Word: capra
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...involved (Liberty Films and MGM) had corporate nausea. The satirical carnage involved, and might antagonize, every major force in the nation's political life. Luckily, the movie was being made by a cinemagician who could turn bludgeons into lollipops-Producer-Director Frank (It's a Wonderful Life) Capra...
Coincident with election year, Hollywood has come up with a time-honored favorite son. And so long as Frank Capra sticks to the original Crouse and Lindsey stage play, his treatment is entertaining. The story of the airplane builder who runs for president and discovers that "he must approve everything except sin" has been filmed true to script. Spencer Tracy blusters sufficiently for a man who jumps into politics over his neck and gradually discovers that handing out golden platitudes on silver platters is a tricky business. He winces effectively as his managers tell him that people are nice...
...good. But Capra comes to grief in over-playing Tracy's love for people, a remarkable love that is shown swelling up within him as he gossips with a barber and watches a radio technician chewing gum. But the most fantastic demonstration of earthy affection appears when Tracy plays wing-tip tag with a business underling over an airfield. They barrel-roll among the clouds for all the world like long lost brothers. This is during the people-are-everything stage. A little later, when Tracy momentarily shifts to the votes-are-everything viewpoint, he tells the same underling...
Riskin's primary mistake, both as the producer of "Magic Town" and as its scenarist, is that he has attempted to invade the very special cinematic territory held securely by Frank Capra. "It's a Wonderful Life," Stewart's last picture, was a Capra production, and its successful mixture of fantasy, allegory, and sentiment was a demonstration of brilliant skill and showmanship. "Magic Town," on the other hand, aims for sentiment and achieves mawkishness; it reaches out for allegory and it grasps chaos and incongruity. And, to round out the comparison, although it appears to have scarcely any intent...
...this ill wind, there was some good. It had, at least, blown many of the best directors (Frank Capra, William Wyler, Leo McCarey) out of the ranks of the independents and back into the fold of the big studios. Their talents would help in the troubled times ahead. How troubled would they...