Word: capra
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...spectacular proof that the comic exterior of You Can't Take It With You concealed not merely plot but superb dramatic conflict, and that its characters, far from being freaks, were really human beings drawn on the heroic scale. Brilliantly explored by Writer Robert Riskin, Director Frank Capra and the season's most astutely chosen cast, these unforeseen potentialities make the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of 1937 into what is easily the No. 1 cinema comedy...
Wholly successful moving pictures are the consequence of a collaboration too complex for analysis. Nonetheless, if the Motion Picture Academy fails to award Director Capra its prize for his first picture since Lost Horizon, most critics will be justified in surmising that its only excuse will be that he has already won it twice before. Known for his knack of inventing "business," Director Capra was faced with the supreme test in a play that was already as full of business as a beehive. How thoroughly he passed it can best be judged by the fact that his shrewd cinema editing...
...agreed to act in pictures on the same sort of terms. Producer Sam Goldwyn followed suit with a statement that Writer Robert Riskin (It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It With You), longtime collaborator of Columbia's Director Frank Capra, had agreed to write pictures for him on the same basis...
Since 1926, Capra's career has been eventful but straightforward. His one flop was For the Love of Mike, with Claudette Colbert, in 1927. The picture that made him tops in Hollywood was It Happened One Night with Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable in 1934. He had been discovered by Harry Cohn long before that, repaid his benefactor with hits like That Certain Thing (1928), Dirigible (1931), Platinum Blonde (1931), The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), Lady for a Day (1933). From 1930 to 1932, Capra worked only on pictures written by Jo Swerling. Then Capra...
Decision to transform Gable from a menace to a mountebank was characteristic of Capra. The formative period of his artistic career was spent teaching Mack Sennett actors to put curves on their custard pies. Regarding himself as an average cinemaddict, he feels sure that anything he enjoys will be enjoyed also by 10,000,000 other people. Old line directors, before talkies cramped their style, liked to stamp and bellow at their actors, strut and show off on the set. Like most of his contemporaries, Capra works without mannerisms, confers quietly with his actors and technical crew before each take...