MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON
SUN1:00 5:40 8:15
MON 12:30
Sunday, October 19 – Monday, October 20
New 4K Restoration
(1939) Naïve scout leader James Stewart, with tart-tongued reporter Jean Arthur in tow, finds Washington ain’t all monuments, while Senator Claude Rains and Boss Edward Arnold provide the requisite dishonor to the American way of life. The D.C. premiere occasioned massive congressional backlash. Approx. 127 min. DCP.
Reviews
“Quintessential Capra – the popular wish-fulfillment served up with such fast-talking comic panache that you don’t have time to question its cornball idealism."
– Nigel Floyd, Time Out (London)
"Capra's films in the 30s—the screwball comedies that he nearly single-handedly created—reconciled the irreconcilable; bridged the rural/urban divide; showed love, decency, and neighborliness ascendant; and demonstrated conclusively that America was a land of perfect unity where all social classes were one. Capra's populist heroes—Longfellow Deeds, Jefferson Smith, John Doe—deflated pomposity at home and defeated the shadowy undemocratic forces threatening the globe. This is classic Capracorn, with the greatest girl cynic of the 30s, Jean Arthur.”
– Don Druker, Chicago Reader