Anytime Movies #6: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

While I catch up on the reviews still in "Draft" phase here, I'll re-run a feature I ran when I first started this blog seven years ago,* when it was suggested I do a "Top Ten" List.

I don't like those: they're rather arbitrary; they pit films against each other, and there's always one or two that should be on the list that aren't because something better shoved it down the trash-bin.

So, I came up with this: "Anytime" Movies.

Anytime Movies are the movies I can watch anytime, anywhere. If I see a second of it, I can identify it. If it shows up on television, my attention is focused on it until the conclusion. Sometimes it’s the direction, sometimes it’s the writing, sometimes it’s the acting, sometimes it’s just the idea behind it, but these are the movies I can watch again and again (and again!) and never tire of them. There are ten (kinda). They're not in any particular order, but the #1 movie IS the #1 movie. 

I’m very suspicious of patriotism (I always recall the "last resort of a scoundrel" remark), yet nothing moves me so much like a movie extolling the virtues of America. The promise "to form a more perfect Union," as it was outlined in The Constitution, as opposed to lining people's pockets, or to lionize the undeserving, or to maintain the status quo because it's comfortable.

Anybody who's fought for this country knows it's not comfortable (and if they did, they were promoted too soon!)

It wasn’t until I was voting on the Emmy’s that I sat down and watched TV's “The West Wing.” I figured it was going to be a vapid “America-Love It or Leave It” tract (starring Rob Lowe), even if it did have Martin Sheen playing the President, in which case, I could leave it. But TWW was a serious look at government work—its glories and  disappointments, the combination of ego and sacrifice. It could criticize individuals and “ideology for ideology’s sake,” but one thing it never ever criticized was the idea of Public Service, no matter what side of the aisle it was on. At the same time the country is being run by crooks specializing in an institutionalized form of bribery and graft, there is an infrastructure of people for whom government service is a sacred trust (well, there’s gotta be ONE!) “The West Wing” paid tribute to that corps of people wherever they might be, week after week, and it made for refreshingly positive TV. It also made for a refreshing look at our nation as it stands.

And so, too, does Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Made in 1939, it plays like it was written yesterday. When I saw it for the first time—right after “Watergate”—I found it amazingly prescient. But, no, it was talking about its own times. The problems just keep re-occurring again and again. And again. Whoever doesn’t know history is doomed to repeat it, and with every fresh crop of people governing, they’ll keep making the same mistakes. Maybe they think they’re unique. Maybe they just don’t know history. They say that if you keep making the same mistake over and over, it’s a sign of insanity. Well, psychology never factored in term limits.

Mr. Smith… is the story of a local youth leader who is appointed to the Senate after the incumbent suddenly dies. This runs afoul of the state’s political machine that ran that late senator as well as the state's senior Senator, Paine (Claude Rains)—who just happens to be an idol of the new senator’s. But, "The Machine" lets it happen, as Smith is a yokel, and their boy, Paine, will be able to keep him in line.

It wouldn’t work if director Frank Capra didn’t have tall awkward Jimmy Stewart—not James, Jimmy—whose every stammered syllable bespoke humility. But get him talking about America or Liberty of The Capitol Dome and the stutter disappears in a fervent stage whisper that trails off in awe. Mr. Smith isn’t sure of himself, but he’s sure sure of the Country.

And Washington, D.C. is just the place to shake him up with a few lashes of the Beltway. Stewart could be frustratingly folksy, but for Capra (and for Hitchcock and Anthony Mann) he could be unnervingly vulnerable and, at the other end of the bi-pole, dramatically unhinged. The last act of Mr. Smith…—the filibuster against false charges of graft—features Stewart in both phases. At one point, he's knee-deep in political hate-mail, clutching it in his hands and looking skyward like Jesus at Gethsemane. Then a few short paragraphs about “lost causes” later, he’s at his most defiant. “You think I’m licked! You ALL think I’m licked!!” That was his Oscar-winning performance, not the next year’s The Philadelphia Story where the “cynical reporter” bit just didn’t wash with someone who looked so homespun. The filibuster scene always brings a lump to my throat, and it’s not sympathy pains for Stewart’s frayed larynx.

