In a quiet fade-out, Frank Capra, the quintessential American film director, died in his sleep last week at 94. His life was like a century-long Capra movie. The son of illiterate Sicilian immigrants, he studied engineering at Caltech but lived a picaresque youth as a brilliant bum, hopping freights, hustling poker and wildcat stocks until he conned his way into the movie business, rising from propman to gagman to director. Hired by the ruthless Harry Cohn (who called him “Dago”), Capra saved Cohn’s Columbia studio with a series of films that were irreverent (“Miracle Woman”), sexy (“Platinum Blonde,” with Harlow) and daring (“The Bitter Tea of General Yen,” about a love affair between a white woman and a Chinese warlord). The 1934 “It Happened One Night” created a new kind of brash romantic comedy, won five Oscars and made big stars of Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert-and Capra. The Depression jolted his social consciousness, resulting in his signature films-“Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “Meet John Doe…… It’s a Wonderful Life”-in which a small-town idealist hero, played by Gary Cooper or James Stewart, battled big shots and the system. These populist fables delighted the public but upset some establishment types. Joseph P. Kennedy, ambassador to Great Britain, fumed that “Mr. Smith,” with its assault on corrupt politics, would do “inestimable harm to American prestige.” Capra’s detractors have called his films sentimental (“Capra-corn”), even fascistic. But they’re Misterpieces. Capra expressed the gloriously imprecise dynamics of democracy. The Soviet populist revolution as seen on TV is pure Capra–“Mr. (and Ms.) Ivanov Go to Moscow.”
