Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was one of the ten nominees for Best Picture in that remarkable year of 1939. It's an expose of the depths to which the government is influenced by the wrong men. You might say it's about how corrupt the Congress, especially the Senate, had become in the 1930s, but that might imply that we've somehow gotten rid of the kind of backroom deals that the movie depicts. We all know that's not the case, of course, making Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in many ways just as insightful today as it was seventy years ago.
James Stewart plays Jefferson Smith, a naive young man chosen to fill the vacancy created by the death of one of the senators from his home state. Smith's choice as a replacement senator is a difficult one for the governor, given how much pressure he faces from newspaperman Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold) to choose someone who will help push through a shady land deal. Smith, the head of the Boy Rangers, a sort of Boy Scout organization, gets public support from the boys themselves, so Governor Hopper (Guy Kibbee) chooses Smith over Taylor's initial objections. After all, what does Smith know about how the federal government works? So long as his powerful and influential fellow senator, Claude Rains' Joseph Paine, guides him, the deal should go through. Right?
No one expects Smith to be as naive as he is, though. For example, when he finally arrives in Washington, he disappears for an afternoon just so that he can see all of the monuments and memorials in town. He stands in awe of the Capitol Dome itself, and I won't even mention how much attention the Lincoln Memorial gets in this film. His assistant, Miss Saunders (Jean Arthur, who's growing on me as an actress), tries to help Smith learn the ways of bill-making and other government operations. Unfortunately, she can't always control him, such as when he's questioned by the press. He makes bird calls and gives Indian signs in his first press conference, and his actions are used to ridicule him in the newspapers the next day. He even punches out one of the newspapermen in retaliation for the damage to his reputation.
Smith, you see, has a specific goal he hopes to achieve while in the Senate; he wants to build a national boys camp to teach morals to the young boys of America. He tells Saunders about the ideal location for this camp, oddly enough the same site that Jim Taylor wants to build a dam. Needless to say, when word gets out about the conflict, everyone tries to distract Smith so he won't know about the plans for the dam. Senator Paine even uses his daughter Susan (Astrid Allwyn) as a "distraction," let's call it, while the bill for the dam is presented.
There's a confrontation, naturally, between Smith and Taylor where their core beliefs are revealed. Is it any surprise that Taylor thinks he "owns" everyone? There's also a confrontation between Smith and Paine where Paine tells the younger man that he has to compromise his principles. Taylor inevitably tries to smear Smith in the newspapers and other media outlets he controls, and Paine even goes so far as to accuse Smith of being unfit to be a Senator because, he claims, Smith is trying to profit from the sale of the land that is in dispute. Paine lies at a meeting of a Senate committee, a moment so shocking to Smith that he packs his bags and tries to leave town. Saunders catches him at the Lincoln Memorial, and he agrees to return to the Senate and attempt the longest filibuster in the history of government.
It's tough to imagine that the writers of a film would decide to make such an arcane Senate rule as the one governing filibusters into a central piece of its narrative, but Mr. Smith Goes to Washington certainly does so to great effect. There's still quite a bit of dramatic license taken with the rules of the Senate, including the scene where bags of mail allegedly against Smith's filibuster arrive on the Senate floor, but you can't fault director Frank Capra for wanting to amp up the dramatic tension in scenes like these.
Stewart is reliably good here, as are Arthur and Arnold and Rains and Thomas Mitchell as Diz Moore, a newspaper reporter who is one of Saunders' closest friends. As much as you enjoy the performances, though, this is really a movie about the government itself. To a degree, it's an essentially conservative message that's being filtered through this narrative. After all, Smith's proposal for a boys camp couldn't be any more "traditional values" than much of the legislation passed these days. However, it's really more about the power the individual has in the face of government that you're supposed to recognize at the film's end. If one man like Smith can come to that most corrupt of places, Washington, and retain his integrity, then why (you're supposed to ask) doesn't everyone else? It's an interesting question to which the film gives perhaps too pat of an answer. It is Hollywood's version of the government, after all.
I've been trying to figure out just how this film would have been received by those in Washington in 1939. It doesn't portray most of them in a very favorable light, of course. In fact, almost every Senator seems to be under the sway of some person or interest with deep pockets. The press is represented in a negative way as well, yet the film received good reviews at the time of its release. Perhaps in the midst of the Great Depression, people wanted to renew their faith in the integrity of the government. How ironic that it sometimes takes a movie like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to make people consider that issue.
Oscar Win: Original Story
Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Director, Actor (Stewart), Supporting Actor (Harry Carey and Rains), Art Direction, Film Editing, Scoring, Sound Recording, and Screenplay
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