Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939)
The first half of this film tested the idea of James Stewart as an actor who could do no wrong for me. And it's not his fault really, it's just that Capra is not after any kind of subtlety here, and he wants him to play the most bumbling version of the character he can, but what results for me is more cringe than amusement. Combined with the clumsy exposition and annoying child actors, I was pretty worried, though the harshness with which the US political system was being represented was a pleasant surprise. Capra is - to me - associated with "heartfelt", but here he seems to be much better at handling the cynical, jaded characters than his impossibly naive protagonist. Jean Arthur is excellent in that role (as is the whole supporting cast really, with faces familiar even to someone with as superficial a knowledge of the studio-era as I have, like Claude Rains and Thomas Mitchell), and even sells her inevitable infatuation with the protagonist from an early point, marking one of the smoothest transitions from annoyed to enamored, which is saying quite a bit given how much Hollywood loves this trope.
It gets much better when Stewart is allowed to play the character as described by Rains ("honest, not stupid"), and the film moves on to the iconic stuff. Very few do righteous indignation better than Stewart, because you can feel the hurt in the way he plays it: it's not only that his faith in his country is being betrayed, it's his whole self-image, his own identity. Stewart realizing, horrified, that he's been a fool in some way or another, is a component of almost every performance of him I've seen, and yeah, he's great at it. Here again, I was pretty impressed by how hopeless the situation is, to the point that the happy ending feels like a Last Laugh-esque fantasy more than an actual hopeful message: as if Capra is saying that trying to stand up to cynicism is admirable and righteous, but don't you expect it to actually work, unless you believe a boy scout paper can save you against the whole of the media industry.
7/10