his false illusion that he is the
reason of his family’s ill fortune and they would be much better off
without him. In the end, Bedford Falls and his life within it become the
realm of George’s axiological inferno, which eventually leads him to the
state of utter despair and makes him contemplate suicide.
Taking into consideration various dimensions of George Bailey’s
drama, it becomes obvious that the reality of It’s a Wonderful Life is
multi-level on more than spatial grounds. Although, within the frame of
Capra’s territorial division, Bedford Falls constitutes the middle–
purgatorial௅level of the presented world, for George it turns into the stage
upon which he is exposed to the axiological experience of all three of
Dante’s levels. I have already discussed the purgatorial level of George’s
axiological experience, also pointing out that the hardship of life and a
never-ending chain of disappointments result in the end in George’s
perception of his life as an unbearable hell on earth. However, to say that
George’s existence consists of darkness and hopeless despair alone would
be too much of an exaggeration. In fact, we can find glimpses of paradisal
reality in between most of the purgatorial events in his life. Nevertheless,
paradisal events, to which I would like to devote some attention at this
point, remain just glimpses in truth, since they are always overshadowed
by the sharp contrast of purgatorial experiences or diminished by
George’s erroneous vision of his life as a failure.
Curiously, innocence and experience have been interwoven
throughout George’s life from the start. The light-hearted frivolity of
George’s childhood games displayed in the first scene we meet the
protagonist, in which he and a group of his peers are sliding down the
snow-covered slope on the shovels is disturbed by Harry Bailey’s falling
into the lake, which eventually results in George’s loss of hearing in his
left ear. The heroic deed of saving Mr. Gower from prison is rewarded
with slaps in the face. Subsequently, the viewer is provided with several
different scenes of the hero’s joyful preparations to leave the town in

37
In her study of comic drama Francesca A. Murphy claims that in comedies the
heroes suffer as much as in tragedies. Therefore, my use of the term tragic here is
not intended to question the genre of It's A Wonderful Life, but to underline the
amount of suffering the hero has to undergo. See Murphy, The Comedy Of
Revelation, 24.
180 Chapter Five

search of foreign adventures and education, and each of the occasions is

prevented by various unexpected disturbances. Hence, the dynamics of
George’s life is ever changing, hectic and constantly altering the mood
from light paradisal bliss to a dim purgatorial solemnity and, irrespective
of George’s opinion in that matter, it never permits a dull moment.
One of the longest paradisal sequences in George’s life begins on the
day before his prospective and never-to-be-realized journey to Europe.
After the scene of selecting a suitcase for a “thousand and one night”
journey, George is heading home in high spirits, and Capra uses the
opportunity to picture the hero in the cheerful state of expectation and
excitement over the possibilities awaiting him. He passes the Norman
Rockwell-like main street of Bedford Falls, which for once appears to be
the classic Caprian small-town idyll. Mr. Gower’s drugstore is crowded
with laughing school kids enjoying soda and ice-cream; the streets are
busy with passersby and shining in the spring sunlight; the trees are in
full bloom, and George’s friends greet him jocularly as a great voyager
and future discoverer of foreign lands. After the joyous exchange of some
waggish jokes, George demands to be driven home in style by his friend,
the taxi driver. At the Bailey’s house the happy paradisal mood prolongs
as George and Harry share the moments of uproarious fun and enjoyment
of getting ready for Harry’s graduation party, which George eventually
joins in as well.
It is during the graduation ball that George sees Mary Hatch as if for
the first time, in spite of the fact that, being the younger sister of George’s
friend Marty (Harold Landon), she must have been around most of the
time; and, in fact, she has always been. Capra introduces Mary to the
audience as early as in the memorable 1919 scene at Mr. Gower’s
drugstore, where George serves little Mary with chocolate ice-cream,
lectures her about the origins of coconuts, and boasts about his plans to
become an explorer, to which Mary responds with a vow to love him till
the day she dies whispered into George’s bad ear.38 Yet, when asked by
Marty to give the girl the thrill of a lifetime by means of a dance at a
graduation party (to which George agrees reluctantly), he looks at Mary
as if he had never seen her before. The moment is magic with romantic
magnetism and the sensation of being suspended in time. They are in the
middle of a crowded ballroom when their eyes meet and, while George
looks at Mary in astonishment and awe, Mary, radiant with beauty and
smiling timidly upon the recognition of George’s presence, makes the

38
Walters points to the solemnity and almost religious reverence of this vow which
Mary utters thoroughly to herself and having made sure that no one else (not even
George) hears her. See his Alternative Worlds In Hollywood Cinema, 121.
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 181

impression of being conscious of her oath from the past and still faithful
to it. They embrace and begin to dance without a word and still gazing at
each other. The silence is broken by George’s humorous admission that he
does not know her indeed, as she cannot be the same little girl he passes
on the street almost every day.
George’s statement together with his astounded enamoured look seem
to confirm Brill’s theory that romantic love, like divine grace, can be
neither earned nor deserved; it must be “amazing”.39 This mutual
amazement makes the couple spend the rest of the evening together. They
engage in a Charleston contest, presented by Capra in a series of the
iconic pictures exposing the craze and merriment of the Roaring
Twenties. Mary, George and dozens of other participants end up in the
school swimming pool which, to the amusement of all, suddenly opens
beneath the dance floor. After dancing in the swimming pool for a while,
the heroes wander the streets of Bedford Falls dressed in oversized sports
attire borrowed from the college’s locker room, as their own clothes are
soaking wet. It is in this scene that Capra shows the romantic nature of
Bedford Falls in its full intensity. Despite the nighttime, the streets are
saturated with moonlight, turning the town into an impressionistic vision
of a romantic green world. The nature in blossom prophesies spring-time
fertility and sentimental fulfilment. George and Mary vigorously perform
a duet of “Buffalo Gals” in an off-key harmony, continuing the happy
celebration of the graduation party as well as their unexpected meeting
and mutual discovery.
I have discussed the subject of songs and singing in the previous
chapters and pointed out how Capra uses them in his movies for the sake
of creating the feeling of communion and tightening the spiritual bonds
between characters. Ellie Andrews and Peter Warne enjoy the experience
of singing in chorus with other passengers of a bus on the road to their
eventual transformation. Citizens of Mandrake Falls bid farewell to
Longfellow Deeds with music and singing at the train station. There is
always music and dancing at the Disney-like reality of Grandpa
Vanderhof’s house and, at the end, the harmonica duet performed by
Grandpa and Mr. Kirby serves as the means of resolving a divisive
conflict. However, in the case of George and Mary, when we realize that
the whole scene of their moonlight walk is, in fact, the art of evasion; that
their “Buffalo Gals” duet acquires another meaning as well. Throughout
the scene they are careful not to say anything explicit and not to verbalise
their attraction to one another. Capra leaves the task of expressing the

