This statement at Matt Yglesias’s Slow Boring Substack made me sit up and take notice:
Sasha Gusev: Political films seem to mostly fall into two tracks: the ideologically pure protagonist is corrupted by politics or always was (The Candidate, The Ides of March, A Face in the Crowd, Primary Colors, Wag The Dog, In The Loop), or the ideologically pure protagonist stands on his principles and wins (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The American President).
I could only wonder whether Sasha Gusev had ever seen Frank Capra’s 1939 movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? Yes, Jefferson Smith is “ideologically pure”. He’s preternaturally ideologically pure. That’s in stark contrast with Claude Raines’s Senator Paine. That character and portrayal strike me as quite accurate (and typical).
Does Jeff Smith “win”? He has maintained his principles but he has not won. He is physically and emotionally a wreck. He is disillusioned at the real nature of politics. There is no bright future ahead for him. It’s hard to see what’s ahead for him. He certainly doesn’t get the girl and ride off into the sunset.
In MSGTW it is the people who have won.
Similarly, what happens at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life? The sense in which George Bailey “wins” is that he is no longer suicidal and has newfound appreciation of his family. His business is still a wreck and he has all the other problems he had at the start of the picture. The real winners are the people of Bedford Falls.
That’s actually pretty typical of Capra pictures. It’s one of the things that sets them apart. Consider Meet John Doe or Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. It Happened One Night is one of the rare cases of a Capra picture in which the “hero gets the girl” but even there I don’t think that’s actually what happened. I think that Clark Gable’s anti-hero “gets the girl” and she’s a spoiled rich girl who isn’t that much of a prize. Maybe her experiences have changed her but probably not.