MY DVD Collection - 09 Feb 2007

Know Your Enemy: Japan

USA 1945
d: Frank Capra
VCI Home Video (Region 1 us)

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Platinum Blonde

(Vor Blondinen wird gewarnt [de])

USA 1931
d: Frank Capra
Columbia Tristar Home Video (Region 0 de)

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American Madness

(Bankkrach in Amerika / Der Tag, an dem die Bank gestürmt wurde [de])

USA 1932
d: Frank Capra
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (Region 0 de)

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Huston, the joshing, principled New York bank manager, Tom Dickson, animates this sermon (scripted by Robert Riskin) by sheer force of personality: a Depression-era bank-run is halted by the little people who rally to Dickson's defence and shame the selfish plutocrats on the bank's board. Huston's rough-hewn character is matched by a wonderfully sophisticated and seductive performance by Johnson, as the manager's somewhat neglected wife. She unwittingly abets her husband's discomfort by allowing herself to be wooed by the chief cashier (Gordon), who's been forced into dishonesty by his gambling debts. Beautifully shot by Joseph Walker, with several striking expressionistic touches, this breathtaking film from Capra's golden period with Harry Cohn's Columbia is notable among much else for its vivid depiction of how a bank operates and for a tremendous climax in which a sea of desperate depositors clamour for their cash.
— JPy, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
One of the first films to deal with the panic associated with the Depression, American Madness also marked the beginning of Frank Capra's populist vein. Walter Huston is wonderful as a youthful and idealistic bank president who opposes his ultra-conservative board and makes loans on faith to small businesses. When a cashier engineers a theft, rumors run wild about the amount of the loss and depositors start a run on the bank. In the end, it is the people who received the loans who come to the rescue of the bank, returning their money and helping to restore confidence. But Capra's populism also works against itself, and ultimately American Madness was Columbia's contribution to Hoover's anti-hoarding campaign; Hoover, too, placed the onus of a nation's pain on the little guy. American Madness is a fascinating souvenir of the Depression, with expressionistic crowd scenes and a dynamic shooting style that turns the bank into a Grand Hotel-like setting for everything from larceny to love.
— PFA
•••••
Capra describes this as "one of the first Hollywood films to grapple directly and openly with the Depression's fears and panic." The wild, upbeat story stars Walter Huston as a youthful and idealistic bank president who opposes his ultra-conservative Board and makes loans on faith to small businesses. When a cashier engineers a theft, rumors run wild about the amount of the loss and depositors start a run on the bank. In the end, it is those "little people" who received the loans who come to the rescue of the bank, returning their money and helping to restore confidence. David Shepard, writing for the American Film Institute, describes American Madness as "Columbia's contribution to the anti-hoarding campaign...an important film, not only because it is a keepsake of the Depression, but also because it proved that Hollywood once believed in its ability to shape the behavior of a mass audience and was willing to try and lead millions of people to their own political and social destiny." Capra calls it "a shocker. It created controversy among critics and bitter contention in financial circles."
— PFA
•••••
A small, often shrill 1932 social comedy by Frank Capra. This was Capra's first venture into populist editorializing, the story of a bank president (Walter Huston) whose answer to the Depression is to "trust people." The bank flounders, and thousands of small investors run in at the finale to save it. Capra recycled much of the material in his sentimental masterpiece of 1946, It's a Wonderful Life, where, in an overtly fantastic context, it seemed much less gratingly naive. Huston pleasingly fills out his part, based on the founder of the Bank of America, with a soaring, half-crazed messianic zeal.
— Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

It Happened One Night

(Es geschah in einer Nacht [de])

USA 1934
d: Frank Capra
Columbia Tristar Home Video (Region 1 us)

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The film which lifted Columbia Studios into the big league by winning five Academy Awards and putting Capra's future output among the biggest box-office successes of the '30s. Gable plays a ruthless reporter who adopts a fugitive heiress making her way across America by bus. She (Colbert) is spoiled and snobbish, he is poor but honest, and his attempts to convert her to homespun pleasures hit the right emotional chord in Depression-weary audiences. Opinions divide about whether the film's comedy and sententious notions about the miserable rich and happy poor have dated, but some of the set pieces definitely haven't aged. Capra's sense of humour is a little like that of Preston Sturges, though less caustic; and the film shows its stars at their best, Colbert as one of Hollywood's fresher comediennes, Gable as dumb-but-loveable hunk.
— RM, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
"It Happened One Night" is considered quintessential screwball but it's tamer than most. "A simple story for simple people...That's my whole plot in a nutshell," says Clark Gable's Everyman, ace-reporter and sometime free-verse poet Pete Warne. Indeed, all the elements of Capra's Depression-era Americana are here but in spontaneous, sporty form. (The film had inauspicious beginnings in the "cross-country bus" genre of Depression-era films, but its genius was in making its heroes get out and walk.) Warne is Mr. Deeds without an undershirt, making a case for the simple man as against the "spoiled brat" runaway heiress Claudette Colbert. Roscoe Karns, as yet another great American type, "Mr. Believe-You-Me," speaks volumes about the class war when he spouts, "You look like you got class, yes sir, class with a capital K." As for the battle of the sexes, the now-famous "Walls of Jericho" in the motel room kidded the Hays Office while managing to raise a few eyebrows therein, despite-or because of-Pete's protestation, "You see, I have no trumpet." It wasn't the censors, however, but the undershirt makers of America who were less than tickled by Gable's chest hairs. Sales of men's undershirts plummeted by thirty percent, and remained low until after the war when real men once again wore underwear, now on the outside.
— Pacific Film Archive

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

(Mr. Deeds geht in die Stadt [de])

USA 1936
d: Frank Capra
Columbia Tristar Home Video (Region 1 us)

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Lost Horizon

(In den Fesseln von Shangri-La [de])

USA 1937
d: Frank Capra
Columbia Tristar Home Video (Region 1 us)

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Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

(Mr. Smith geht nach Washington [de])

USA 1939
d: Frank Capra
Columbia Tristar Home Video (Region 1 us)

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Meet John Doe

(Hier kommt John Doe [de])

USA 1941
d: Frank Capra
Sanctuary Digital Entertainment (Region 0 uk)

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Arsenic and Old Lace

(Arsen und Spitzenhäubchen [de])

USA 1944
d: Frank Capra
Warner Home Video (Region 1 us)

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It's a Wonderful Life

(Ist das Leben nicht schön? [de])

USA 1946
d: Frank Capra
Republic Entertainment (Region 1 us)

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