39
Brill, The Hitchcock Romance, 20.
182 Chapter Five

feelings that have been born between the heroes to their smiles, glances,
body language, and the natural green world around them. First, they sing
instead of speak and, next, they choose to test a local folk habit of
throwing a rock and making a wish after they successfully break the glass
of an old abandoned house’s window, and for a while the heroes get
utterly lost within the magic of turning dreams and desires into expected
reality. Music and the other theatrical games George and Mary play in
this sequence, as Carney points out, “indicate their inability to speak their
true feelings.”40 Their duet is, therefore, the only verbal way they can
afford to express their affections for each other at that moment.
In fact, for some reason, Mary’s and George’s subsequent behaviour
seems to contradict the romantic bond which by now is quite obvious to
the viewer, and they head in quite an opposite direction than could be
expected. This surprising fact becomes evident in the scene of the rock
throwing custom. At first Mary objects to the idea stating that she loves
that old house which is so full of romance and she declares she would like
to live in it. She looks at the mansion with a dreamy look in her eyes, and
the view of the house offered to the audience through Mary’s eyes brings
to mind the recollections of fairy tale castles straight from gothic
mysteries. To George, however, it displays nothing more than that of an
old decrepit house and he retorts incredulously: “In that place? I wouldn’t
live in it as a ghost”. He throws the rock and accurately breaks the glass
and in reply to Mary’s inquiry about the dream he wished for, he recites
the already-quoted long list of dreams and plans of leaving Bedford Falls
and conquering the outside world.
Poague finds a connection here with the soliloquy delivered by
George in front of the old Granville house and the 1919 drugstore scene,
in which young George expresses the wish to travel to exotic places and
to have harems and three or four wives. In both cases we hear George’s
plans concerning the future; both speeches are addressed to Mary; and in
both cases George overtly excludes Mary from his plans which Poague
identifies as an act of “spiritual mischief” comparable to the one of Peter
Warne’s in It Happened One Night.41 However, it seems quite plausible to
believe that at the moment of uttering his list of dreams and desires at the
rock throwing scene, George is truly convinced about the accurateness
and completeness of his list. Or if not quite, by means of the flow of

40
Carney, American Vision, 395.
41
Poague, Another Frank Capra, 200. In It Happened One Night Peter Warne
delivers a speech concerning his vision of Pacific Island and his dream to find a
proper girl to share his desires with. His soliloquy is addressed to Ellie Andrews,
whom he deliberately excludes from his vision.
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 183

words uttered without the single break, George at least desperately tries to
brush aside the conscious realization of his love for Mary, for fear it
might stop him from achieving his goals.
Mary, on the other hand, seems to be certain of her feelings, wishes,
and intentions when she bends in search for a rock of her own and, with
determination painted on her face, breaks another window which brings
George’s soliloquy to a halt. She refuses to reveal what she had wished
for, explaining that it might not come true if she told it out loud.42 Such
logic brings to mind Mary's childhood declaration of her love in the
drugstore which, although spoken out loud, was also unheard by anybody.
George's acceptance of such an explanation, as Poague suggests, casts a
shadow upon the prospective fulfilment of his own loudly pronounced
dreams, as well as the nature of his real desires and intentions. The critic
points out that, in the light of George's acceptance of Mary's remark about
not verbalising the wish, George's eager pronouncement of his dreams can
be understood as a subconscious desire to cancel his wish.43 The couple
resume walking and singing and they stop at George’s poetic offer of
lassoing the moon and giving it to Mary:

What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I’ll throw
the lasso around it and pull it down. [...] I’ll give you the moon, Mary. [...]
Well, then you could swallow it and it’d all dissolve, see? And the
moonbeams’d shoot out of your fingers and your toes, and the ends of your
hair.

This imaginative vision in which George equips Mary with a halo and,
by doing so, equating her to the status of a saint, proves that, against the
pronounced intention to exclude her from his plans for the future,
George’s perception of Mary as a moonlit goddess is overtly romantic.
Carney’s reading of the scene argues that, despite its visionary undertone
and beauty, it brings nothing to the plot and leads the characters not a
single step further, except for “beating around the bush” in order to avoid
verbalising their feelings.44 I would argue the case, however, since, by
means of his romantic improvisation, George creates the sense of union
and binds Mary with bonds stronger than any traditional declaration of
love would be able to. Mary accepts the offer with an inspired smile and
the look in her eyes exposes the aura of an inner light which seems to

42
Walters discusses the subject of making wishes in It's A Wonderful Life in details
in his Alternative Worlds In Hollywood Cinema, 120-127.
43
See Poague, Another Frank Capra, 198.
44
See Carney, American Vision, 395.
184 Chapter Five

radiate from within her even without the need of “swallowing” the moon.
In the context of the spatial organisation of Bedford Falls’ reality and
George’s life within it, the scene of lassoing the moon may also be read
from another perspective. It is interesting to note how close௅standing in
the near vicinity of the old Granville house, their future love nest௅the
heroes are to heaven. In fact, Capra deviously suggests that at this point
that they are so close to heaven and paradisal reality that it would be
possible for George to physically reach out and get the moon for Mary.
The moment of the couple’s paradisal proximity is disturbed by a
casual witness to George’s romantic extravaganza, who from his near-by
front porch accuses him of talking the girl to death and wasting time he
should devote to kissing. Thus, the couple are brought back to earth and
the scene that follows constitutes a comic counterbalance to the moment
of their romantic exultation. By a screwball-like accident George steps
upon the belt of Mary’s robe. She sheds it and hurriedly hides in a nearby
hydrangea bush and, subsequently, is trying to shame George into
returning the only piece of her attire. George, however, finds the situation
very interesting and his initial impulse to throw the robe back to Mary
changes into the comic flow of speculations upon its possibilities. Alas,
the paradisal mood of the couple’s carefree evening together is radically
changed by the news of Peter Bailey’s stroke, which forces George to part
with Mary and rush back home.
The next occasion that George and Mary meet together is dimmed by
purgatorial shades of George’s disappointments, which have piled up
during the four years of Mary’s absence at college and have left George
sour and bitter. His bitterness is even more intensified by an abrupt
realization that Harry, who has arrived to Bedford Falls with the news of
his recent marriage, is not going to remain in town and take over the
Building and Loan after all. George is pondering upon the matter when
his mother (Beulah Bondi), obviously having in mind the matchmaking
plan, suggests his paying a visit to Mary. But George heads in another
direction as if in search for something that would at least temporarily
grant him freedom from any social obligations and responsibilities. He
ends up on Bedford Falls’ main street, where he is spotted by his
childhood acquaintance, the town’s beauty Violet Bick (Gloria Grahame).
George proposes to engage in a series of activities which conspicuously
recall the romantic performances of his and Mary’s at the “Buffalo Gals”
scene:

Let’s go out in the fields and take off our shoes and walk through the grass.
[...] Then we can go up to the falls. It’s beautiful up there in the moonlight,
and there’s a green pool up there, and we can swim in it. Then we can
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 185

climb Mt. Bedford, and smell the pines, and watch the sunrise against the
peaks, and... we’ll stay up there the whole night, and everybody will be
talking and there’ll be a terrific scandal...

However, the romantic ideas of George, to which Mary would surely

respond with eager readiness and acceptance, for Violet sound
preposterous and she reacts to them with indignation and furious denial.
The scene is brought to an end by the sound of laughter of the passersby
witnessing the encounter. Capra does not provide us with any clue as to
whether the above occurrence has made George consciously realize the
difference between the two girls and Mary’s exceptional ability to grasp
the romantic needs of his soul. Nevertheless, we subsequently see him
walking undecidedly back and forth beneath Mary’s window.
According to Carney, the events that follow indicate George’s
inescapable entrapment within the social system and his inability to act
outside of it. He reluctantly accepts Mary’s invitation to come in, and his
sulky expression reveals his discomfort. Carney points out that Capra’s
intention is to show “what it feels like to be a character playing a part
scripted and directed by someone else.”45 Thus, George joins the line of
Capra’s other heroes, who were similarly forced to take part in a puppet-
like show before him. Stew Smith, Longfellow Deeds, Jeff Smith, Kirby,
Jr.–they all find their way out of it eventually. George, however, is stuck
within the purgatorial level and hence devoid of any possibility to liberate
himself from the social oppression. Indeed, the circumstances
surrounding his visit to Mary’s house display the accuracy of the above
thesis. Even though he never admits that he is going to follow his
mother’s suggestion to visit Mary, the girl informs him that Mrs. Bailey
has already called and announced his intention to drop in. Thus, Mary has
been awaiting George in full readiness and she has managed to carefully
prepare the stage for George’s visit. An embroidered picture of George
lassoing the moon is placed in a visible place and a record player
transmits the tunes of “Buffalo Gals” in commemoration of their evening
spent together four years ago.46 Therefore, by means of entering Mary’s
house, George is once more denied the chance to direct his own life and
becomes an actor in a play directed by Mary. George acknowledges these
props set by Mary with a mask of indifference and slight annoyance. In
fact, during the few initial moments of his visit, he acts rudely and
insultingly towards her. He ridicules Mary’s confession of having been
homesick for Bedford Falls while at college and, next, they spend a

