Product Description
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Designated the "Number One Director in Hollywood" by Time
Magazine in 1938 and voted by Entertainment Weekly (April 19th
issue, 1996) as one of the greatest directors of all time, Capra
has received numerous industry awards and accolades over the
course of his successful career including three Best Director
Os®.
The Premiere Frank Capra Collection is a 6-disc collectible box
set featuring five of Frank Capras best films. The digitally
re-mastered set includes Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, You Cant
Take it With You, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, It Happened One Night
and American Madness. The DVD box set includes a bonus disc
packed with all-new interviews, archival footage, plus Frank
Capras American Dream documentary hosted by Ron Howard and
produced by Capras eldest son, Frank Capra, Jr. (An Eye for an
Eye, Marooned). This Premiere Collection also features
commentaries for each film, along with a 96- page collectible
Movie Scrapbook.
.com
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Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Political heavyweights decide that
Jefferson Smith (James Stewart), an obscure scoutmaster in a
small town, would be the perfect dupe to fill a vacant U.S.
Senate chair. Surely this naive bumpkin can be easily controlled
by the senior senator (Claude Rains) from his state, a
respectable and corrupted career politician. Director Frank Capra
fills the movie with Smith's wide-eyed wonder at the glories of
Washington, all of which ring false for his cynical secretary
(Jean Arthur), who doesn't believe for a minute this rube could
be for real. But he is. Capra was repeating the formula of a
previous film, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, but this one is even
sharper; Stewart and Arthur are brilliant, and the former cowboy
star Harry Carey lends a warm presence to the role of the vice
president. Bright, funny, and beautifully paced, Mr. Smith Goes
to Washington is Capra's ode to the power of innocence--an idea
so potent that present-day audiences may find themselves wishing
for a new Mr. Smith in Congress. The 1939 Congress was none too
thrilled about the film's depiction of their august body,
denouncing it as a caricature; but even today, Capra's jibes
about vested interests and political machines look as accurate as
ever. --Robert Horton
It Happened One Night Director Frank Capra (Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington) took home every O in the book (well, okay, all
the major ones) for this seminal 1934 comedy starring Clark Gable
as a hard-bitten reporter who stays close to a runaway heiress
(Claudette Colbert) rather than lose a good story. Funny and
sexy, the film is full of memorable scenes often referred to in
other films, such as the "walls of Jericho" (a mere bedcover hung
on a line down the middle of a room so site-sex roommates can
get undressed), and Colbert's famous flash of thigh to stop a
speeding car in its tracks. Capra's brisk, urbane brand of wit
was a perfect complement to his populist faith in the common man
(in this case, Gable's character), and that inspired combination
makes this film both a spirited entertainment and an uplifting
experience. --Tom Keogh
You Can't Take It With You
Frank Capra's 1938 populist spin on the George S. Kaufman and
Moss Hart play about a family of happy eccentrics is a great deal
of fun, though it significantly rewrites the original work and
doesn't represent Capra (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes
to Washington) at his best. Jean Arthur plays a member of the
blissful Vanderhof household who falls in love with a rich man's
son (James Stewart) and brings him into her nutty home. Lionel
Barrymore, who played such a bad guy eight years later in Capra's
It's a Wonderful Life, is the wonderful Grandpa Vanderhof, who
addresses God during the dinner prayer as "sir" and speaks
plainly and beautifully of why it's good to be alive. Capra took
this rtunity to rail against big business and champion the
common man, but the overall tone of the film--typical for the
director's comedies--is buoyant and snappy. --Tom Keogh
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is Frank Capra's classic screwball comedy
about a village innocent who inherits $20 million, only to
discover it's more trouble than it's worth. The screwball in
question is Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper), a small-town
greeting-card poet and tuba player transed to the big city
to administer his newly inherited wealth, where fast-pattering,
wised-up cynics, sneering society denizens, and corrupt lawyers
lord it over the ingenuous and straightforward. Deeds's
idiosyncrasies are amply magnified in the tabloids by journalist
"Babe" Bennett (Jean Arthur), dating Deeds as a cover, only to
discover she's the sap when she falls irresistibly for him. But
the damage has been done, when Babe's column is used by a pack of
corrupt lawyers, Cedar, Cedar, Cedar & Budington, to prove Deeds
mentally unfit. The miracle of this unforgettable comedy is how
it embraces dark material, calling into question some common
assumptions about capitalism while maintaining an approachable
atmosphere of light comedy, and deceptively so. You'll be so
pixilated by its charm, you won't rest until you've doodled your
way to a rhyme for "Budington." --Jim Gay
More Stills from The Premiere Frank Capra Collection (click for
larger image)
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