Frank Capra

Frank Capra is the epitome of the american dream. As an individual he started off with italian beginnings, that humbily led him to America with his family and he became a superstar director.

I've always liked It's a Wonderful Life, it's a classic film that I always watch a christmas time, it's the best christmas film. What I really wanted to look at in this blog post is how his films have inspired so many others, so take for example this one inspired Micheal, you know the John Travolta film, where he's a angel trying to get his wings back. All's very original.

So I decided to look at Frank Capra's filmography and pick a few to watch, I figured if they've inspired so many other pieces of work maybe they can subconsciously inspire mine and make it better. I think that's just wishful thinking, but i do believe to so some point it does inspire and improve judgement of moving image.

So started by watching It Happened One Night! I really really enjoyed the narrative of this film and thought it was well thought out and very entertaining. I love it in films when they call people Buddy and theres naughty business it's just a family fun rom com, it clearly did set the tone for films like the Seven Year Itch and Some Like it Hot. I also watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington which is the main reason for this blog post. I found it such an interesting story. Mr Smith is a model citizen in a small town he runs the scouts, he saves cats from trees and basically so crooked politicians vote for him to be a senate so that they can convince him to vote the way they want so they have more seats for there bill in the white house. I used to be really big into keeping up to speed with politics especially in the UK but I've stopped caring to put it bluntly. So knowing a bit more about american politics is also something that I don't mind. One major thing that took me by surprise is it's got a pretty obvious ending in the way Mr Smith makes a difference and gets these crooked politicians done, but one of the scenes is in House of Cards. I don't know if you have watched House of Cards but it is one of the greatest TV series of our generation. Honestly I've never watched anything so good. Kevin Spacey is just an unbelieveable actor and he's absolutely ruthless to get to the top. Once I've finished watching the second series I might compare it to the original english series in a separate blog post.

Frank Capra's films won a lot of oscars at the time, It Happened One night was the first film to take the big five oscars so he is the original commercial film director who had it all. I think a lot can be learned from him, so next I'm going to watch Meet John Doe and one of his later ones Arsenic and Old Lace. I also think it's really interesting to see how his talent went on to inpire further italian-american directors of the future, like Martin Scorsese.