American Madness, [Capra's] film about an idealistic banker, is one of the finest American movies to emerge from the early years of the Depression. Very little in Capra's early career as a director suggested he was capable of creating a film as sharp in its social observation and as ambitious in its analysis of American values as this melodrama about robbery, murder, a bank panic, and the conflict between social responsibility and greed. (p. 57)

There is a good deal of "business" in the plot of American Madness but basically the film centers on what would become Capra's perennial subject in his best films: the conflict between a resolute individual, full of goodwill toward his fellow men, and the forces of disunity and corruption who would create and exploit social dislocations for their own benefit. (pp. 57-8)

Capra's mastery of his medium is obvious in American Madness, as it...