La critique de Witney Seibold (part1)

Some context: in 1938, America was still feeling the effects of the Great Depression. The government wasn’t to be trusted, economics was a lie, and anyone who managed to hang onto their wealth was morally suspect. And while amoral rich bastards have been a stock dramatic character for, gosh, centuries, the modern version of that character was codified in movies like You Can’t Take It With You. In Frank Capra’s famous movie, the heroes refuse to pay taxes, and the wealthy characters are seen as stuffy, lifeless buffoons. The “evil rich” will be a common notion in many Best Picture winners, and will be used to most famous effect in Citizen Kane, a little flick from 1941 you may have heard of. So if the heroes of Capra’s film seem irresponsible and childish to a modern audience (they refuse to pay taxes?), know that they are actually intended to be heroic, bold, free-thinking wild spirits.

You Can’t Take It With You is shamelessly sentimental. It’s about blissful liberty overcoming corporate cynicism. It’s about everything working out in the end. It’s about how love, romance, and inventiveness are definitely better than wealth, status, and ambition. Even the title is a lesson to the audience. And it’s all told with a relatively heavy hand. But since it was made by Frank Capra – who essentially invented film sentimentality – you forgive a lot of it. Capra, who I previously wrote about in Best Picture: It Happened One Night (1934), was a master on-screen humanity. He had a knack for casting actors and exploiting situations for every last bit of their halcyon, sweet, romantic powers. These days, the word “sentimentality” is a bit of a cuss. When talking about Capra, it’s a compliment....