American Madness

American Madness (Frank Capra, 1932) As contemporary a movie as they come, taking on The Great Depression, "bank-runs" and "the only thing to fear" being fear in this pre-Code film, originally begun as a project for Alan Dwan but ending up in the capable hands of Francesco Rosario Capra, All-American immigrant. 

Thing is, when Capra is on point, his films aren't just "contemporary," they're "for the ages," and American Madness speaks for today, just as it did for 1932, only the subject may not be about bank-runs, but about ignorance.

Here's the story: It's a rough day for bank manager Tom Dickson (Walter Huston—father of John and grandfather of Anjelica, Tony, and Danny): He's got a meeting with the bank's board and they have blood in their eyes. They feel the bank is losing money and they want to merge with a local Trust and have Dickson resign. It seems he's a bit too "liberal" with the bank loans going out to the bank's patrons, trying to get on their feet after losing jobs, or trying to start a business or avoid losing the farm. He needs to be a bit more "conservative" with the loans, stop taking risks with the bank's money—after all, look at what they've done to earn it. Dickson is of the opinion that money isn't worth anything until you DO something with it, build something, make the money work—only in that way will they be able to combat the stagnation of The Great Depression.* So, yeah, he'll give loans out to farmers and local grocers and merchants, as well as to friends of the board.

Because it's the little guy that makes an economy work. Prosperity starts from the bottom up, not from trickling down. *Ahem* Speaking of the bottom...

The film begins with a ritual: the tellers are the first to arrive and in the dimness of the closed bank, go to the vault, open it and retrieve the trays of cash that they will use in their transactions. They joke, spar, and throw small-talk at each other. Prominent among them is Chief Teller Matt Brown (Pat O'Brien), who has been given a break by Dickson; Brown is an ex-con who got a bad break, but Dickson is giving him a chance to make a life for himself, a responsibility he takes extremely seriously and with a fierce loyalty to the bank and to Dickson personally. This puts him in conflict with a loan manager Cyril Cluett (Gavin Gordon), who's a bit of a blowhard and a guy who plays fast and loose with the rules, including flirting with Dickson's wife (Kay Johnson), who likes the attention, feeling somewhat neglected by her husband and his focus on business (the man even forgot their anniversary, for pity's sake!).

But Cluett is such a snake that one of his clients is a local mob-boss, and to get on the guy's good side and to avoid blackmail, he gives him entree to the bank. The crook is going to stage a bank robbery and Cluett gives him access. The bank-robbery does not go well. Yeah, the crooks make off with some cash, but in the attempt, a security guard is killed. Suspicions run to the guy with the keys, the Chief Teller, who is questioned by the police, but obstinately won't revel his whereabouts on the night of the robbery; there's a good reason for keeping silent—he tracked Dickson's wife to the apartment of Cluett, where he found them getting ready to have an after-play drink. Brown, out of loyalty to his boss, will not reveal what he knows, even if it points suspicions right at him, with his criminal record.

Dickson, however, has his hands full. News of the robbery turns to rumors throughout the city—the further afield it gets from the source, the further afield it gets from the truth, ie. the bank is insolvent due to the robbery and Dickson was the one who made off with the money. In a panic, the depositors start a run on the bank to withdraw their funds, so they can get their money out before everybody else and the bank runs out of money.

So, the bank starts filling up with panicked people wanting to get their money, out of the assumption that the bank is becoming insolvent and they'll lose everything. Meanwhile, the police are questioning Brown, who won't tell them his whereabouts on the night of the robbery because it will reveal the betrayal by Dickson's wife. The bank's board, further emboldened by this turn of events, wants Dickson out...now. Dickson implores Brown to tell him what happened, so that he can start to put an end to the mess, but Brown is adamant. He won't tell him where he was that night, lest he learn about the indiscretion of his wife.

"Ya trust ME, don't ya, Matt?"

For me, American Madness is emblematic of how Americans process information—that is, "badly." Even in this 24-hour news-cycle (but maybe, BECAUSE OF the 24 hour news-cycle), we colonists have a tendency to get things wrong and never get them right. Usually, in any big news story, there is a window of opportunity—a vacuum, if you will—that needs to be filled with information, good, bad, or...well, that's just it, it's going to be either good or bad, right or wrong. When news "breaks," unless somebody fixes it, in rushes questionable facts, speculation, ephemeral arcana, historical precedence, more speculation, and more questionable facts. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum (and there usually are an infinity of ads, as you have have to pay for this crap) until someone can say "what we know so far..." Time allows verification and verification gels fact.

In the meantime, however, everything that has gone before has implanted itself in the conscious or unconscious mind of the viewer, and, if they switch off without the verification, they may be left with the impression that the Martians are attacking Grover's Mill. Now, Martian have never attacked Grover's Mill, but more recent examples of major events are rife with speculation in the infancy of their reporting that is parroted back, mis-read, or mis-interpreted in the vacuum of facts that suck in the questionable first few minutes of confusion.

But, without the benefit of time or hindsight, verification, or refutation, or even the inability to accept facts and change one's opinion, that questionable information hardens into facts (although they are merely opinions, as they have no basis in fact) and the holders of those misbegotten ideas are merely looking for their own verification to shore up the opinions.

Rather hysterical publicity photo of Walter Huston holding off panicking bank customers with pistols.

So, let's face facts. In this electronic age—no one is facing facts. Or even recognizing them as facts. Thanks to the glut of information available to us—from the 24 hour news cycle and the internet—we have both the most informed and uninformed electorate simultaneously. One may take comfort in the Lincoln bromide "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all of the time..." but only if you stay away from German history. Steven Colbert famously called the phenomenon "Truthiness" as in "my gut is more informed than my brain." I take the word from the song "Zippity-Doo-Da" and call it being "satis-factual," only holding those truths that make you happy.

And that's the way it is, Tuesday November 8—Election Day.

And that's American Madness.

* The story is based on the principles of Amadeo Giannini, who started the Bank of Italy in San Francisco in 1904. He was the son of immigrant parents and he adapted a radical concept, giving loans to the middle-class, rather than the upper-crust, basing his decisions on character rather than cronyism. One of his loans was to a young Harry Cohn, who started a movie studio called Columbia Pictures that made American Madness. Now, before you can say that the guy was "WRONG-G-G" and "a LOSER," let me just say that Giannini did NOT go out of business, but he DID change the institution's name...to "Bank of America." 

You might have heard of them.