In 1939, when he made ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington‘, Frank Capra already had won three Academy Awards for best director. He would be nominated for the fourth time for directing this film, but he did not win. Not because Frank Capra’s film or direction were not as good, in fact many critics and film historians consider ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington‘ to be his best film. The bad luck was that the film was released in the year in which ‘Gone with the Wind’ conquered the audiences and won 8 Academy Awards, and another famous film, John Ford’s ‘Stagecoach’, collected another two. But there was another reason. This film, which criticized the corruption of the American political system and the superficiality of the sensational press with the means of cinematic comedy, angered politicians and journalists alike. However, the audiences rewarded it with tickets sold at an amount several times higher than the cost of the production and posterity today considers it a great classic film, combining the genre of political film and that of films in which the lone American hero fights for justice against all odds and against almost everyone around him. In addition, this is a film that seems to stay always actual, addressing perennial problems in American politics and not only in American politics.
A US senator from a state in deep America dies and, according to American law, the state governor has the task of appointing a replacement until a new senator is elected. The politicians who run the state, all subordinate to a rich local magnate, are convinced by the governor, who in turn is influenced by his six children, to send the young Jefferson Smith, organizer of the local scouts activity, to the Senate. He is an idealistic man and a novice in politics, knowledgeable in the history and biographies of great American statesmen and confident in the principles and justice embodied in the American Constitution. Arriving in Washington, Mr. Smith must learn the ABCs of political activity, deal with the press hungry for sensationalism, and maneuver between the morals of a corrupt political class and his ideals. When his law proposal to establish a summer camp that would bring together children from all over America clashes with the interests of politicians and of their handlers, these will try to buy him and, when they fail, to eliminate him from political life through slander and deceit. Mr. Smith, armed with his principles and with the text of the Constitution, will prove to be no easy victim.
From the first scene, viewers will notice the dynamic use of the camera, the exceptional editing, the control of shots with many participants and extras, the talent to build and bring to the screen the images of the places where American political theater takes place: the meeting room of the Senate, the corridors and the offices in the Capitol Hill building, the public ballrooms and the secret mansions where the powerful in the shadows meet. For this film, Columbia built in their Hollywood studios an almost faithful 1:1 replica of the Senate meeting room. James Stewart is ideal for the role of Mr. Smith, the embodiment of the lone American hero, the fighter for justice against all odds, but using completely different weapons than the heroes of Westerns. This role deserves to be one of his most famous ones. The secretary who helps him decipher the secrets of the corridors of power and political bureaucracy and who becomes – inevitably, the hero’s romantic interest is Jean Arthur, a talented actress of a modern beauty. Two supporting roles that both actors were nominated for Academy Awards for, but did not win, caught my attention: Claude Rains plays the other state senator, while the lesser-known (to me, at least) Harry Carey humorously plays the Senate President. The plot has a few less believable twists, but if we look at this film as a gunless western, we can overlook them. What is worrying is how relevant ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington‘ still seems today, and not just in the American context. We can only hope that justice always triumphs in the end, just like in this film.