Rent Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

Comfort Cinema With Its Fists Up - Mr. Deeds Goes to Town review by griggs

I queued up a cosy Capra lark and got something that quietly sharpens into a social punch. Longfellow Deeds—greeting-card poet, tuba enthusiast, and fish-out-of-water—inherits $20 million from his uncle, and arrives in New York as the Depression-era story everyone wants to sell.

Capra keeps the scenes on a short lead: jokes land, then consequences follow. You can almost hear the newsroom machinery—headlines, hustle, moral shortcuts—as Jean Arthur’s Babe Bennett works him under false pretences for a story, then catches feelings (and a conscience). When a desperate farmer turns up with a gun, the film stops winking and shows its hand: Deeds’ plan to fund 2,000 ten-acre farms isn’t a gimmick, it’s a challenge.

Yes, Capra can’t resist a big courtroom crescendo, but the sanity hearing still bites. It’s humane, funny, and unexpectedly bracing—comfort cinema with a backbone.

Comedy-Drama. - Mr. Deeds Goes to Town review by Steve

 Frank Capra gives us an unlikely American hero, a rich man who wants to give all his money away! Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) is an everyman from Hicksville who inherits $20m and moves to the bright lights of New York. Mr. Deeds is taken for a ride, but surely he can trust the fast talking newshound (Jean Arthur) he is falling in love with?

Cooper gives a signature performance as the provincial, tuba playing writer of greetings cards who grows disillusioned by ambient corruption. Arthur became a star as the tough cynic who repents. As ever, Robert Riskin's dialogue is full of sharp political wit, and he's brilliant at voicing Deeds' idiosyncratic wisdom.      

Some of the commentary on America in the depression feels like editorialising. Unlike other Capra/Riskin films, the message isn't spun into the thread of the narrative. They hammer away at the point that America needs to find a unified solution to the depression which includes the rich and the poor. At times the film seems as unworldly as its hero.

There are many incidental pleasures, like the unflattering portrayal of the Algonquin round table of New Yorker critics. Its theme is that a corrupt society will always make good people appear naive, even dangerous. Which is fair enough. Deeds wins out because Capra can't send his audience home without hope. But the fascists had seized power across Europe.

"Budington must feel like an awful stranger.” - Mr. Deeds Goes to Town review by LJ

This comedy-drama is almost identical in plot to the later Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, except that Mr. Deeds is a jerk and it is much less engrossing.