45
Carney, American Vision, 397.
46
See Carney, American Vision, 397-398.
186 Chapter Five

couple of awkward minutes on conventional small talk during which

George purposefully exhibits his moodiness and irritation. He finally
decides that he should go home and hurriedly exits leaving Mary almost
in tears. He significantly returns to collect his hat, however, and he
reluctantly stays longer to talk to Sam Wainwright, who calls Mary from
New York.
Capra uses the scene, in which the couple is forced to share the
receiver, as a means to bind them with something more than just a
telephone cord. As they listen to Sam’s business ideas, they are painfully
aware of their proximity. They stand so close that George’s face touches
Mary’s brow, and after a while of perplexed, intimate glances, George
breaks down, grabs Mary by the arm and desperately declares that he
does not want to get married ever and to anyone and adds in desperation:
“I want to do what I want to do.” Subsequently, in an outburst of passion,
he pulls Mary to his chest and covers her tearful face with kisses,
frantically repeating her name over and over again.
Carney treats the above scenes as one more proof of George’s
oppression by the boundaries of the social codes, and he states that the
“tyranny of love is even more oppressive [...] than that of hate.”47
However, I am inclined to interpret these events from an alternative
perspective. It is unquestionable that the events of the day of his visit to
Mary’s house disturbed George’s world, which at any rate so far has
mostly been marked by purgatorial experiences. The news of his brother’s
marriage forced him to ultimately bury the hopes for fulfilment of his
dreams of at least going to college. Hence, he gets to Mary's in a state of
disillusionment and painful capitulation mixed with resentment and
reluctance to accept his fate. It seems Mary constitutes a counterbalance
to George’s dark experiences. Having achieved part of George's
aspirations herself (moving out of Bedford Falls for the sake of gaining a
college education) Mary displays a deep understanding of George's
problems and frustrations. After all, she has made a conscious decision to
cast away the delights offered by the world outside Bedford Falls. She
rejected the courtship of Sam Wainwright, the suitor who would certainly
secure her at least with the comfort of material luxury, and decided to
return to her hometown and to intertwine her life with the man whom she
had once vowed to love forever. Mary brings light into George's life and
awakens passion and feelings, of which up till now he was not, or did not
want to be, conscious. James Walters points out that it would be
interesting to know “whether without Mary coming back into his life,

47
Carney, American Vision, 397.
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 187

George would have recovered from the death of his dreams.”48 I tend to
believe that Mary’s presence in George’s life secures the hero from
sinking into the infernal level at this point. She helps him to heal his
wounds; she tries to show him his real value; and helps him, at least
partially, to liberate his mind from the axiological inferno he is constantly
endangered by.
For a short while the sun begins to shine for George, but only
metaphorically, as it rains heavily on the day of Mary’s and George’s
wedding. Capra informs us about their marriage in a shot presenting the
couple, family, and guests preparing for the wedding photograph a minute
before their departure for a honeymoon to Bermuda. I have already
described the circumstances that eventually force George and Mary to
change their plans, and thus depriving George even of this chance to
leave Bedford Falls at least for a short time. However, by way of
compensation for yet another disappointment, George is offered the
reward of a different sort than the one he had always longed for.
After an entire day of heroic struggle to save the Building and Loan
using his own honeymoon finances, George receives a phone call from
Mary, who urges him to come home and provides him with an address
which does not seem to ring a bell for George. He arrives at the old
Granville house, exhibiting the same level of dilapidation and decay as
four years ago, and while George watches the house with a dazed
expression, Capra shows us the comic shots of George’s friends, Ernie
and Bert, busying themselves with preparations to greet the groom in
style. The door opens and Ernie, playing the role of a butler, lets George
in. The interior of the house displays the ingeniousness of Mary’s creative
imagination. In a few brief hours she has managed to transform the
decrepitude of the house into the augury of fertility and romance. She
stands with the coy, radiant smile of a bride and awaits her newly-wed
husband’s reaction, while he acknowledges the table built out of the
boxes piled up together and set for two with champagne and caviar; the
bed prepared for their wedding night; the fire in the fireplace; the broken
windows covered with the South Seas travel posters. The gramophone is
playing “Song of the Islands” and Mary greets George with the words:
“Welcome home, Mr. Bailey”. As they rush into each other's arms, Mary
reveals that this was the dream she had wished for on the night of
throwing the stones four years ago. At the same moment, Bert and Ernie,
standing outside in the rain, begin to sing “I Love You Truly” in a two-
voice harmony.

48
Walters, Alternative Worlds in Hollywood Cinema, 125.
188 Chapter Five

The scene bears a meaningful significance when, upon Mary’s

confession, we consider the different direction in which the dreams of
both protagonists have always been heading. Even though throughout the
film Mary, ever aware of a complex nature of George's desires, is always
careful to compensate his feelings of unfulfillment in any possible way, as
in the wedding night scene in which she attempts to create the atmosphere
of exotic places from George’s desires,49 it becomes clear that while
George’s dreams have always been heading “outward”, i.e. outside of the
limitative social and geographical boundaries of Bedford Falls, Mary’s
desires have been directed “inward” all along.50 She declares being home
sick after the four-year-long absence from her home town, whereas
George would be happy to leave the town for any length of time. The
same attitude is confirmed in the earlier rock throwing scene.
It is interesting to note that, in this respect, within the purgatorial and
also paradisal level, George differs from most of Capra’s other heroes.
Deeds, Smith, and even Doe were dreaming about leaving big cities and
returning to the safety of their idyllic small towns. George, on the other
hand, is always driven by the desire to escape Bedford Falls. This is,
however, because of the fact that Bedford Falls constitutes a microcosm
in itself and it can be treated as a picture of America in miniature, within
which every political, economic, and social phenomenon is to be found.
Potter’s politics provides the town with the regime of much the same kind
that D. B. Norton and James Taylor had thrived on in the previous
movies. Therefore, it is not necessary for George Bailey to leave the town
in order to struggle for higher ideals and against social injustice outside of
it. The desperate need to get out of Bedford Falls is, consequently, as I
have already stated, the result of his purgatorially-blurred perception of
his existence.
On the day of the couple’s wedding life once more strips George of
his brief paradisal exultation, by means of depriving the newlyweds of
their Bermuda honeymoon. Nevertheless, in exchange for one more
unfulfilled hope of leaving, and in truth, for all of the lost dreams of
outside adventures, Mary offers him the rewards of romantic love and
family life. George accepts the offer but, nevertheless, he is not ready to
utterly part with his former plans. He hides them deeply within his mind

