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Christ out of Mandrake Falls, Vt., "fine fellow, very democratic." He writes postcard doggerel and sprints like an excited puppy when a fire engine roars by, Gary Cooper embodies the "cornfed bohunk" with private offbeat rhythms. (Told he's just inherited $20 million, he processes the news by playing his tuba in the living room.) Off to New York, inside the mansion there's an echoing foyer and a bannister for sliding, outside the Depression is still felt. The social whirl of wiseguys, phonies, quacks, moochers and snobs, "eat with the literati" and knock their lights out. The newspaper reporter (Jean Arthur) gets the scoop by posing as a poor stenographer and studying the creature up close, even after dubbing him Cinderella Man the enigma remains: "That guy's either the dumbest, most imbecilic idiot in the world, or the greatest thing alive." The poet burdened with riches, or simply Frank Capra ruminating on Oscar-plated fame with a reversal of It Happened One Night. The sights between meetings, "Shawnee River" with drumming on a park trash can, a bubble pricked by your neighbor's hunger, "an undercurrent of social unrest." Democracy's vertical and horizontal nature, fine when exalted by Whitman but a systemic menace when put into practice, thus the protagonist silhouetted before a barred window in the psychiatric cell. "Crucified for a couple of stinking headlines," then wounded silence at the insanity trial—manic depression is the official diagnosis, the Faulkner sisters have a name of their own for it, "pixilated." (Seaton's Miracle on 34th Street revises the theme.) A turning point for Capra. the new Gospel played with speed and vivacity and the swing of emotional extremes. "Lamb bites wolf. Beautiful." Demme in Melvin and Howard adjusts this to the dawn of the Eighties. Cinematography by Joseph Walker. With George Bancroft, Lionel Stander, Douglass Dumbrille, Raymond Walburn, H.B. Warner, Ruth Donnelly, Walter Catlett, Jameson Thomas, Mayo Methot, John Wray, and Warren Hymer. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |