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Frank Capra |
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Director / Producer |
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1897 - 1991 |
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Born May 18,
Bisaquino, Sicily, Italy |
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Key
Production Country: USA |
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Key Genres:
Comedy, Comedy Drama, Romance, Americana, Drama, Romantic Drama,
Romantic Comedy,
Comedy of Manners, Screwball Comedy |
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Key
Collaborators: Joseph
Walker (Cinematographer), Robert Riskin (Screenwriter), Gene Havlick
(Editor), Stephen Goosson (Production
Designer), Barbara Stanwyck (Leading Player), Jo Swerling
(Screenwriter), Dimitri Tiomkin
(Composer), H.B. Warner (Character Player), Harry Cohn (Producer),
Walter Connolly (Leading Character Player) |
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Highly
Recommended: Mr.
Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)*,
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)* |
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Recommended:
The Bitter Tea of General
Yen (1933)*, It
Happened One Night (1934)*, Meet John Doe (1941) |
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Worth a Look: The Strong Man (1926), Long Pants (1927), The Miracle Woman
(1931), Lady for a Day (1933), Broadway Bill (1934), Lost Horizon (1937), You Can't Take it
With You (1938), Arsenic and Old Lace
(1944), State of the Union (1948), Hemo the Magnificent [TV] (1957), A Hole In the Head (1959), Pocketful of Miracles (1961) |
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Approach with Caution: Ladies of Leisure (1930), Rain or Shine
(1930), Forbidden (1932) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section. |
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Links:
[
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Film Reference ] [
A
Capra Site ] [
Bright
Lights Film Journal Article ] [
Frank
Capra at Reel Classics ] [
Frank
Capra's America ] [
Classic Film and
Television Home Page ] [
Sight & Sound Article (2010) ] [
Time Out Article (2010) ] |
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Books: [
The
Name Above the Title: An Autobiography ] [
Frank
Capra: Authorship and the Studio System ] [
Frank
Capra: The Catastrophe of Success ] [
American Vision: The Films of Frank Capra ] [
Frank Capra: Interviews ] [
Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity, And American Film Studies,
1930-1960 ] [
Another Frank Capra ] |
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"Like
Chaplin, Frank Capra began his
film career as a simple, effective comic talent and progressed
to 'message movies'. And, as with
Chaplin, the populism of his later films demonstrated both a
decline in humour and disturbing political ambiguities."
-
Geoff
Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989) |
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"Many of Capra's most famous films can be read as excessively
sentimental and politically naive. These readings, however, tend
to neglect the bases for Capra's success - his skill as a
director of actors, the complexity of his staging
configurations, his narrative economy and energy, and most of
all, his understanding of the importance of the spoken word in
sound film." -
(Charles Affron (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers,
1991) |
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"Nowadays,
the mere mention of Capra's name is enough to make literate and
learned film-writers dip their pens in bile. But when, between
director and actor, you actually pump the breath of life into
impossibly idealized Everymen, as Gary Cooper, James Stewart, or
Barbara Stanwyck did, a powerful emotional current is given out
from the screen. The fact that they have nothing to do with the
real world has absolutely no bearing on that." -
David
Quinlan (Quinlan's Illustrated Guide to Film Directors, 1999) |
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"Capra is a master of the socially significant film. His work is
full of optimism, humor, love, patriotism, and respect for
traditional values." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"I
think of the medium as a people-to-people medium, not
cameraman-to-people, not direction-to-people, not
writers-to-people, but people-to-people...You can only involve
an audience with people. You can't involve them with gimmicks,
with sunsets, with hand-held cameras, zoom shots, or anything
else. They couldn't care less about those things. But you give
them something to worry about, some person they can worry about,
and care about, and you've got them, you've got them involved." -
Frank Capra (Directing the Film, 1976) |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director that we
haven't seen include The Matinee Idol (1928), The Power of the
Press (1928), Flight (1929), The Younger Generation (1929), Dirigible
(1931), Platinum Blonde (1931), American Madness (1932), Riding High
(1950), and Here Comes the Groom (1951). |
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