Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

Frank Capra won his second Oscar for Best Director for this 1936 screwball comedy starring Gary Cooper as an eccentric small-town poet and tuba player from Vermont who inherits $20 million and goes to New York City to manage his uncle's estate. Jean Arthur is jaded reporter Babe Bennett, who poses as a damsel in distress to gain his trust while exploiting his eccentricities in articles that portray him as a country bumpkin. When Deeds decides that the money is bringing him nothing but misery and trouble and he attempts to give it away, he's taken to court and has to defend his sanity. This is another of Capra's populist comedies of rural values colliding with urban sophistication, and the laconic Cooper plays his role with warmth and uncorrupted innocence, a trusting, virtuous man whose values and good intentions are manipulated by cynical urbanites. Arthur's star was on the rise and her mix of hard-earned experience and suppressed idealism here—delivered with spunky energy and snappy bite—elevated her to the top of Hollywood's echelon. Capra's sentimental brand of homespun values, and his manner of satirizing his rural heroes before taking their side in a triumphant finale, has been somewhat derisively branded as Capra-corn. But while this is one of his cornier films, those old-fashioned values and the charismatic performances of Cooper and Arthur make it a perennial favorite. Making its Blu-ray debut in a remastered 80th anniversary edition, extras include audio commentary by Frank Capra Jr., and a behind-the-scenes featurette. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)