Now, I’ve read the original screenplay to “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” It ends with a big parade honoring the completely vindicated Smith, surrounded by his boy-rangers, supported by the woman-he-loves (Jean Arthur, again, who manages to make her extraordinarily jaded Senate Aide adorable, even when she’s at her worst—and she has a great drunk scene with Thomas Mitchell. Hmmm, Thomas Mitchell, again). Why, even the disgraced Senator Paine is being lionized in the sequence. Oh, it’s just so sweet, your eyes could roll back in their sockets and jam and stick that way. As Arthur’s Miss Saunders tipsily says in the film, “Nah, I can’t think of anything more shappy!” “Capra-corn” is what the very self-aware director called it.

So, he cut it. Orson Welles has said: "If you want a happy ending that depends, of course, on where you stop your story." Capra leaves his story’s ending ambiguous. Oh, you could call the riotous goings-on at the end a Happy Ending—but all of Paine’s Senate pals are trying to calm him down, telling him it’s okay…everything’s all right, we're still on your side. The only solace Jefferson Smith is granted is in the sympathetic smile from the Vice-President (played by John Ford’s silent cowboy film-star Harry Carey) before he collapses in a heap of his enemy’s mass-generated letters. The movie "celebration" has all the weight of an Al Gore victory celebration on Election Day 2000--a case of premature exaltation. But nothing's been solved. No one's been cleared. Nothing has been decided. There is just misunderstanding and confusion. Carey leans back and has a chaw while the chaos of Democracy continues unabated. It may not be a "happy" ending, considering the sequence that was shelved. It may not even be a dramatically satisfying ending. But it is representative of the loud, messy process that turns the gears of Democracy. 

However slow-moving, however off-course, they still turn.

Jeferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart) looks for guidance.

Anytime Movies:
Chinatown
American Graffiti
To Kill a Mockingbird
Goldfinger
Bonus: Edge of Darkness

Washington turns out for the Mr. Smith premier—they weren't happy.

From Wikipedia:  "Alben W. Barkley, a Democrat and the Senate Majority Leader, called the film 'silly and stupid', and said it 'makes the Senate look like a bunch of crooks'."

* And, on Sunday, we'll put up a "Don't Make a Scene" feature from each week's film.

Air Force

Air Force (Howard Hawks, 1943) The day starts out like any other for the crew of the "Mary-Ann" the B-17 "Flying Fortress" no. 05564 of the 48th bomber wing out of Hamilton Field, California: they are assigned to fly to Hickam Field in Hawaii. The date, December 6, 1941.

They're a motley crew: The pilot is Michael Aloysius Quincannon (John Ridgley), his co-pilot Bill Williams (Gig Young) who's sweet on the sister of bombadier Tom McMartin (Arthur Kennedy); Monk Hauser Jr. (Charles Drake) is the navigator and son of a pilot from the Lafeyette Escadrille; master sergeant Robbie White (Harry Carey Sr.) is the crew-chief, aided and abetted by his assistant Weinberg (George Tobias) a native New Yorker (as he's only too glad to tell you); "Minnesota" Peterson (Ward Wood) is the radio operator and the rookie on the flight is his assistant, Private Chester (Ray Montgomery), who is wide-eyed, wet behind the ears, and only too eager to be on the plane; in marked contrast to him is gunner Joe Winocki (John Garfield) who was washed out of flight school by his instructor Quincannon and has no love for the air force...or the mission...or his pilot.

Winocki is the bad apple in the barrel. the fly in the ointment, the wrench in the works. Hawks likes his groups to run like well-oiled machines, but there's no drama without a bit of sand in the gears. Winocki doesn't really fit in, or his attitude doesn't allow him to fit in. 

