This political comedy wasn't a success and consequently it isn't revived much. It's based on a play and it shows. It's made up of 'scenes' and with one exception, (some hi-jinks involving airplanes), it's set mostly in one or two rooms, (in one scene the actors keep entering and exiting through doors to the left and right of the screen as if in a play). In some respects it represents the very pinacle of Capra-corn but by the time it was made audiences had grown tired of this kind of liberal chest-thumping. (Had it been made fifteen years earlier it would probably have been a huge success). And yet it is very well played and highly enjoyable and, on at least one occasion, it seems to be ahead of it's time. Maybe Tracy's vision of the future was as unpalatable to the American public of the period as Adolphe Menjou suggests it would be in the film. But if one is going to get slapped up the face with political sentiments aren't they better to come from the liberal left? The climatic scene may be preposterous, (I can't believe anyone on the verge of being elected President is going to turn down the job because of his wife's liberal conscience. Don't these people think things through?), but at least it's preposterous in a gooey, rose-tinted and embarasingly sincere way without an ounce of cynicism.
Of course, Capra picked the most liberal, grand-standing actors on the planet to portray the potential President and his wife when he chose Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn and, of course, they're marvellous. They cut through all the goo and marshmallow stuff to get to the heart of their characters. You just wish at times they had better material to work with. As the unscroupulous, unfeeling newspaper woman with whom Tracy has been having an affair and who is doing all she can to put him into the White House, (and, therefore, vicariously herself), Angela Lansbury is terrific. She was still very young when she made this film but you would never know it and her performance here prefigures her work in "The Manchurian Candidate" some fourteen years later. And as Tracy's cynical young campaign manager, Van Johnson does the best acting of his career. In a just world both he and Lansbury would have been Oscar nominated.
After the relative failure of this film, Capra's career began to wind down, (he only made four other films). Perhaps he felt that any change in direction at this stage would be a sell-out. At least he escaped with his integrity intact.
Of course, Capra picked the most liberal, grand-standing actors on the planet to portray the potential President and his wife when he chose Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn and, of course, they're marvellous. They cut through all the goo and marshmallow stuff to get to the heart of their characters. You just wish at times they had better material to work with. As the unscroupulous, unfeeling newspaper woman with whom Tracy has been having an affair and who is doing all she can to put him into the White House, (and, therefore, vicariously herself), Angela Lansbury is terrific. She was still very young when she made this film but you would never know it and her performance here prefigures her work in "The Manchurian Candidate" some fourteen years later. And as Tracy's cynical young campaign manager, Van Johnson does the best acting of his career. In a just world both he and Lansbury would have been Oscar nominated.
After the relative failure of this film, Capra's career began to wind down, (he only made four other films). Perhaps he felt that any change in direction at this stage would be a sell-out. At least he escaped with his integrity intact.