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appalachiablue

(41,055 posts)
9. Capra was using scripts that had an anti capitalist frame
Mon Dec 2, 2019, 05:21 AM
Dec 2019

and socialist appeal that had been successful in his earlier 1930s Republican-Depression era films.

The writer of 'Frank Capra, Socialism and the American Hero' claims that by 1946 and later, Americans were not as receptive to the common man, small town hero characters and socialist themes that had been so effective in his works years earlier. Because of his films it's natural to think of Capra as more egalitarian politically when in fact as you say he was a Republican, like Stewart.

Before reading the WaPo article I had no idea Stewart was suffering from PTSD when filming the role of George Bailey. My father had shell shock post war although I wasn't born until years later and so observed nothing. Stuff happens.

http://sghistory.blogspot.com/2011/03/frank-capra-socialism-and-american-hero.html

While Capra was a staunch anti-Communist activist, the content of his films—the villanizing of bankers and government bureaucrats, the portrayal of community as the site of moral redemption—are often characterized by a sharp undercurrent of socialism. The ideology in his films and characterization of the American Hero proved popular with American audiences in the early and mid-1930s; as the decade wore on, however, Capra's films became less and less appreciated, grossing lower box-office revenue and receiving criticism from both the film community and the federal government.
What, then, changed in the thirteen years between 1933, when Capra released his first film Lady for a Day, and 1946, when It's a Wonderful Life was released to almost no box-office revenue? As Capra's protagonists are the products of a socialist envisioning of the American Hero, their relevance to the American public fluctuated with the general sentiment toward socialism. Capra's films were most successful when many Americans saw socialism, or some of its elements, as a solution to the national woes of the Great Depression. In the years directly before and during America's participation in World War II, however, Capra's films underwent much more scrutiny, as they seemed to promote the ideology of a potentially dangerous foreign power.

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