His bitterness informs his posture and every remark that comes out of his mouth. He grates. He's an outsider (self-imposed) that goes against the grain of the collective. He's not a professional, that important term in the world of Howard Hawks, and if he's going to fit in—become part of the crew—he'll have to change, and in a turn-around that would impress Sergeant York.

He even has a crack on his lips in the most dramatic part of the movie—when the crew gets in radio-range of Hawaii, they hear, instead of landing instructions from the tower...nothing. A turn of the frequency and they intercept Japanese radio transmissions backed by the sound of gunfire. "Who're you listening to...Orson Welles?" he snears, before White shuts him up.

No. They're listening to Pearl Harbor, dying.

Quincannon and the other pilots get through to Hickam, enough for them to warm them off to land somewhere else. The squadron splits up, and "The Mary-Ann" makes its way to Maui, but not before they make a pass over the Harbor at Oahu and gaze out their windows at the devastation. The shots of the carnage are overhead shots of burning models. Far more representative are the darkened faces of the crew, their faces only illuminated from the fires below as they look out in disbelief.

It's a bit surreal, almost "Twilight Zone-ish:" taking off near San Francisco, the U.S. was at peace, and seven hours across the Pacific later, they're landing in the middle of a war they weren't expecting and, not having any armaments on these flights, for which they're unprepared. And under the worst of conditions. The Maui area on which Quincannon makes his landing isn't an airfield, it's just bare ground and the landing is inelegant and damaging, impairing one of their landing gear. The crew gets out, and split up—determined not to be stuck there, one group sets about to fix the gear, while Williams and Hauser do a little scouting of the vicinity. What they find, unfortunately are Japanese snipers who follow them to the B-17 and start firing on it—there's just enough time to get back in the air and head back for Hickam.

The airfield is a jumble of destruction, but the crew get ample opportunity to get intel, visit McMartin's sister who was injured in the attack, and pick up some mail from the soldiers to get home, and a fighter pilot Lt. "Tex" Rader (James Brown), who was involved in that accident, winning him the suspicions of McMasters and Williams. Then they have to get to Wake Island. On the way, they listen to President Roosevelt declare war on Japan, determine that McMasters sister will pull through. But, the reception at Wake isn't warm, Wake knows that their time is limited before they're overrun; they want the "Mary-Ann" off the island and in the air to the Philippines.

Williams and Quincannon listening to the declaration of war.

They take mail from Wake and one piece of contraband—a dog named "Tripoli" which has a running gag that the mutt barks every time he hears the name "Moto." Of course, it's against regulations, but the crew warms to the dog, even rigging up an oxygen mask for it when they get to higher altitudes. They then finish their grueling odyssey of "7,000 consecutive miles" to land at Clark Field in Manila, where the news is grim, and the "Mary-Ann" becomes involved in aerial combat for the first time on their journey...and in the war.

The third act is mostly action, for the first time in the film. Overall, the emphasis is less on combat—in these early days of the war—but more on perseverance despite hardship, playing on the American self-image of "stick-to-itiveness" that allows them to last no matter how much punishment they take. In that way, Air Force is a companion piece to They Were Expendable, John Ford's tribute to the Navy during the darkest days of the Pacific war, where victory is uncertain, but survival is the nearest thing to victory that can be achieved. Certainly, it added to recruitment efforts with its gung-ho spirit and its dramatic manipulations to seek revenge.

Of course, you expect that in a war film—while the war is going on, and certainly from movies of that time period. The basis of Air Force has its roots in some reality—there really was a a squad of B-17's that flew out of San Francisco to the Philippines on December 6th only to find their first stop at Pearl Harbor destroyed. The rest of the movie is fanciful, and even extends to outright lies about "treacherous" Japanese citizens forming sniper squads and using vegetable trucks at Pearl Harbor to damage planes on the ground (the Japanese bombers had an easy enough time of that as the planes were all grouped together on the ground—take out one and you took out a lot of them). There weren't any fifth columnists in Hawaii, not one—only victims of the attack. But fear, rumor, and suspicion make better stories than truth. All of those elements led to the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II—but only on the West Coast extending out to Salt Lake City. Truth is usually the first casualty of a war.

