MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN (74)

Directed by: Frank Capra (1936)

Starring: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, Lionel Stander

The Pitch: A naive small-towner inherits a vast fortune and comes to the big city.

Theo Sez: Starting off as screwball and ending up a full-throated, vaguely pixillated fanfare for the Common Man, this is clearly a film to be reckoned with - a Capraesque epic of zany comedy, delicate romance, populist politics and the triumph of small-town values. That it doesn't quite live up to its reputation may be because Mr. Deeds is a rather more disturbing figure than the diffident nice guys played by James Stewart in DESTRY RIDES AGAIN or, of course, MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON : despite the constant emphasis on what a "swell guy" he is, his (and the film's) anti-intellectualism - wanting an opera house to be run "like a grocery store" - is as off-putting as his habit of socking anyone he takes exception to. His strength of character runs perilously close to authoritarianism, a reminder - as with films like GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE - that the Depression created a hankering for strong leaders, and that the Fascism of 1930s Europe had its equivalent, albeit in incipient form, on the other side of the Atlantic. Fortunately it remains exceptionally solid as a movie, in a way that may not even be possible anymore : the justly famous courtroom climax, for example, has the villain taking something like a quarter of an hour to build a complete case against Deeds, then Deeds taking even longer to rebut each point in turn. It's just not "cinematic" - though it makes for wonderfully satisfying cinema.