Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939, PG)

Dir: Frank CAPRA, USA, 129mins, 35mm

The Governor and political boss of a small western state need to pick a replacement after the sudden death of one of their US Senators. A coin toss leads to the accidental selection of a popular but deeply naïve local youth leader, Jefferson Smith. The hapless Smith goes to Washington with high ideals, but stumbles and quickly runs foul of the home state party machine, which decides to smear his reputation with corruption allegations. Smith’s last chance is to take the floor of the Senate and appeal to the truth. Although the film made a star of Jimmy Stewart and confirmed the magic of the ‘Capraesque’, the impact of Frank Capra and screenwriter Sidney Buchman’s parable of political cynicism is hard to still understand post-Watergate. But Washington’s political class had never been so directly attacked in any film since at least the untamed days of Pre-Code Hollywood (even though the yarn would in just a few years seem to partially come to life, embodied in the rise of Harry Truman to the presidency). One rumour has it that the Senate extracted its revenge with the Neely Bill, anti-monopoly legislation that led to the breaking up of the Hollywood studio system from the late 1940s onwards.

Preceded by the first of four selections of early films from the US Library of Congress film archive, exploring the cinematic persona and larger than life public presence of Theodore Roosevelt – The First US Movie President (USA, 1898-1919, 10 mins @ 16 fps, 16/35mm).

Presented with the support of the Embassy of the United States.