The Modernism of Frank Capra and European Ethical thought

Abstract

For many, Frank Capra remains the quintessential American director. In numerous ways, America was a dramatically different place at the time of his death on 3 September 1991 than the America of his classic films from the 1930s to early 1950s. The differences between the America of small town values, railroads, the radio, and classic cars and the America of the computer, cell phone, instant media, and sex are nearly as great as the gap between his origins in Sicily on 18 May 1897 and the American icon he had become. His greatest and most successful films such as It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) exude a quality of simplicity, honesty, and sentimentality that people termed ‘Capracorn’ but, nonetheless, many of them still consider the real America. While Capra’s style and ideology of hope, optimism, and national identity run counter to current trends in popular and critical thinking and tastes, years of scholarship and criticism by outstanding film scholars such as Robert Sklar, Ray Carney, Robert Ray, Charles Maland, Joseph McBride, among many others, demonstrate how the depth and complexity of Capra’s best work contradict simplistic and superficial understandings of his films (Maland 1980; Sklar 1981; Ray 1985; Carney 1986; McBride 1992; Poague 1994).