[Whatever] it is that gives the thirties their air of curious innocence also gives Capra, at this distance, a slight but distinct aspect of futility. The hero of Mr Smith Goes to Washington consciously embraces a lost cause, but twenty-four years later the nobility of this looks faintly ridiculous and pathetic. In a period insulated at one end by a technical innovation (the sound film) and at the other by the war, Capra suffers the fate of his generation…. Capra speaks to us now in accents poignant but somehow muffled….

This is most true of the most perfect of the comedies, the earliest of the films….

[For example, most] of the humours of It Happened One Night [rise] out of the contrast between [Peter], tough, self-possessed, uncouth but endearingly honest and straightforward, and [Ellie], tough, self-possessed, extremely at ease yet ready to deceive herself and others about her...