Huey P. Long, asked once if Fascism would ever come to America (and this at a time when the U.K. and the Irish Free State already had Fascist movements, and when people still drew distinctions between Nazism and Fascism), said "Sure--but when it comes it'll be called Anti-Fascism." Had Anti-Fascism ever arrived, under the aegis, probably, of the Kingfish himself, then Frank Capra would have been its Leni Riefenstahl.

I wish I had written these two sentences. And that's about the highest praise I can offer a writer.

Paul:

First,

You probably shouldn't start commenting on a movie when you were only half way through it.

Second,

When you say, "We're supposed to believe in the outlandish premise of the incorruptible, naive, and only just barely better than incompetent man (always practically virginal and innocent in other ways, too) besting the people who can actually run things, build things, and manage a society."

Are you saying that the antagonists of some Capra films (Potter from "It's a Wonderful Life" or Jim Taylor in "Mr Smith...") are men that could "actually run things, build things, and manage a society"? If so, I believe this is even beyond cynicism.

His movies are not just "Look at the bumbling man who is able to best the corrupt rich people!" I would say they are more of an example that in some situations, a regular guy can make a difference. His protagonists are not symbols of "moral purity." Jimmy Stewart's character in "Wonderful Life," although a good person in whole, had his faults like everyone (his temper at times, he wanted to commit suicide, etc.). Stewart's character in ("Smith") is probably one of purest characters in a Capra film. But he is even not perfect. In fact, I would say he's innocent to a flaw (not knowing what is going on and who is doing what).
If nothing else, Capra's movies allow the audience to attempt to see a somewhat "regular" person in interesting situations. That is one reason why Stewart was Capra's favorite actor, because he epitomized the "regular" man. (Hitchcock thought the same thing.)
So, I will put you with the party bosses, labor leaders, and "sophisticates." But, why be so sadly and blatantly one-sided?

Myron,

Do you think that Potter Stewart and other Capra antagonists are actual characters or just stereotypes? They're nothing more than caricatures, cardboard cut-out enemies for Our Hero Regular Joe to overcome. That's one of my big complaints about Capra--the way in which he constantly asserts that Regular Guys who believe in ill-defined American Ideals are inherently better than people who are at the top of any hierarchy, because the latter are always there by fraud.

Capra's protagonists are flawed, but we're clearly meant to sympathize with their flaws, and in fact usually his protagonists' real flaws (ignorance, simplism, inability to understand what's going on) aren't the flaws we're supposed to see (which usually come down to having a temper problem--is there a Capra film that doesn't involve the protagonist punching people out?). By contrast, as I wrote above, the 'flaws' of the antagonists are like the flaws of capitalists in Communist propaganda.

" If nothing else, Capra's movies allow the audience to attempt to see a somewhat "regular" person in interesting situations."

And this is what Capra wants you to think, and as far as I know what he thought himself. But there is no such thing as a Regular Guy, and social problems are never even halfway as simple as he portrays them. It's only A Wonderful Life, wherein the problem is mostly personal (a guy trying to find meaning in his life), where the saccharine formula works, because Capra's mindset is wholly personalistic and moralizing; but in, say, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, he's discussing social problems as if they could be cured by acts of individual altruism, which isn't true.

So I'm not going to let Capra off the hook because of the regular guy/interesting situations argument, mainly because the guys are never presented as being that regular and the situations are always drawn in a terribly skewed way to support a vision of how society should be--a vision which, I should make clear, I want no part of (I'm unapologetic for wanting to live in Chicago instead of Carbondale).

One:
Remeber that when Capra is illustrating characters and social dilemmas, he also has to do it in an entertaining way. A director (producer, actor, etc.) always wants to send a message through his work, but the message and the medium must be of a sort that will also entertain to a degree. I agree that Capra's (and most movie/tv characters) are usually not entirely realistic. This had to be so because movie-goers want to be entertained. A movie maker must skew the message to an extent that it still entertains. Nobody wants to watch a movie that is all message and not entertaining. Stanley Kubrick has tons of messages in his movies, but both the message and characters are skewed enough to make them interesting as well.

Two:
I'm from Champaign. So, I understand that nobody would want to live in Carbondale. EVER! :)

There are no bounds to the lengths to which morally corrupt persons will go to justify their behavior, including portraying themselves as "the people who can actually run things, build things, and manage a society".

...including portraying themselves as "the people who can actually run things, build things, and manage a society".

I believe at least part of Paul's point here is that not infrequently they not only "portray themselves as", but also are the people who can run things, etc. (What's more interesting, perhaps, is how often people who would be perfectly good at running things have to portray themselves as the second coming on Sen. Smith, in order to have a chance of getting elected. It's not too hard with 20-20 hindsight now to read the 2000 election as a competition between a competent policy wonk and bureaucrat and a morally corrupt failed businessman, in which the competition was more about who could better 'Smith it up' than about, like, who actually had the relevant background and capacity to run the country.)