To a remarkable extent, Capra's films caught the mood of America in the Thirties and Forties. When sufficiently little was happening in the world for the masses to be bemused for weeks by the deserved misfortunes of the rich, Capra rebuilt the Depression-bruised male ego with reassurance that, despite unemployment, he was still virile and the master of any situation…. Deeds and You Can't Take It With You combined the folk experience of the Depression (bankruptcy, eviction) born equally of the renewed confidence inspired by the New Deal and the need to dispel the lingering malaise. Mr. Smith tempered the muckraking of the earlier Thirties with the vindication of a flawed democracy that was threatened with extinction abroad. Doe (visually darker than earlier Capra, and not just because of a different cameraman) caught that moment when, in Roosevelt's phrase, Dr. New Deal gave way to Dr. Win-the-War….
Internally, the Capra films became more pessimistic, though this was not immediately apparent. Only in Deeds does the hero win a clear victory by his own efforts. In Smith, the end is more absurdist than triumphal, and the popular protests are all beaten down…. [In] Doe the people's movement is completely discredited…. In Capra's later films, the hero is often saved by a directorial decree as dictatorial as it is delirious.
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