Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Eighteen: Doing the Deeds

As the poster says another great Frank Capra production but unlike my two previous Frank Capra viewings (It Happened One Night and You Can't Take It With You) this did not win Best Picture but he did win Best Director for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Made in between ITHON and YCTIWY, this is possibly the least comic of the three films but like the other two is all to do with power and status and money. As in You Can't Take It With You, Capra roots for the little guy but sees what happens to that little guy when he gives him money. Gary Cooper, nominated for Best Actor, plays Longfellow Deeds a smalltown man who inherits a fortune from a long-forgotten uncle and goes to the Big City to claim it. He is then looked after by the guy who played Max in Hart to Hart who is some kind of press agent for the estate but becomes Deeds' confident. Meanwhile a female journalist decides to get the story of Deeds so she pretends to faint in front of him and then starts to romance him. The journalist is played by Jean Arthur in her big break she would later go onto work with Capra on two more ocassions. After he discovers her deception he starts to lapse into melancholy but decides to start donating his fortune to farmers who lost their wealth in the great depression. Although this angers the dead uncle's lawyer who tries to prove that Deeds is insane by gathering evidence from his recent behaviour and his old home town. Obviously in the end everything works out well Deeds keeps the fortune, helps the farmers and gets the girl and Capra teaches all the rich people a lesson.

In the other Capra films I have watched there has been someone to root for or someone likeable but the main problem I found was that Deeds wasn't particularly relatable. Although Gary Cooper is a fine actor there's something lacking in the script that gives Deeds any smalltown charm instead he often quite easily resorts to punching people in the face which isn't a good representation of the small guy done well. He only redeems himself in the second half of the film and Cooper is very good in the final insanity hearing scenes. Jean Arthur again handles herself well as the typical woman in a man's world she is able to wrap the newspaper editor, the camerman and briefly Deeds round her little finger. Max from Hart to Hart is also fairly decent as Deeds' sidekick. Overall I can see why this didn't win best picture as it doesn't have the charm of You Can't Take It With You or the knockabout humour and the romance of It Happened One Night. But there are still elements of greatness as this is a Frank Capra film after all. There'll be more Capra to come as his films did garner another two nominations in the decade those films being Lady for a Day and Lost Horizon.