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| Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town |
I like people who go against the grain, especially directors. It's difficult enough to impose your personal point of view in any field, but not so difficult as in the world of filmmaking. Movies are meant to be seen by a big audience and require a lot of help to make. For the creative process of moviemaking you need a lot of different people and a lot of different skills and of course you need a lot of money. It's hard to achieve your personal vision using the eyes and hands of others and the money from others. Frank Capra was resolute about how to make a movie. A movie is ultimately the end product of one person and that person is the director. "Art is not a committee" was his decree. Capra learned his trade in the late twenties. Arguably his breakthrough came with American Madness in 1932, establishing him as the king of the depression era. He would follow that up into the early forties with a string of depression comedies, all solidly framed within the American capitalist institutions.
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| American Madness (1932) |
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| Meet John Doe (1941) |
