This movie is shocking from it's first few minutes. It presents politics as being as despicable, bitter, dirty and calculating as it is today. It's astonishing that in 1948, politics could be portrayed much more honestly than any movie or news outlet would even attempt today. Oddly, the plot involves the disclosure of a candidate as a big phony who's sold the country to power-brokers and big industry; not for his sexual entanglement with a woman who isn't his wife. Is this a thematic choice for the movie, or the oft-repeated rubric that this behavior was known before Kennedy, but held secret by a complicit press. Only Capra's ridiculous imposition of his cherished immigrant patriotism (which has nothing to do with the hateful foreground action) mucks things up. The political gamesmanship is NOT presented lightly or for comic value. And that part of the story (the much better part) whole-heartedly resists the preachy jingoism that Capra tries to paste on it.
Hepburn is the estranged wife of Tracy. We meet her, only after Tracy's lady-friend has had a lengthy, forceful impact on the film. Lansbury plays a pathetic, scheming politicians daughter almost as evil and hateful as she is in Manchurian Candidate. It is not the usual Tracy/Hepburn vehicle. Capra is in John Doe mode and tries to sell a rotten ending that's just so much sentimental pap. He could never resolve his more complicated scripts. Thankfully his signature cuteness has been relaxed almost to non-existence. It's shot better than most Capra movies, and the DVD transfer is unbelievably crisp.
This would make a very intelligent double-feature with "All the Kings Men" about Huey Long.
Hepburn is the estranged wife of Tracy. We meet her, only after Tracy's lady-friend has had a lengthy, forceful impact on the film. Lansbury plays a pathetic, scheming politicians daughter almost as evil and hateful as she is in Manchurian Candidate. It is not the usual Tracy/Hepburn vehicle. Capra is in John Doe mode and tries to sell a rotten ending that's just so much sentimental pap. He could never resolve his more complicated scripts. Thankfully his signature cuteness has been relaxed almost to non-existence. It's shot better than most Capra movies, and the DVD transfer is unbelievably crisp.
This would make a very intelligent double-feature with "All the Kings Men" about Huey Long.