Another Frank Capra

Another Frank Capra offers a new interpretation of the great Hollywood director beyond the patriotic sentimentalist or the cynical opportunist that he has been taken for.

Leland Poague (Author)

9780521389785, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 24 November 2005

308 pages
23.4 x 15.6 x 1.6 cm, 0.433 kg

Another Frank Capra offers a new interpretation of the great Hollywood director beyond the patriotic sentimentalist or the cynical opportunist that he has been taken for. Often cast as a cinematic simpleton or primitive, Capra's exploitation of the stylistic and narrative resources of cinema was, in fact, extremely self-conscious and adventurous in ways typical of artistic modernism. His modernism is also evident in his repeated and strong identification with female characters. Informed by recent work in genre theory and feminist psychology, Another Frank Capra shows Capra to be a 'proto-feminist' director whose feminism has been entirely neglected by previous critics.

Preface
1. Picturing Capra, Meet Frank Capra, Critical Concepts, You Can't Take It with You
2. Melodrama and the unknown woman: Forbidden
3. Questions of difference: Mr Deeds Goes to Town
4. Glimpsing the eternal: Lost Horizon
5. 'This Is a Man's World': Mr Smith Goes to Washington
6. 'To Be or Not to Be': It's a Wonderful Life
Postscript: The Catastrophe of Success
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Selected Filmography
Index.

Subject Areas: Films, cinema [APF]