The Great Moment

 The Great Moment (Preston Sturges, 1943) I'm sure there were many dust-ups in the relationship between movie-maker Preston Sturges and the studio financing his films, Paramount Pictures, but this is the one that soured the deal. Not really a comedy (but not a straight historical film, either) The Great Moment tells the story of Dr. W.T.G. Morton (Joel McCrea) the dentist who is credited (amongst a great many dis-creditors) of perfecting painless surgery, or what we now refer to as the practice of anesthesiology, at the time an accomplishment as fanciful as breaking the sound barrier, much less powered flight.

It provided another exercise for Sturges to explore non-linear story-telling, and, indeed, Sturges jumps all over the place in the story, starting first* with Morton in triumph over the Main Titles, then moving to the end of the story with the doctor dead, unheralded and even vilified, and his widow recalling the struggles that the dentist went through, after the discovery and the challenges to his claims, including an ill-advised patent pursuit (done at the urging of President Franklin Pierce who passed the matter onto Morton to create a federal test-case). Only after an explanation of the down-fall, does Sturges then tell the tale of the days before the discovery, with the dentist's work and struggles, the comedic failures and the life-threatening ones, ending with the acknowledgement of the scientific community of his discovery and methods. "Here, everything changes" are the last words of the movie.

They might just as well have been "No good deed goes unpunished."

Seeking a patent for the method, Morton is forced to reveal his secret in order to save a life and it is then appropriated by the military during the Civil War. With the cat out of the medicine bag, Morton pursues the unresolved patent question, and is castigated in the Press for his selfishness and anti-humanitarianism. It would hardly be an inspiring story in chronological order, and would influence anybody to walk out of a theater muttering "Guess I'd better stop messing around with that cold fusion idea."

For Sturges, it was a challenge to make a popular entertainment out of what is a downer story in a straight chronological timeline and, instead, taking the audience to a more satisfying conclusion, going from tragedy to triumph (even if he has to bend time to do it). But, its flashback structure irked the Paramount brass, and they withheld the film for two years (during which Sturges would make The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero to much acclaim), finally releasing it after Sturges' contract had run out and he'd moved on to potentially sunnier pastures. In those two years, the film had been re-edited, re-titled, and comedic elements added—I detect a clumsily inserted women's scream (and the same one) inserted three times in the film for use in both horrific and comedy situations.

How much of what we now know as The Great Moment is actually part of Sturges' plan and how much is studio interference is readily apparent from a reading of Sturges' original screenplay.** It was Sturges' intention to tell the story in an intricate flashback structure, while, simultaneously making Morton's work relatable to modern audiences.  It still resonates to this day, with the privatization of medical breakthroughs through the study of cell and DNA research; should an entity, corporate or individual, profit from work that could benefit mankind, or even save a life?

In the meantime, there is this film, slightly disjointed by design or by malice,*** the last of Sturges' Paramount films to be released, and the only film Sturges made for the studio that did not make a profit (although it was brought in ahead of schedule and below its budget). Its reputation, like the Morton patent lawsuit, would hang over its extraordinary creator for the rest of his career, which never achieved the same heights as it once had. 

No good deed goes unpunished.

Dr. Morton and Preston Sturges

* Well, not so much.  You can't trust anything in the Paramount botched version of Sturges' film, which he intended to call "Triumph Over Pain."  Sturges' screenplay starts in modern times as a young boy is about to go into surgery.


** The screenplay has been published and can be found here. 

*** Paramount can be counted on to completely botch a film from time to time.  I remember going to the Seattle International Film Festival, specifically, to see Sergio Leone's long-in-the-preparation gangster film Once Upon a Time in America and was horrified to find a disjointed, flawed film that seemed to go on forever.  What was presented there was a re-edited Paramount Pictures version, cut in chronological order, completely destroying Leone's intentions to present it in a complicated flashback structure—that managed to give away a central mystery, and robbed the film, which would prove to be Leone's last, of almost all of its resonance and power.  Years later, I went to see it at a repertory theater—mostly because the show-times indicated a longer cut—and was amazed to see a version that retained the flashback structure, and, although it was an hour longer than the SIFF presentation, seemed to be a much shorter film experience. OUATIA is still a flawed film, but Leone's amazing work as a film-maker was never more apparent.