49
Poague states that Mary has acknowledged George's desires all along and
therefore she is fit to take part and share them with him. Furthermore, she
constitutes George's alter ego, mirror image, soul mate and spiritual equal and
hence she is able to profoundly comprehend George's problems and dilemmas. See
his Another Frank Capra, 212.
50
See Carney, American Vision, 410.
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 189

and never mentions them out loud anymore. However, disappointment

and the conviction of failure keep poisoning him from the inside and
result in deepening the feeling of forever dwelling in the depressing realm
of purgatory. Looking more closely at George’s and Mary’s relationship,
it quickly becomes clear that she is the foundation of it. While George’s
steely determination to launch his romantic aspirations into life leads him
to the state of incessant discontentment, Mary’s desires remain more
“classical”, which according to Daniel Sullivan’s analysis means
“allow[ing] for passions and dreams only in so far as they conform to
human nature and respect its right order.”51 Sullivan argues that “the
romance Mary perceives is one of stability and rootedness, of domesticity
and a lived-in, close-at-hand history and is antithetical to the escapist
romance that appeals to George.”52
Interestingly, just as George represents an alteration to the previous
pattern of Capra’s heroes, in many ways Mary constitutes an exception
from other prominent Capra heroines. She masterly reconciles her
determination and impressive strength of character with ever dazzling
feminine warmth, fragility and angelic innocence and beauty. From the
very beginning she displays strength, confidence about what she wants
and she aims at realising her desires, never allowing for any distractions
to cloud her perception of the world she lives in. What is especially
striking is the fact that, unlike many other women in Capra’s movies, she
does not need to undergo a process of transformation. Her system of
values is defined and well-ordered and she never doubts it or falters on
her way to build her family life and supporther husband and children in
any accessible way. Therefore, Mary can be considered to be the constant
paradisal element in George’s life, akin to a Dantean Beatrice.
Unfortunately, this awareness, which at times is briefly acknowledged by
George, in the long run gets overshadowed by his purgatorial reality and
infernal attacks.
Examining George’s ultimate breakdown after the incident of losing
the Building and Loan funds, Carney’s statement that there is no need for
a real villain in It’s a Wonderful Life proves to be adequate.53 In truth,
George’s purgatorial frustrations throughout the film are the outcome of
his own false judgments and inability to draw the line between the reality

51
Based on Irving Babbitt’s analysis of different types of imaginations, Daniel
Sullivan argues that George and Mary represent “romantic” and “classical” types
accordingly. See his “Sentimental Hogwash? On Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life,”
Humanitas, vol. 18, No. 1/2 (2005): 129-133.
52
Sullivan, “Sentimental Hogwash?”, 132.
53
Carney, American Vision, 380.
190 Chapter Five

of his unfulfilled dreams and the factual meaning of the events in his life.
Thus, the state of axiological hell he seems to be drowning in most of the
time is due to his own imagination. It is also due to this confusion and
utter loss of hope that George allows Potter’s spiteful assertion that he is
worth more dead than alive to permeate his soul so easily. However, even
at the time of the most profound despair, George is granted paradisal help
in the person of Clarence, the second-class angel.

Pottersville: The Infernal Level

While George contemplates committing suicide by means of throwing
himself into the river, Clarence intervenes by jumping first and thus
changes the meaning of George’s action into a heroic sacrifice to save a
life. As they dry their clothes in the nearby toll house, Clarence tells
George he is an angel sent from heaven in order to help him. In the course
of the conversation that follows George pronounces the "wish" to have
never been born. Having realized that it is not going to be easy to
persuade George that he has been mistaken as to the value of his life all
along, Clarence decides to grant him the wish and offers him a chance to
see what the world would be like had he never been born. What follows is
a bleak infernal level in which George experiences the horrifying results
of his nonexistence. One of the first changes that George acknowledges
during his desperate search for familiarity within the alternative version
of his home town provided by Clarence is the change of the town’s name.
Bedford Falls is now Pottersville, and while George in horror traverses
unrecognizably altered streets, Clarence makes attempts to point out how
much good George had brought to his home town, how much had
depended on him, and how priceless his life had been.
The nightmarish Pottersville sequence depicts the third, abysmal
underworld level of It’s a Wonderful Life’s spatial reality. The town
without George Bailey is transformed beyond recognition and within it
Capra paints a cold vision of a modern town crowded with unfamiliar,
unsmiling strangers bleakly passing the streets, which seem to be “dark
with something more than night.”54 Pottersville draws a sharp contrast to

54
Raymond Chandler quoted in Frank Krutnik, “Something More Than Night:
Tales Of The Noir City,” in The Cinematic City, ed. David B. Clarke (London:
Routledge, 1997), 83. Similarly, in the article "Capra Corn" D. J. M Saunders
expresses the opinion that: “As a person of this era, I find George's journey to the
underworld more deeply scary, more spiritually exhausting, and finally more
redemptive than the comparable episodes in medieval or 19th-century literature."
See her "Capra Corn." In contrast, Wendell Jamieson in his New York Times article
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 191

Bedford Falls. The nightmare town “exposes the iconography of the

1940s noir city: a riot of neon and jazz, the main street of Pottersville is
crammed with burlesque halls, dance joints, pawnbroker’s stores,
numerous bars.”55 Martini’s homey bar is now Nick’s, while George’s
Bedford Falls friends gathered there are hostile and cynical. Mr. Gower is
a drunkard and an ex-con, as George was not there to prevent the tragedy
of his unintentional poisoning of a child. Violet Bick is a prostitute, uncle
Billy is in an asylum, George’s mother is a solitary sullen old woman
running a boarding house, and everyone George meets in Pottersville
denies ever knowing him. “Bailey Park” is replaced by “Potter’s Field”,
the cemetery, where George finds the grave of his younger brother Harry
Bailey’s tomb, indicates that the boy was drowned at the age of nine as
George was not there to save him. This further indicates that the whole
transport of men saved by Harry during the war must have died as well.
The depth of horror of dislocation and homelessness that George
experiences is conveyed, among others, by means of close-ups of the
hero’s despairing face and terrified expression at the climactic moments
of his realization that he has found himself in the real inferno of life: a
world without obligations and relations, of which he always thought as of
a constraining burden. Finally he has managed to free himself from the
social bonds that had seemed to imprison and destroy his individuality.
Surprisingly, contrary to what might have been expected, the apparent
state of liberation from social oppression brings about George’s
appreciation of his hitherto prevailing life and makes him long for the
usual order of Bedford Falls’ reality.
With the last desperate sparkle of hope George hurries to find his
house. However, he gets there only to find the Granville house in utter
ruins and looking even more decayed and gothic-like than during the rock
throwing scene. It is covered with dust and cobwebs, apparently
abandoned and uninhabited for more than the last twenty years. In shock
he looks for his wife but Mary is also much altered in Pottersville reality.
She is a spinster librarian and looks older, dried up and lacking much of
her girlish beauty and jovial vitality. George’s hysteric attempt to
persuade Mary that he is her husband and a father of her children ends up

presents the opinion that “Pottersville […] looks like much more fun than
stultifying Bedford Falls–the women are hot, the music swings, and the fun times
go on all night. If anything, Pottersville captures just the type of excitement
George had long been seeking.” See his “Wonderful? Sorry, George, It's a Pitiful,
Dreadful Life,” New York Times, December 19, 2008. Online on January 16, 2013
at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/movies/19wond.html.
55
Krutnik, “Something More Than Night,” 85.
192 Chapter Five

in a street shooting, which Capra presents in noir gangster-like stylistics.

