Word: capra
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...would be easy to make fun of First Wives but a mistake to miss it. Once you accept the fact that Frank Capra is dead and that Hollywood is remaking The Day of the Jackal in case the original was insufficiently bloody, First Wives is one of the best movies of a very long year. It's funny: "There are only three ages for women in Hollywood--Babe, District Attorney and Driving Miss Daisy," declares Goldie Hawn, who with her collagen-inflated lips is trying to stay in the first phase. It's touching: Diane Keaton is convincing...
...peal of applause, something truly amazing happened, for New York: no one got up and started to run for the exit. Just about everyone sat still for the credits, and even for the closing announcements, as though they didn't care about beating the rush. No doubt Frank Capra would have preferred it if everyone had joined in a chorus of "Auld Lang Syne"--but, for this temporary New Yorker, it was a not unimportant thing, a fleeting improvement in the city's ailing quality of life...
...around us, people were plopping down huge blankets in tiny plots of ground, daring you not to move over. It didn't seem like a promising atmosphere for "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," surely one of the sappiest films ever to come from that master of sap, Frank Capra...
...along with this undertone was a clear desire to meet Capra halfway, to be taken in by Senator Smith's crazy idealism. Just like an audience seeing the movie in 1939, this one booed the corrupt party boss, sighed when Jean Arthur confessed her love and cheered when they hypocritical Claude Rains broke down and admitted how right Jimmy had been all along. It wasn't a total transformation; everyone knew that, when the lights went out, they would be walking back to an empty subway in the dark, and the defensive glower would have to return...
...Rogers and Ma and Pa Kettle and the Clampetts of Beverly Hills, to Forrest Gump, who took the myth one step further by demonstrating that a double-digit IQ could lead to immense worldly success if accompanied by a good heart and simple decency. It is the essence of Capra's best-loved heroes. Jefferson Smith must contend with the schemes of Senator Paine, his onetime hero who plays a scene decked out in white tie and tails. In Meet John Doe, Gary Cooper battles the fascistic schemes of the super-rich Edward Arnold, who is seen in an elegant...