The History of John Ford: The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936)

When Orson Welles was asked what movies he studied before embarking on directing Citizen Kane he replied, "I studied the Old Masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford." 

Running parallel with our series about Akira Kurosawa ("Walking Kurosawa's Road"), we're running a series of pieces about the closest thing America has to Kurosawa in artistry—director John Ford. Ford rarely made films set in the present day, but (usually) made them about the past...and about America's past, specifically (when he wasn't fulfilling a passion for his Irish roots). 

In "The History of John Ford" we'll be gazing fondly at the work of this American Master, who started in the Silent Era, learning his craft, refining his director's eye, and continuing to work deep into the 1960's (and his 70's) to produce the greatest body of work of any American "picture-maker," America's storied film-maker, the irascible, painterly, domineering, sentimental puzzle that was John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

The Prisoner of Shark Island (John Ford, 1936) I've always been fascinated by the events surrounding the assassination of Lincoln. The nation, just after the surrender at Appomattox, was hit once again by a revenge killing by a Southern sympathizer, whose own grandiose ego put the Nation into an uproar, and generated an hysterical government response that usurped the judicial process in the quest for its own vengeance in the prosecution of half-hearted conspirators and acquaintances. 

One of those was Dr. Samuel Mudd, who was visited the night of Lincoln's assassination by a fleeing and injured John Wilkes Booth, and who treated a leg fracture sustained in the assassination.* The film would have you believe that Booth and his accomplice—one could call him a "getaway driver" if you transposed it to horses—stumbled on Mudd's house that night, and Mudd, helped the man without any knowledge of the man and his murderous deeds at Ford's Theater of that night.

But it simply wasn't true. Samuel Mudd did know Booth, and had often seen him on-stage, and being a Southern sympathizer himself, had even met with Booth and his followers a few times. The movie depicts them as strangers, which is a stretch of credibility considering Booth's notoriety as an actor. And the two were well-acquainted. And although it can be said that Mudd was not guilty of Lincoln's assassination, he was hardly innocent, either, aiding and abetting the man who was. Mudd was an accessory after the fact, at the very least. But not here.

The Prisoner of Shark Island gets the basic story right, though. Mudd is soon swept up by the law in the hysterical days following the murder, tried with the other conspirators, but is spared the gallows and is, instead, sent to the Dry Tortugas, a prison off the coast of Florida (there is no "Shark Island" in the U.S.—the name is purely exploitative). Mudd was sent to Fort Jefferson on that island, and whether the place was surrounded by a shark-infested moat, as the movie has it, is probably more part of the fabrication that is woven throughout the movie. All the details are wrong. Including a local black sharecropper named "Buck" (played by Ernest Whitman) following Mudd to Dry Totugas at the behest of Mrs. Mudd (Gloria Stuart—you might remember her as the elderly Rose in a little movie called Titanic).

An aside on that: Race relations in the movie might be a bit unsettling for some—the film was made in 1936 and a few years later in 1939, Gone With the Wind (where Whitman has an uncredited role) proved to be as condescending, if not more so. However, the cast of black actors is a bit more extensive, most of them are guards or prisoners, but Mudd treats them (despite his Southern leanings) as peers in the prison situation. I did smile when some of the characters refer to Mudd as "the white boy." You don't hear that every day in early movies.

