Irish Film Institute -MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN

MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN

Director: FRANK CAPRA

115 minutes| U.S.A.| 1936| Black and White| D-Cinema


Mr. Capra goes to town with this devastating parable about good deeds in a fallen world. A country boy unexpectedly inherits a fortune and is transported to the big city by lawyers and financiers eager to exploit his innocence for their own ends. But Longfellow Deeds is not as simple as he looks. Dismayed by the cynicism and cruelty of city slickers and sophisticates, and moved by the plight of farmers facing starvation, he begins to give away his money to the poor, at which point he is promptly pronounced insane and put on trial. Buoyed by Robert Riskin’s sparkling script and by Gary Cooper’s pitch-perfect performance as Deeds, Capra in this film finds his voice, his style and his big theme: this is an inimitable populist fantasy about worth against wealth and about the dignity of the individual in fighting the inhumanities of the times. ‘A comedy quite unmatched on the screen’ was Graham Greene’s verdict.

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