Frank Capra - C/D?

Two posts? For Capra?

Just finished State of the Union, and parts of it I found fascinating. The big ending was more or less Mr. Deeds and Mr. Smith and John Doe, so that was nothing new. But: 1) Angela Lansbury gives an eerie preview of her performance in The Manchurian Candidate 15 years before the fact; 2) Ditto Tracy saying, "Don't you dare turn that mic off, I paid for this broadcast"--think someone appropriated that one a few decades later; 3) the guy who stands there in the wings near the end with a frozen look of contempt directed at Tracy, he was great. The politic machinations are patly cynical, but not necessarily outdated. And I loved Hepburn calling herself a "thick quinker."

Capra had a limited number of things to say, but he said them very well indeed in his best films. Not many directors can claim high points as high as Capra's. When the public got tired of his schtick, his fall from grace was head-spinningly quick.

State of the Union is a fave Capra film...I agree, you can see Mrs. Eleanor Shaw Iselin in that, so much so, I forgot the movies were made that far apart.

I still have not seen Lost Horizon but have been wanting too for years and years since seeing stills of a young Jane Wyatt and reading how bad the film was. Always wanted to see that for myself.

I loved American Madness!

Always thought Make Way for Tomorrow was a Capra film but it wasn't.

Spotting character actors always fun. State of the Union has Capra regular Charles Lane, Tom Pedi in practically his first film (Caz Dolowicz in Pelham One Two Three), Margaret Hamilton making googly eyes at Van Johnson, and the bug-eyed guy from The Big Sleep who says "That's what the man said, all right."

I still think his best film could be Lady for a Day, or The Bitter Tea of General Yen. I've grown out of a lotta the phony, vague corn of the later films.

"Thick quinker" is all over the internet. Did it originate with State of the Union, or was it already in circulation?

Not many directors can claim high points as high as Capra's.

don't think this is true w/ regard to either capra's body of work or even individual moments w/in his films.

In reply to the OP, i really don't think It Happened is forgettable, and Joseph McBride's The Catastrophe Of Success is a fantastic biography of his life and work.

watching arsenic and old lace is this an american thing cos its no good

I haven't seen it in ages, so i dunno, it's thought to be more frantic than funny. It stayed on the shelf for 3 years til WW2 ended.

I'm still watching because the brother is amazing, in a different movie than anyone else

who, Teddy Roosevelt?

btw Raymond Massey was played by Boris Karloff in the play, i think

nah, Karloff. delightful creeping.

via Criterion Current

In his latest book, Frankly: Unmasking Frank Capra, (Joseph) McBride tells the story of his years-long struggle to get his 1992 biography Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success out into the world. McBride’s version of the life of the director of such classics as It Happened One Night (1934) and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) differs considerably from the one Capra told himself in his 1971 book, The Name Above the Title.

“Virtually all of Capra’s autobiography is fictitious,” McBride tells Ray Kelly at MassLive. But his original publisher sided with Capra’s allies, who included the director’s sons and archivist Jeanine Basinger, and after a series of face-offs in court, The Catastrophe of Success finally found a home at Simon & Schuster. Politically, Capra was “all over the map,” McBride tells David Walsh at the World Socialist Web Site. Perhaps the most damning discovery McBride came across during his research was Capra’s willingness to pass along the names of writers he’d worked with to the FBI during the Hollywood Red Scare. “That was a shock,” he tells Walsh. “He violated the principles, for example, of his finest film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939], which was written for him by a Communist Party member, Sidney Buchman.”

https://www.masslive.com/entertainment/2019/04/film-historian-explains-difficult-journey-in-unmasking-famed-filmmaker-frank-capra.html

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6336-may-books

Duh

The Catastrophe Of Success is an excellent book.

i follow joseph mcbride on fb -- he's terrific, always posts excellent, well-written stuff

it's a wonderful life? it's an okay movie--SO overrated. deeds & happened so much better

i follow joseph mcbride on fb -- he's terrific, always posts excellent, well-written stuff

Capra's early films with Barbara Stanwyck = electric.
Everything else of his that I've seen = meh.

So The Bitter Tea of General Yen then.

I discovered that through Jonathan Rosenbaum, and for me it's easily the best and most interesting film he's made.