Anyway, the best part of the movie and where Ford seems to have his interests highest (aside from the dramatically acute assassination sequence) is in an early attempt by Mudd to try escaping from the island, by means of friendly guards, makeshift ropes, and a boat commanded by his wife's father (Claude Gillingwater) who fought for the South. Ford has loved the play of light throughout his career and the sequence is not only suspenseful, but beautiful as well. In Shark Island, Ford has already established an atmospheric way of portraying the prison by dousing it in inky blackness, with any luminescence a metaphor for freedom, but the escape (photographed by Bert Glennon, who worked with von Sternberg—in black and white—and de Toth—in color—and who photographed Ford's Stagecoach, Rio Grande, Wagon Master, and Young Mr. Lincoln in black and white, and Drums Along the Mohawk in Technicolor) is a showcase of interesting angles, shadowy depths, and mastery of light surrounded by darkness.

The escape only worsens his plight, once he is re-captured (John Carradine's malevolent villainy as a vengeful Northern guard is never more apparent than when he casually confronts Mudd with a "Hiya, Judas!") he is thrown into a sweltering pit with Buck, until a yellow fever epidemic overtakes the Fort, killing the only physician on the premises. As the only prisoner with medical experience, he is charged by the Fort's Commandant (played by Ford's first cowboy star, Harry Carey) with trying to halt the spread of the disease (which, despite its conventionality as a "Hollywood" type of idea is historically accurate), for which Mudd is ultimately pardoned.

Warner Baxter, Harry Carey, and Ernest Whitman (lying down) in "the pit"

The true bones of the story make for a good historic melodrama (despite the messing with details and the white-wash of Mudd's relationship with Booth) and that always held an appeal for Ford and the producer that he would collaborate with on some of his greatest films: Darryl F. Zanuck, who was only a year into running his motion picture conglomerate 20th Century Fox. This was their first work together in a string of legendary films that would cement the careers of both men.

The conclusion of Ford's depiction of the assassination—
a veil is drawn across the stricken president, becoming abstract
"Now he belongs to the ages."

Dr. Samuel Mudd

* The legend is that Booth sustained it jumping from the Presidential viewing box in Ford Theater to the stage, where he vaingloriously quoted Shakespeare—"Sic semper tyrranus"—to the horrified crowd and made his escape (this is how it's depicted in the film). Some accounts speculate that Booth got the injury when his horse stumbled and fell on him during his frantic run from Washington D.C. Not as dramatic. In Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a newspaperman says at one point "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Ford was a frequent activist for that practice, as The Prisoner of Shark Island shows throughout its story, which has the basic story right, but the details are enhanced for dramatic effect. Sic semper dramatis (which is a podcast with John Hodgman).

Anytime Movies (Transplanted): Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

While I have a few reviews "in the works," It's as good a time as any to re-boot (actually transplant from the old movie blog) a feature I started years ago, when it was suggested I do a "Top Ten" List. 

 I don't like those: they're rather arbitrary; they pit films against each other, and there's always one or two that should be on the list that aren't because something better shoved it down the trash-bin. 

 So, I came up with this: "Anytime" Movies. 

 Anytime Movies are the movies I can watch anytime, anywhere. If I see a second of it, I can identify it. If it shows up on television, my attention is focused on it until the conclusion. Sometimes it’s the direction, sometimes it’s the writing, sometimes it’s the acting, sometimes it’s just the idea behind it, but these are the movies I can watch again and again (and again!) and never tire of them. There are ten (kinda). They're not in any particular order, but the #1 movie IS the #1 movie.


I’m very suspicious of patriotism (I always recall the "last resort of a scoundrel" remark), yet nothing moves me so much like a movie extolling the virtues of America.

It wasn’t until I was voting on the Emmy’s that I sat down and watched “The West Wing.” I figured it was going to be a vapid “America-Love It or Leave It” tract (starring Rob Lowe), even if it did have Martin Sheen playing the President, in which case, I could leave it. But TWW was a serious look at government work—its glories and disappointments, the combination of ego and sacrifice. It could criticize individuals and “ideology for ideology’s sake,” but one thing it never ever criticized was the idea of Public Service, no matter what side of the aisle it was on. At the same time the country is being run by crooks specializing in an institutionalized form of bribery and graft, there is an infrastructure of people for whom government service is a sacred trust (well, there’s gotta be ONE!) “The West Wing” paid tribute to that corps of people wherever they might be, week after week, and it made for refreshingly positive TV. It also made for a refreshing look at our nation as it stands.

