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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
AMERICAN MADNESS Directed by: Frank Capra. Written by: Robert Riskin. 1932. 76 min. Not Rated. With: Walter Huston, Pat O’Brien, Kay Johnson, Gavin Gordon, & Constance Cummings.
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN
YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU
MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON DVD Features: Commentary and "Frank Capra Jr. Remembers..." featurette for each film. Frank Capra's American Dream documentary hosted by Ron Howard. Interviews with: Frank Capra Jr.; Ken Bowser, Frank Capra Documentarian; Richard Peña, director, Film Society of Lincoln Center; Jeanine Bassinger, curator, Frank Capra Archives, Wesleyan Cinema Archives. Completely digitally remastered picture & sound. Collectible Movie Scrapbook.
A must for any American film buff, the set includes at least two films that should be on anyone’s top 50 list of the studio era: the always sexy It Happened One Night, with career-making performances by Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable as the runaway heiress and the rogue reporter on her tail in the prototype of the modern romantic comedy; and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the rousing and optimistic one-man crusade against congressional cynicism. And with three films costarring the unique Jean Arthur, this may be the closest we get to a collection of the squeaky-voiced embodiment of the 1930’s career woman.
All of the special features have appeared in earlier editions, with the exception being You Can’t Take It with You, the second Capra film to win the Best Picture Academy Award. Perhaps the least known of the set, 1932’s American Madness, a melodrama perfectly balanced between light comedy and nourish danger, is an early example of Capra’s faith in the individual to do the right thing. Made during a time when a quarter of the banks were near insolvency, the film’s bank setting is upstaged by employee intrigue – adultery, a heist, a shooting, and mob terror, captured in a tension-building, fast-paced run on the bank.
Each disc’s commentary by the director’s son (and in some cases author Cathrine Kellison) offers occasionally informative tidbits: American Madness’ leading lady, Kay Johnson, is the mother of Babe’s James Cromwell; actress Jean Arthur really was neurotic and difficult, so much so that for her close ups, Capra would playback the soundtrack of the master shot so that Arthur could imagine the other actors in the scene; and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’s inspiring sequence at the Lincoln Memorial was shot on the sly. However, with a collection with nearly 24 hours of material, information overlaps. Fortunately, the compact series of featurettes, “Frank Capra Jr. Remembers…,” are like shorthand commentaries. And the 1997 doc Frank Capra’s American Dream benefits hugely from the first-hand accounts of actresses Jane Wyatt (who appeared in Capra’s Lost Horizon), Fay Wray (also the wife of Capra’s scribe Robert Riskin), and soundman Edward Bernds, making it more than a career overview. Peter Falk, who appeared in the director’s last film, Pocketful of Miracles, sums up the man this way, “The best thing about Frank Capra’s directing is that he knew a lot and said very little.” Kent Turner
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It’s about time. Director Frank Capra, who put Columbia Pictures on the map with his award-winning box office hits in the mid-1930’s, receives the deluxe treatment by Sony Pictures, inheritors of the Columbia name and catalogue. No fold-out booklet here, but a beautifully illustrated 96-page scrapbook – part autobiography, part historical overview – with stills, lobby cards, and loaded with stats and figures of the collection’s five films.