George escapes unharmed and, with the sudden realization of
hopelessness of his efforts, he heads towards the bridge on which
everything started. With tearful voice and his fists pressed tightly into his
eyes, he prays to God to let him get back to his wife and kids and let him
live again. Three times he repeats the last plea: “I want to live again”, in
folklore fashion,56 and his wish is granted once more. George is brought
safely back to Bedford Falls and eventually he is able to look at and
behold his home town in a completely new light. George’s Pottersville
encounter made him realize that “to break free of all merely ethical,
personal, and social involvements may be not to achieve but to give up all
that is most important in life.”57 The infernal journey, therefore, turns out
to have a purifying power enabling clarification of George’s perception
out of purgatorial deformity, which would never have been possible
without tearing him out of his home town and thrusting him into a drastic
experience of self-discovery outside of Bedford Falls’ boundaries.
Clarence provides the hero with an opportunity to discover his real
identity and to undergo the process of positive transformation, which
appears to have been more complex and difficult for George than for any
previous Capra hero. Although the process of inner transformation and
maturation usually entails touching the bottom, it seems in the case of
George this condition is fulfilled on more than one level. Deeds, Smith,
and Doe had each suffered states of severe emotional breakdown at some
point; however, it is only George Bailey that has reached an emotional,
ideological and financial bottom combined together. The situation does
not appear less solemn when we recall that the reasons for his wretched
state flow mostly from within himself, and less from the outside factors,
as in the case of the previously-mentioned films. Pottersville, as Krutnik
accurately notices, “is alive with shadows emanating from within George
Bailey–born of his wish to be unborn.”58
Pottersville is, therefore, the vision of George’s greatest subconscious
nightmare.59 It presents the world in which Peter’s Bailey’s life-long
efforts to save the town from the soulless power of Potter’s economic
tyranny turn out to have been futile. In Pottersville reality there is a
dancehall situated in the place where the Bailey Building and Loan used
to be which, George learns, went out of business years ago. The vision

56
See Poague, Another Frank Capra, 186.
57
Carney, American Vision, 419.
58
Krutnik, “Something More Than Night,” 91.
59
Walters, however, argues that, in movie terms, it is more than "subconscious."
See his Alternative Worlds In Hollywood Cinema, 120-131.
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 193

shows that, without George’s relinquishments endured for the sake of

continuation of his father’s legacy, Peter Bailey’s commitment to the case
of providing disinterested help to people in need had been in vain and he
sacrificed his life purposelessly in the end. Moreover, Pottersville is the
reflection of what the world would have looked like if the nightmares of
all Capra’s populist heroes’ had come true. It is the reality in which
Jefferson Smith does not go to Washington to struggle against corruption
and iniquity: the world in which Anne Mitchell’s father’s ideology gets
lost in oblivion, not continued by his daughter and John Doe, and it is the
world in which Longfellow Deeds does not win his case and ends up in
an asylum, just as George’s uncle Billy.
Interestingly, George’s biggest Bedford Falls adversary, Mr. Potter,
does not appear in Pottersville in person. Nevertheless, his influence upon
the town is evident on every street, in every stone and building. In this
reality he is unrestrained by any opposition and he succeeds at
transforming the town into an anonymous place devoid of communal
identity and human bonds, and as distant as possible from Capra’s
philosophy to “be kind" and to "love thy neighbour”. Potter’s heavy toll
on the town is so conspicuous in Pottersville that it is probably the reason
for Clarence’s decision to make George undergo such a severe trial. What
is most surprising is the fact that it is not the emissary of evil but the
angel who takes the hero for the tour throughout the infernal realm.
Clarence’s solution seems to be the only way to show George the picture
of the world unblurred by his purgatorial perception. And, indeed,
Clarence’s mission is accomplished successfully, as George
acknowledges the angel’s simple moral that “Each man’s life touches so
many other lives, and when he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole.”
In the eyes of Stephen Handzo, It’s a Wonderful Life reflects the story
of A Christmas Carol from Bob Crachit’s perspective.60 In my opinion,
however, the aforementioned interpretation of Martin Schneider is more
convincing. Schneider points out that, in Dickens’ story, there are in fact
three different Scrooges and, furthermore, he states that, while Mr. Potter
in It’s a Wonderful Life can be considered to be a much more chilling
version of the “chiselling, greedy Scrooge,”61 as he is presented in the
middle part of the short story, it is in fact George who constitutes “the
first and third incarnation of Scrooge, the idealistic businessman and the
joyous goofball.”62 The statement seems plausible, especially when we
realize that it is not Bob Crachit in Dickens’ story that is offered the

60
Handzo, “Under Capracorn,” 172.
61
Schneider, “Youth is Wasted On The Wrong People!”
62
Schneider, “Youth is Wasted On The Wrong People!”
194 Chapter Five

second chance, but Scrooge. And it is Scrooge who is subdued by the

peculiar experience of visiting his past and future life, which is rarely
accessible to ordinary mortals.
Therefore, such a point of view inevitably leads to a conclusion that
there is an undeniable similarity between the characters of George and
Mr. Potter. A number of critics have noticed that George and Potter have
the same job and they both occupy the same function within the Bedford
Falls community. Additionally, Carney points out “[i]t is not accidental
that halfway through the movie Potter’s most threatening gesture to
George is not an attempt to destroy him, but a offer to merge with him.”63
Contrary to Scrooge, however, George never allows himself to cross this
elusive line which parts him from becoming a coldblooded opportunist
like Potter. Throughout the film George matures and becomes
transformed as Potter never does. At a closer look, it turns out that Mr.
Potter is, in fact, proof against all sorts of change. Within the twenty-six-
year time span of reality presented in the movie, Potter never ages and
practically remains physically unaltered until the end. In Another Frank
Capra, Poague discusses the subject of what he calls “timelessness” in
It's a Wonderful Life and he points out that, similarly to the Valley of the
Blue Moon in Lost Horizon, time is frozen in Bedford Falls.64 To support
his theory, at one point in the movie Uncle Billy states: “Nobody ever
changes in Bedford Falls”. However, this statement also seems to be true
especially in the case of Mr. Potter; he never changes his opinions and
lifestyle and appears unmoved by any outside political, social or
economic turmoils and events that influence the town and its citizens.
Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is the fact that Potter never suffers
any consequences of his evil deeds and never gets punished for them.
Throughout his whole life George has always considered the mere
prospect of leaving the territorial boundaries of Bedford Falls as an act of
moving into paradise, and he perceives his home town as a hell on earth.
However, his infernal experience of the alternative reality of Pottersville
radically alters his perception and, when his plea to get back to life (no
matter what it brings) is granted by Clarence, George rushes back home
and looks at the town as if looking at it for the first time. He loudly
applauds every street and building he passes, greets friends and strangers
busy with some last-minute Christmas preparations and even stops to
greet Mr. Potter, who readily replies with a venomous retort: “Happy
New Year to you–in jail!”

