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Undoubtedly one of the most celebrated films about Washington politics is Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Some people may find the story of a naive young man who wants to start a boys’ camp and ends up a United States Senator dated and a bit sentimental, but to me it is still one of America’s greatest films and this comes from someone who in another incarnation was in the first group of American Film Institute fellows. To properly set the scene for what is one of the great sequences and speeches in American cinema requires a brief plot synopsis.
Jefferson Smith (played by James Stewart who would later star in Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life) finds himself appointed to replace a senator who died suddenly. A local hero for singlehandedly putting out a forest fire and the state head of the Boy Rangers, Smith (note the symbolic first name) wants to found a boys’ camp that will teach the values of citizenship. The Tammany Hall-like political machine that controls the state thinks his boyish idealism will make him easy to manipulate.
The machine, which is under control of one Boss Taylor, who pulls the strings of most of the elected puppets in his state, wants only one thing out of Smith: that he will vote to pass a Deficiency Bill that contains funds for a pork barrel dam that will enrich Taylor and his cronies, a dam that will be on the same site Smith has chosen for his camp.
Smith naively has no clue about the ticking time bomb in the Deficiency Bill, until his loyal legislative aide Saunders, played by Jean Arthur in one of her best roles, informs him that he is being played for a sucker. Smith is so disillusioned that he decides to leave Washington. On his way out of town he stops at the Lincoln Memorial where Saunders convinces him to stay and fight Taylor, plotting what she calls a “forty foot dive into a tub of water.” When the bill comes to the floor, Smith will filibuster it.
Capra’s direction of the filibuster sequence, which lasts almost half the movie, is generally recognized by film experts as one of the great sequences ever to come out of Hollywood. Capra’s cutting back and forth between Stewart’s seemingly quixotic struggle (one reporter in the movie even says Smith is tilting at windmills) and the reactions of the rest of the country remains a textbook example of the power of great editing. As for Stewart and Arthur, this sequence will establish them as two of Hollywood’s greats as they play off one of Hollywood’s premier character actors, Thomas Mitchell, who would win an Oscar that year for his role in Stagecoach. Often using high angle shots from the Senate gallery as if the camera were sitting there with the press and other visitors, Capra pulls out all the stops as Stewart’s eloquence increases even as his voice deteriorates to an elemental croak and his eyes seem to sink into his skull like a man already in the shadows.
Everyone who had anything to do with this scene knows the tightrope they are walking on, for if they play it too broad they are liable to lose balance and if they play it too casually the drama will drain from this titanic struggle. Capra forces his audience to walk the same tightrope, for as you watch Smith passionately defend the ideals of American democracy, you too must decide whether you have become too cynical to be moved by the speech. Do those values seem quaint, even irrelevant, or do they still hold the power to move you? Is Smith as naive and simplistic as the Taylor minions think he is? Who is more realistic, Paine or Smith?
You decide:
[After reading the Declaration of Independence] Now, you’re not gonna have a country that can make these kind of rules work, if you haven’t got men that have learned to tell human rights from a punch in the nose. [The Senate applauds] It’s a funny thing about men, you know. They all start life being boys. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if some of these Senators were boys once. And that’s why it seemed like a pretty good idea for me to get boys out of crowded cities and stuffy basements for a couple of months out of the year. And build their bodies and minds for a man-sized job, because those boys are gonna be behind these desks some of these days. And it seemed like a pretty good idea, getting boys from all over the country, boys of all nationalities and ways of living. Getting them together. Let them find out what makes different people tick the way they do. Because I wouldn’t give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn’t have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a – a little lookin’ out for the other fella, too…
That’s pretty important, all that. It’s just the blood and bone and sinew of this democracy that some great men handed down to the human race, that’s all. But of course, if you’ve got to build a dam where that boys camp ought to be, to get some graft to pay off some political army or something, well that’s a different thing. Oh no! If you think I’m going back there and tell those boys in my state and say: ‘Look. Now fellas. Forget about it. Forget all this stuff I’ve been tellin’ you about this land you live in is a lot of hooey. This isn’t your country. It belongs to a lot of James Taylors.’ Oh no! Not me! And anybody here that thinks I’m gonna do that, they’ve got another thing comin’… I hate to stand here and try your patience like this, but EITHER I’M DEAD RIGHT OR I’M CRAZY.
His voice very hoarse, from his filibuster] Just get up off the ground, that’s all I ask. Get up there with that lady that’s up on top of this Capitol dome, that lady that stands for liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes if you really want to see something. And you won’t just see scenery; you’ll see the whole parade of what Man’s carved out for himself, after centuries of fighting. Fighting for something better than just jungle law, fighting so’s he can stand on his own two feet, free and decent, like he was created, no matter what his race, color, or creed. That’s what you’d see. There’s no place out there for graft, or greed, or lies, or compromise with human liberties. And, uh, if that’s what the grownups have done with this world that was given to them, then we’d better get those boys’ camps started fast and see what the kids can do. And it’s not too late, because this country is bigger than the Taylors, or you, or me, or anything else. Great principles don’t get lost once they come to light. They’re right here; you just have to see them again!
I guess this is just another lost cause, Mr. Paine. All you people don’t know about lost causes. Mr. Paine does. He said once they were the only causes worth fighting for. And he fought for them once, for the only reason any man ever fights for them. Because of just one plain, simple rule: “Love thy neighbor.”
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