Another Frank Capra (Cambridge Studies in Film)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 8/21/2008
EAN 9780521389785, ISBN10: 052138978X
Paperback, 308 pages, 23.4 x 15.6 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
Another Frank Capra offers a new interpretation of the great Hollywood director beyond the patriotic sentimentalist or the cynical opportunist that he has been taken for. Often cast as a cinematic simpleton or primitive, Capra's exploitation of the stylistic and narrative resources of cinema was, in fact, extremely self-conscious and adventurous in ways typical of artistic modernism. His modernism is also evident in his repeated and strong identification with female characters. Informed by recent work in genre theory and feminist psychology, Another Frank Capra shows Capra to be a 'proto-feminist' director whose feminism has been entirely neglected by previous critics.
Preface
1. Picturing Capra, Meet Frank Capra, Critical Concepts, You Can't Take It with You
2. Melodrama and the unknown woman
Forbidden
3. Questions of difference
Mr Deeds Goes to Town
4. Glimpsing the eternal
Lost Horizon
5. 'This Is a Man's World'
Mr Smith Goes to Washington
6. 'To Be or Not to Be'
It's a Wonderful Life
Postscript
The Catastrophe of Success
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Selected Filmography
Index.