63
Carney, American Vision, 381.
64
See Poague, Another Frank Capra, 201.
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 195

Miraculously, the story is resolved with a different ending than the

one predicted by Mr. Potter, and George does not end up in jail after all.
Capra shows that the life-long servitude in the name of community and
common good has not been in vain and, when George finally reaches the
Granville house, he finds his fiscal troubles solved by the endeavours of
his wife, family and friends. The missing sum of eight thousand dollars,
and much more than that, has been collected among the grateful members
of Bedford Falls’ community in a gesture of appreciation for their
benefactor’s commitment and understanding of human needs. This
ending, in consequence, presents the scene of ritual komos-like
celebration. The picture of George standing by the Christmas tree and
surrounded by his friends and loved ones indicates that the hero has been
brought back to life in more ways than one. Firstly, when Clarence
exercises his power to bring him back to the spacial level of Bedford
Falls. And secondly, when his infernal experience of the hopeless
emptiness of existence devoid of social and familial responsibilities
makes him finally acknowledge the value of the priceless gift he has been
given௅his life in Bedford Falls.
Due to the successful accomplishment of his mission, Clarence is
rewarded with a set of wings and, as George is reborn to life, the angel
can return to heaven. Thus, the earthly order of George’s home town is
restored. Bedford Falls once more constitutes the middle, purgatorial
level of Capra’s spatial organization of It’s a Wonderful Life’s reality. It
still remains the place where people have to struggle against the
experience that every single day provides. It is also the place where the
envoy of evil, Mr. Potter, does not cease to hatch his crooked plans.
However, for George, Bedford Falls acquires an utterly new dimension
and changes into his axiological paradise. It is not by coincidence that the
film’s final celebration takes place in the time of Yuletide. The lyrics of
Hark, The Herald Angels Sing, sung together by the Bedford Falls
community surrounding George and his family, indicate explicitly the
nature of the event–resurrection, rebirth and renewal become the core of
the celebration. The sounds of Auld Lang Syne that follow the carol have
also been used on several occasions as a symbol of the strengthening of
community bonds and sense of unity and belonging. The evergreen
Christmas tree together with people gathered beneath it signify the green
world and fertility that George was looking for elsewhere whereas it has
always been right there within his reach.
George’s clarified insight allows him to realize the truth behind his
brother’s toast: “To my big brother, George, the richest man in town.”
Indeed, the ending of the movie proves that George’s wealth can be
196 Chapter Five

considered multidimensionally. He is rich with the generosity of his heart

and his humanity, reflected in the vast number of friends ready to help in
a critical moment.65 Thus, George recognizes Clarence’s moral that “no
one is a failure who has friends”. But George’s richness can be measured
differently as well. Carney points out that: “George–family man,
burdened with debts, cares, children [...] is the richest, most imaginative
traveller in all of American film.”66 He is the pilgrim to whom it was
given to travel various dimensions of reality, and experience the
paradisal, purgatorial and infernal levels of his own life. He is also
provided with the opportunity to see what the world would be like
without him. Such a journey, which becomes George’s exclusive
experience, as it was offered to no other Capra hero but him alone, turns
out to be more educating and rewarding than any far-away travel he had
longed for. His pilgrimage through the different levels of his existence
and non-existence enable George to rid himself of his daunting
purgatorial illusions and to become rejuvenated within the paradisal realm
and heavenly banquet which he finally achieves.
A number of critics consider It’s a Wonderful Life to be Capra’s
culminating work. Most frequently the view is based on the universal
approach of the film’s message. As Sullivan accurately notices:

In It’s a Wonderful Life, Capra permitted contemplation of, among other

things, accidental death, natural death, suicide, birth, bankruptcy,
depression, poverty, vice, depravity, virtue, spirituality, God, scepticism,
envy, materialism, indeed much of what any thoughtful person would list
under the category of ‘the human condition.’67

Charles Maland points out that the film incorporates some themes,
motives and character types from Capra’s earlier movies. George’s
romantic idealism certainly relates to the characters like Deeds and Smith.

65
In her reflection upon the reconstruction of the post-war countries Johanna
Mendelson Forman states: “It is difficult to accomplish postconflict reconstruction
anywhere in the world when it is done in the isolation of friends and allies.” See
her “Striking Out In Baghdad: How the Lessons of Post-conflict Reconstruction
Went Awry,” in Nation-building: Beyond Afghanistan And Iraq, (ed.) Francis
Fukuyama (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 198. The quotation
seems to be adequate to the It's A Wonderful Life socially miraculous ending. After
all, it is interesting to ponder over the question how would George Bailey's
situation develop without the financial help and moral support of a vast number of
friends and allies.
66
Carney, American Vision, 435.
67
Sullivan, “Sentimental Hogwash?,” 139.
 Innocence and Experience: It’s a Wonderful Life 197

The motives of the bank run, the misery of the Great Depression, and a
suicide attempt at Christmas Eve have all been used previously. The
moral delivered in It’s a Wonderful Life by Clarence and stating that
“wealth is better measured by one’s friends than one’s bank account” had
been first pronounced in You Can’t Take it With You.68 Hence, it can be
argued that the film constitutes a manifesto of Capra’s crucial ideological
premises.
My examination of It’s a Wonderful Life allows for drawing the
conclusion that the film can be considered to be the quintessence of the
Capra romance, as romantic traits are conspicuous at every stage of the
protagonist’s life. Therefore, romance can be traced in all three levels:
paradisal, purgatorial, and infernal, of both the spatial and axiological
division of the presented reality. Moreover, in the end the hero ascends to
the paradisal level and, thus, eventually succeeds at a “maintaining of the
integrity of the innocent world against the assault of experience”,69
which, as I have already mentioned, according to Northrop Frye,
constitutes the central concern of romance. Therefore, It’s a Wonderful
Life can be considered a masterpiece of romance celebrating the triumph
of life and renewal over sterility, wasteland and death.

68
Maland, Frank Capra, 138.
69
Frye, Anatomy Of Criticism, 201.
 CONCLUSION

In his Anatomy Of Criticism, Northrop Frye claims that romance,

which in its various forms is nearest to the “wish-fulfilment dream”,1
never ceases to be topical and current. The reason for its timelessness,
according to Frye, lies in the universal need of people to project their
ideals into some form of romance, regardless of the age and epoch or the
social or intellectual class they represent. Romantic heroes and beautiful
heroines symbolise ideals and villains the deterioration of them. Frye
argues that this pattern has been evident from the chivalric romance of the
Middle Ages, continuing throughout Renaissance aristocratic romance,
eighteenth century bourgeois romance and up to more contemporary
Russian revolutionary romance. As Frye states:

No matter how great a change may take place in society, romance will turn
up again, as hungry as ever, looking for new hopes and desires to feed on.
The perennially childlike quality of romance is marked by its
extraordinarily persistent nostalgia, its search for some kind of imaginative
golden age in time and space.2

Therefore, in the world of romance, the primary focus will be the heroes
and villains and their mutual struggles reflecting the everlasting conflict
between good and evil, innocence and experience.
In my book, my aim has been to prove the presence of this sort of
romantic nostalgia-and its Hollywood version-in the films of Frank Capra.
Frye's claim that romance and its determinants are still valid and present in
culture is evident also in the case of cinematic art which is why, despite
their age, interest in Capra's films is not limited to the academic world and
several of them remain perennial favourites. In order to prove the
legitimacy of the thesis that Capra's filmic universe fulfils the condition of
romance I have chosen seven films by the director and analysed them with
regard to Frye's theory of the romantic mode. The analysis of romantic
elements in Capra's pictures was preceded by establishing two categories-
“innocence” and “experience”-reflecting three comedy levels: paradisal,

