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- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
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- (October, 23 1939)
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- This new Capra fable is a whimsical, the Capra directing as
- slick, the script as fast and funny as in Mr. Deeds Goes to
- Town. The acting of the brilliant cast is sometimes superb. But
- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is bigger than any of these things.
- ITs real hero is not calfy Jeff Smith, but the things he
- believes, as embodied in the hero of U.S. democracy's first
- crisis, Abraham Lincoln. Its big moment is not the melodramatic
- windup, but when Jefferson Smith stands gawking in the Lincoln
- Memorial, listening to a small boy read from a tablet the
- question with which this film faces everyone who sees it:
- "Whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated
- can long endure." The question, not the answer, makes Mr.Smith
- Goes to Washington much more than just another top-rank Frank
- Capra film.
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