And so, too, does Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Made in 1939, it plays like it was written yesterday. When I saw it for the first time—right after “Watergate”—I found it amazingly prescient. But no, it was talking about its own times. The problems just keep re-occurring again and again. And again. Whoever doesn’t know history is doomed to repeat it, and with every fresh crop of people governing, they’ll keep making the same mistakes. Maybe they think they’re unique. Maybe they don’t know history. They say that if you keep making the same mistake over and over, it’s a sign of insanity. Well, psychology never factored in term limits.

Mr. Smith… is the story of a youth leader who is appointed to the Senate after the incumbent dies. This runs afoul of the state’s political machine that ran that senator as well as the senior Senator, Paine (Claude Rains)—who just happens to be an idol of the new senator’s.

It wouldn’t work if director Frank Capra didn’t have tall awkward Jimmy Stewart—not James, Jimmy—whose every stammered syllable bespoke humility. But get him talking about America or Liberty of The Capitol Dome and the stutter disappears in a fervent stage whisper that trails off in awe. Mr. Smith isn’t sure of himself, but he’s sure sure of the Country.

And Washington, D.C. is just the place to shake him up with a few lashes of the Beltway. Stewart could be frustratingly folksy, but for Capra (and for Hitchcock and Anthony Mann) he could be unnervingly vulnerable and, at the other end of the bi-pole, dramatically unhinged. The last act of Mr. Smith…—the filibuster against false charges of graft—features Stewart in both phases. At one point, he's knee-deep in political hate-mail, clutching it in his hands and looking skyward like Jesus at Gethsemane. Then a few short paragraphs about “lost causes” later, he’s at his most defiant. “You think I’m licked! You ALL think I’m licked!!” That was his Oscar-winning performance, not the next year’s The Philadelphia Story where the “cynical reporter” bit just didn’t wash with someone who looked so homespun. The filibuster scene always brings a lump to my throat, and it’s not sympathy pains for Stewart’s frayed larynx.

Now, I’ve read the screenplay to “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” It ends with a big parade honoring the completely vindicated Smith, surrounded by his boy-rangers, supported by the woman-he-loves (Jean Arthur, again, who manages to make her extraordinarily jaded Senate Aide adorable, even when she’s at her worst—and she has a great drunk scene with Thomas Mitchell. Hmmm, Thomas Mitchell, again). Why, even the disgraced Senator Paine is being lionized. Oh, it’s just so sweet, your eyes could roll back in their sockets and jam and stick that way. As Arthur’s Miss Saunders tipsily says in the film, “Nah, I can’t think of anything more shappy!” “Capra-corn” is what the very self-aware director called it.

So, he cut it. Orson Welles has said: "If you want a happy ending that depends, of course, on where you stop your story." Capra leaves his story’s ending ambiguous. Oh, you could call the riotous goings-on at the end a Happy Ending—but all of Paine’s Senate pals are trying to calm him down, telling him it’s okay…everything’s all right, we're still on your side. The only solace Jefferson Smith is granted is in the sympathetic smile from the Vice-President (played by John Ford’s silent cowboy film-star Harry Carey) before he collapses in a heap of his enemy’s mass-generated letters. The movie "celebration" has all the weight of an Al Gore victory celebration on Election Day 2000--a case of premature exaltation. But nothing's been solved. No one's been cleared. Nothing has been decided. There is just misunderstanding and confusion. Carey leans back and has a chaw while the chaos of Democracy continues unabated. It may not be a "happy" ending, considering the sequence that was shelved. It may not even be a dramatically satisfying ending. But it is representative of the loud, messy process that turns the gears of Democracy. However slow-moving, however off-course, they still turn.

Jeferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart) looks for guidance.

Chinatown
American Graffiti
To Kill a Mockingbird
Goldfinger
Bonus: Edge of Darkness