1
Frye, Anatomy Of Criticism, 186.
2
Frye, Anatomy Of Criticism, 186.
200 Conclusion

purgatorial and infernal which, according to Francesca Aran Murphy, were

developed by Dante in his Divine Comedy. One might add that these
categories make it possible to incorporate much of the latest criticism of
Capra's work with their frequent reference to darker elements. In my book
the category of “innocence” constitutes the counterpart of the Dantean
paradisal level, while “experience” combines the purgatorial and infernal
elements.
“Innocence” is represented by three of Capra's comedies: Lady For A
Day, You Can't Take It With You, and It Happened One Night. All of these
films are examples of paradisal visionary comedies of light mood in which
the villains are practically non-existent and the protagonists achieve their
goals with little effort. The category of “experience” is represented by
Capra's populist trilogy: Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, Mr. Smith Goes To
Washington, and Meet John Doe. In these films and category we encounter
darkness, suffering, or even motives of suicidal death. These are the
Quixotic or quest comedies, by the end of which the heroes always remain
on the verge of achieving their goals. The above categorisation allows for
viewing and interpreting Capra's films through the prism of what Frye
considered to be the core of romance, namely struggles to maintain
innocence in the world of experience.3 Such a division encompasses
Dante's three realms of comic imagination, as well as echoeing Frye's
concept of the mythic cycle, according to which romantic reality
progresses from “death to rebirth, [from] darkness to a new dawn.”4
My last chapter is the exception to the pattern I have applied in the two
preceding analytical chapters, as I have devoted it entirely to one film;
Capra's masterpiece and the quintessence of romance, It's A Wonderful
Life. The multilevel spatial and axiological structure, as well as the
organisation of the world presented in the film, demands a complex
analysis, which has resulted in the formulation of a thesis that the film
combines all three of Dante's levels–paradisal, purgatorial and infernal–
and as such not only constitutes a study of innocence and experience but
also, by means of the construction of the protagonist and the way of
building the plot, it can be viewed as the realisation of the complete
mythic cycle from birth through death and up to the hero's rebirth.
Capra's films chosen for this book represent Frye's romantic idea of an
affirmation of life and its ultimate renewal. In the course of the films
Capra's heroes of both categories have to undergo a transformation.
However, in order to successfully achieve their aim, the protagonists are

3
Frye, Anatomy Of Criticism, 201.
4
The concept was discussed in the second chapter of the dissertation. See Frye, A
Natural Perspective, 121.
 Songs of Innocence and Experience 201

submitted to a three-stage process: a dangerous journey, a climactic

struggle against adversities (in the case of the “innocence” category) or the
envoy of evil (in the case of the “experience” category), and final
exaltation of the hero.5 Therefore, Capra's plot formula realises the Greek
comedy stages of agon, pathos and anagnorsis, and in most cases
concludes with a komos-like celebration of the victory of the fertile green
world of ideals over sterility, darkness and death. Capra's protagonists
display a noble character which provides them with heroic strength and the
determination to fight for their ideals against all odds and obstacles. In
contrast, the villains in Capra's universe are evil, merciless and
unchanging. With the exception of the infernal comedies, the heroes are
usually accompanied by helpers–faithful friends and goddess-like
damsels-who are the source of the heroes' romantic passion and the reason
for their will to keep on striving.
Love is at the centre of Capra's romance. In accordance with Frye's
paradigm, the romantic love of Capra's movies is a desire of the soul,
having little to do with reason or the laws of logic. It comes unexpectedly
and out of nowhere, dazzles, brings chaos and at first disintegrates the
hero's world. In the end, however, romantic love constitutes a healing
power and as such provides values worth living for. The romantic universe
is a fantastic one, as Brill suggests. Nevertheless, even though in Capra's
films we encounter neither talking animals nor fairy tale creatures, it is
still the world of fantasy, where occasionally time restraints are loosened,
angels come down to Earth in person, and the characters are able to cross
the spatial boundaries and, like Dante, travel through the realms of the
underworld.
Notwithstanding the different mood of each type of comedy, Capra's
ultimate message is one of optimism. His filmic universe, like The Divine
Comedy, is about resurrection, renewal and victory over death. “I'm not
interested in defeat”, Capra says, “Sure, [...] good hasn't taken over the
earth. But neither has evil taken over the earth. And you shouldn't let it.”6
His romantic heroes–his Deeds, Smiths, and Baileys–all recognise and
share this belief and their faith in higher values, morality, and everyday
kindness provides them with the strength to be the warriors in service of
ideals and “lost causes”. As Capra himself suggested, the source of his
hopeful and optimistic perception of life can be expressed in Fra
Giovanni’s utterance: “The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it,
yet within reach, is joy. There is a radiance and glory in the darkness,

5
See Frye's concept of romance was discussed in the second chapter.
6
Capra quoted in Schickel (ed.), The Men Who Made The Movies, 88.
202 Conclusion

could we but see, and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look!”7
In the hectic times of ours, where people quite often seem to have
forgotten these values, the optimistic moral of Capra’s movies once more
begins to live and regain its meaning.
As discussed in my book, Capra's films have influenced many films to
this very day. However, it is probably true that they are their own best
legacy. Modern critics seem to favour the currently fashionable noir-
related subjects and certainly, by means of studying and analysing the dark
elements of Capra's films, they pay a due respect to the director and his
art. However, these trends tend to ignore the comic aspect of Capra's
movies which, as I have already pointed out, was one of the most vital
goals of the director. Nevertheless, Capra is alive in the minds of his
audience, about whose needs and appreciation he was always so
concerned. Similarly, as at the time of the original releases of the films,
today's audiences appreciate them for what they are: a sophisticated blend
of comedy, romance and the dark noir elements. The reason for the films
perennial popularity to a large measure can be found in Frye's myth-based
concept of romantic reality.8 Such an almost archetypal world of romance,
as presented in Capra's films, still remains an up-to-date vision and the
contemporary audience still remains convinced by it.

7
Fra Giovanni quoted in Jeanine Basinger, The It’s A Wonderful Life Book (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), IX.
8
The concept was discussed in Chapter Two.
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 SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY

1922
Fultah Fisher's Boarding House (Fireside Productions)
Director: Frank Capra
Producers: G. F. Harris and David Supple
Screenplay: Walter Montague, based on Rudyard Kipling’s poem
Photography: Roy Wiggins
Cast: Mildred Owens, Ethan Allen, Olaf Skavian
Ca. 12 minutes

1926
The Strong Man (First National)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Harry Langdon
Screenplay: Hal Conklin, Robert Eddy, and Frank Capra, based on a story
by Arthur Ripley
Photography: Elgin Lessley, Glenn Kershner
Cast: Harry Langdon, Priscilla Bonner, Gertrude Astor
Ca. 78 minutes

1928
That Certain Thing (Columbia Pictures)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Harry Cohn
Screenplay: Elmer Harris
Photography: Joseph Walker
Cast: Viola Dana, Ralph Graves, Burr McIntosh
Ca. 69 minutes

The Matinee Idol (Columbia Pictures)

Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Harry Cohn
Screenplay: Elmer Harris and Peter Milne, based on Robert Lord and
Ernest S. Pagano's story “Come Back to Aaron”
Photography: Philip Tannura
Cast: Bessie Love, Johnnie Walker, Lionel Belmore
Ca. 66 minutes
212 Selected Filmography

The Power Of The Press (Columbia Pictures)

Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Jack Cohn
Screenplay: Sonya Levien, based on a story by Frederick A. Thompson
Photography: Chet Lyons
Cast: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Jobnya Ralston, Mildred Harris
Ca. 62 minutes

1931
The Miracle Woman (Columbia Pictures)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Harry Cohn
Screenplay: Jo Swerling, based on the play “God Bless You, Sister” by
John Meehan and Robert Riskin
Photography: Joseph Walker
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, David Manners, Sam Hardy, Beryl Mercer
Ca. 87 minutes

Platinum Blonde (Columbia Pictures)

Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Harry Cohn
Screenplay: Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin, based on a story by Harry
Chandler and Douglas Churchill
Photography: Joseph Walker
Cast: Loretta Young, Robert Williams, Jean Harlow, Walter Catlett,
Halliwell Hobbes
Ca. 90 minutes

1932
Forbidden (Columbia Pictures)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Harry Cohn
Screenplay: Jo Swerling, based on a story by Frank Capra
Photography: Joseph Walker
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou, Ralph Bellamy, Dorothy
Peteeson, Halliwell Hobbes
Ca. 83 minutes

American Madness (Columbia Pictures)

Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Harry Cohn
 Songs of Innocence and Experience 213

Screenplay: Robert Riskin, based on his story

Photography: Joseph Walker
Cast: Walter Huston, Pat O'Brien, Kay Johnson, Constance Cummings,
Sterling Holloway
Ca. 76 minutes

1933
The Bitter Tea Of General Yen (Columbia Pictures)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Harry Cohn
Screenplay: Edward Paramore, based on a novel by Grace Zaring Stone
Photography: Joseph Walker
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Nils Asther, Walter Connolly, Toshia Mori, Gavin
Gordon,
Ca. 89 minutes

Lady For A Day ( Columbia Pictures)

Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Robert Riskin, based on a story “Madame La Gimp” by
Damon Runyon
Photography: Joseph Walker
Cast: Warren Williams May Robson, Guy Kibbee, Glenda Farrell, Walter
Connolly, Jean Parker, Halliwell Hobbes
Ca. 88 minutes

1934
It Happened One Night (Columbia Pictures)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Robert Riskin, based on a story “Night Bus” by Samuel
Hopkins Adams
Photography: Joseph Walker
Cast: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns,
Jameson Thomas, Ward Bond
Ca. 105 minutes

Broadway Bill (Columbia Pictures)

Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Robert Riskin, based on a story by Mark Hellinger
214 Selected Filmography

Photography: Joseph Walker

Cast: Warner Baxter, Myrna Loy, Walter Connolly Clarence Muse,
Raymond Walburn Margaret Hamilton, Douglas Dumbrille
Ca. 90 minutes

1936
Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (Columbia Pictures)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Screeplay: Robert Riskin, based on a story “Opera Hat” by Clarence
Budiongton Kelland
Photography: Joseph Walker
Cast: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, Lionel Stander, Walter Catlett, Douglas
Dumbrille, George Bancroft
Ca. 115 minutes

1937
Lost Horizon (Columbia Pictures)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Robert Riskin, based on a novel by James Hilton
Photography: Joseph Walker
Cast: Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, Edward Everett Horton, Thomas
Mitchell, John Howard, Thomas Mitchell, John Howard, H. B. Warner
Ca. 118 minutes

1938
You Can't Take It With You (Columbia Pictures)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Robert Riskin, based on George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s
play
Photography: Joseph Walker
Cast: Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Edward Arnold,
Spring Byington, Mischa Auer, Ann Miller, Dub Taylor, Samuel S. Hinds,
Donald Meek, Halliwell Hobbes
Ca. 127 minutes

1939
Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (Columbia Pictures)
Director: Frank Capra
 Songs of Innocence and Experience 215

Producer: Frank Capra

Screenplay: Sidney Buchman, based on Lewis R. Foster's story “The
Gentleman From Montana”
Photography: Joseph Walker
Cast: James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Edward Arnold, Thomas
Mitchell, Eugene Pallette, Guy Kibbee, Beulah Bondi, Poter Hall
Ca. 125 minutes

1941
Meet John Doe (Warner’s)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Robert Riskin, based on a story by Richard Connell and
Robert Presnell
Photography: George Barnes
Cast: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan,
James Gleason
Ca. 135 minutes

1942
Arsenic And Old Lace (Warner Brothers, release 1944)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Philip G. and Julius J. Epstein, based on Joseph Kesselring
play
Photography: Sol Polito
Cast: Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, Josephine
Hull, Jean Adair, Edward Everett Horton, John Alexander
Ca. 118 minutes

“Why We Fight” Series (The War Department, The Army Pictorial

Service 1942-1945):

Part I: Prelude To War (1942)

Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Narration: Walter Huston
Ca. 53 minutes

Part II: The Nazis Strike (1943)

Directors: Frank Capra, Anatole Litvak
216 Selected Filmography

Producer: Frank Capra

Ca. 42 minutes

Part III: Divide And Conquer (1943)

Directors: Frank Capra, Anatole Litvak
Producer: Frank Capra
Ca. 58 minutes

Part IV: The Battle Of Britain (1943)

Director: Anthony Veiller
Producer: Frank Capra
Narration: Walter Huston, Anthony Veiller
Ca. 54 minutes

Part V: The Battle Of Russia (1944)

Director: Anatole Litvak
Producer: Frank Capra
Narration: Walter Huston, Anthony Veiller
Ca. 80 minutes

Part VI: The Battle Of China (1944)

Directors: Frank Capra, Anatole Litvak
Procucer: Frank Capra
Narration: Walter Huston, Anthony Veiller
Ca. 64 minutes

Part VII: War Comes To America (1945)

Director: Anatole Litvak
Producer: Frank Capra
Narration: Walter Huston Anthony Veiller
Ca. 70 minutes

1946
It's A Wonderful Life (Liberty Films)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, and Frank Capra, based on
Philip Van Doren Stern's story “The Greatest Gift”. Additional scenes Jo
Swerling
Photography: Joseph Walker and Joseph Biroc
Cast: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell,
 Songs of Innocence and Experience 217

Henry Travers, Beulah Bondi, Ward Bond, Frank Faylen, Gloria Graham,
H. B. Warner, Todd Karns, Samuel S. Hinds, Tom Fadden
Ca. 129 minutes

1948
State Of The Union (Liberty Films)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Anthony Veiller and Myles Connolly, based on a story by
Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse
Photography: George J. Folsey
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Van Jonson, Angela Lansbury,
Adolphe Menjou, Charles Lane, Irving Bacon
Ca. 121 minutes

1950
Riding High (Paramount)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Robert Riskin, Melville Shavelson, and Jack Rose, based on
Mark Hellinger's story (remake of Capra's 1934 film “Broadway Bill”)
Photography: George Barnes and Ernest Laszlo
Cast: Bing Crosby, Coleen Gray, Charles Bickford, William Demarest,
Raymond Walburn, Margaret Hamilton, James Gleason
Ca. 112 minutes

1951
Here Comes The Groom (Paramount)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Virginia Van Upp, Liam O’Brien, Myles Connolly based on a
story by O'Brien and Robert Riskin
Photography: George Barnes and Farciot Edouart
Cast: Bing Crosby, Jane Wyman, Alexis Smith, Franchot Tone, James
Barton, Robert Keith
Ca. 113 minutes

Bell System Science Series (Frank Capra Productions, 1956-1957):

Number I: Our Mr. Sun (1956)

Director: Frank Capra
218 Selected Filmography

Producer: Frank Capra

Script: Frank Capra
Photography: Harold Wellman
Animation: United Productions Of America

Number II: Hemo The Magnificent (1957)

Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Script: Frank Capra
Photography: Harold Wellman
Animation: Shamus Culhane Productions

Number III: The Strange Case Of The Cosmic Rays (1957)

Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Script: Frank Capra, Jonathon Latimer
Photography: Harold Wellman, Ellis Carter
Animation: Shamus Culhane Productions

1959
A Hole In The Head (United Artists)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Arnold Schulman based on his play
Photography: William H. Daniels
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Edward G. Robinson, Eddie Hodges, Eleanor Parker,
Carolyn Jones, Keenam Wynn, Thelma Ritter
Ca. 120 minutes

1961
Pocketful Of Miracles (United Artists)
Director: Frank Capra
Producer: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Hal Kanter and Harry Tugend, based on screenplay “Lady For
A Day” by Robert Riskin, and the short story “Madam La Gimp” by
Damon Runyon
Photography: Robert Bronner
Cast: Glenn Ford, Bette Davis, Hope Lange, Peter Falk, Thomas Mitchell,
Edward Everett Horton, Ann-Margaret, Snub Pollard, Benny Rubin,
Doodles Weaver
Ca. 136 minutes