It’s an Immigrant Life: Decoding the Immigrant Narrative in Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

Dear Reader:

My monster puppy has the face of a black cabbage 🙂

We return to our regular Friday post! This was originally meant to be uploaded last Friday, but for obvious reasons (*cough cough* the presidential inauguration), this analysis seemed more relevant on this particular Friday. Today, we are going to talk about immigrants, or specifically the immigrant narrative within one determined film text – Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. If you haven’t seen it, then do it, right now, on January 20th, the day of the 45th presidential inauguration, watch this film. This film should be to inauguration day what It’s a Wonderful Life is to Christmas. The basic plot is as such:

After the unexpected death of a senior state senator, the state’s governor selects the naive leader of the Boy Rangers (Boy Scouts), Jefferson Smith, to fill the empty seat, but only after the governor is pressured by the state’s other senator, Senator Paine, and the powerful political boss Jim Taylor, to get somebody who won’t ask any questions. Paine and Taylor hatch a grafting scheme involving a dam in the state, meaning they plan on charging the government more money than the land and dam are worth and pocketing the rest. Portrayed by the press as a country bumpkin and manipulated by Senator Paine’s daughter, Smith, his savvy yet cynical assistant Clarissa Saunders, and her friend, a jaded capitol reporter, hope to stop the scheme and expose the corruption. What follows is a frame-up, a smear campaign, and a 24-hour filibuster like you’ve never seen (unless you binge-watch C-SPAN for some reason). The film is a champion of American values, rugged individualism, and the beauty of democracy, but also a nuanced critique of the system and institutions of democracy itself, mainly Congress.

Before the examination begins, I’ll say my piece. Today is going to be really hard for a lot of people, as will tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that until 2020. I can’t recall if I’ve ever been political on this blog before, but today is different. We can all feel that. In my very first post, another Capra film, I discussed briefly the immigrant ancestry of my nonno, Angelo, and how he and his family made their way across the Atlantic in the early-20th century to come to America. From the lands of Germany, Scotland, and Italy (and who knows what else) as well as some unknown country probably in West Africa (DNA tests are quite expensive), the Williamsons, Johnsons, Arbets, McCollums, Terwilligers, and those without a surname or even a name at all, travelled here, by ship, whether voluntarily, in third class, or in chains. They came here hoping that whatever was on the other side had to be better, or perhaps with the hope that wherever they were going, they would be able to make their way home again. To be honest,  I can’t even imagine having to make that kind of choice, or even worse, having no choice at all.

My family, scattered and nebulous as they may be, they had hopes and dreams, fears and ambitions, favorite foods, seasons, colors, spots, stories, and songs. They loved and hated, starved and thirsted, connected and felt hurt, had scars and birthmarks, picked their teeth and licked their fingers, cried and screamed and laughed and sneezed. They touched people, fell out of love, had dreams fade away or be taken away from them. But somehow, despite distance, sickness, war, circumstances beyond their control or understanding, I ended up here, writing this, being able to read and write, watching moving images, to drink my coke and eat my mint milanos,  look my muppy in his furry puppy face, and tell all of this to you via a tiny electromechanical brain which sends signals to a satellite in outer space and back down to earth. And you are here, despite evolution, extinction, ice ages and climate change, migration, genocide, colonialism, globalization, civil and international war and revolution,  pestilence and disease, famine and plague, slavery and servitude, rape and murder, exploitation and victimization, xenophobia and fear-mongering, and tyranny and fascism, we are all immigrants. Every last one of us. From all corners of the globe, we all ended up here with hope and home in our heart, whether we fought or stole for our small piece, doing unspeakable things to one another in the pursuit of that dream, the American dream.

Back to our regularly-scheduled programming . . . enjoy the show!

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Italian-American film director Frank Capra (1897-1991) was one of the most celebrated and profitable filmmakers of the 1930s and early-1940s, known for his Academy Award-winning screwball comedies (It Happened One Night [1934], You Can’t Take It with You [1938]), comedy-dramas (Meet John Doe [1941]), and World War II-propaganda films (Why We Fight series [1942-1945]), however, his heritage as an Italian immigrant to America is largely absent from the characters, composition, and surface narratives of a majority of his oeuvre, as well as from academic study of his ideological contributions to American cinematic history.

Through a close-reading analysis of his critically-acclaimed Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Capra, utilizing a re-telling of the immigrant narrative, provides a subtextual examination of the American Dream and the nation’s political foundations from an “immigrant’s” perspective. Through examination of Capra’s own autobiography (The
Name Above the Title: An Autobiography [1971]) as well as biographical texts and critical analyses of his film works (The Catastrophe of Success by Joseph McBride [1992]), this paper will discuss how Capra subtly incorporates his Italian-American immigrant heritage – on the level of narrative, character, and subtext – into his films, which otherwise embrace and espouse the constructed optimism and individualism of American ideology.

Frank Capra was born Francesco Rosario Capra in the Sicilian town of Bisacquino in 1897, before travelling at the age of 5 with his mamma, papa, and five older siblings through Ellis Island to settle on the East Side of Los Angeles. Through innumerable struggles, Capra graduated college, taking on several jobs before ending up back in Los Angeles to become a filmmaker (Capra, “Struggle for Success”). In his autobiography, Capra described the harsh and vivid experiences of being an immigrant and a peasant, as well as the “stench and misery . . . panic and pandemonium . . . cramped, itchy, hardship” journey (5), by ship and train, to their new home:

“I hated being poor. Hated being a peasant. Hated being a scrounging newskid in the sleazy Sicilian ghetto of Los Angeles. My family couldn’t read or write. I wanted out. A quick out. […] It all began with a letter. A letter from America–when I was a big-eyed child of five. It was the first letter Papa, my forty-seven-year-old peasant father, Salvatore Capra, had received from anywhere. In Papa’s old cracked house of stone and mortar, clinging by its toenails to the rocks in the village of Bisaquino, Sicily, the local priest read the letter to a houseful of gaping relatives: Papa, Mama, six ragged children; […] I remember clearly my traumatic shock on learning that not one of my peasant clan could read. I knew people were different–some poor, some rich, some kind, some mean. I knew these things because the children of the poor are born with their eyes and ears open and know most things before they can walk. And now I knew that peasants were poor and had do work like beasts because they were ignorant. That thought must have burned itself into my child’s mind; I never forgot it, never lost my resentment against it.”
(Capra 1971: xi, 3)

Capra’s resentment may be a potential explanation for his films’ general lack of “Italian-ness,” independent of content regulation or censorship. Even immigrants featured in his films, such as the dance teacher Potap Kolenkhov (Mischa Auer) in You Can’t Take It with You (1938), or the uncredited immigrant community of Bedford Falls in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), embodied by the Martini family, are background characters or victims. It is even likely that upon watching a majority of Capra’s most popular and acclaimed films, that a viewer would not even know he was Italian or an immigrant at all. Two of Capra’s only onscreen depictions of Italians and Italian-Americans are almost two-decades apart – his directorial “debut” La Visita Dell’Incrociatore Italiano LIBIA a San Francisco, California (1921) [Trans: The Visit of the Italian Crusier LIBIA to San Francisco, California] and his seven-part, Academy Award-winning World War II propaganda series, Why We Fight (1942-5).

Produced by the Italian Athletic Club of San Francisco, La Visita follows the Italian naval cruiser Libia’s month-long stop in the city during its world tour. The short documentary captures the nearly-three-week celebration of the Libia’s arrival on the West Coast, mixing proud Italian-Americans with political and religious figures, local athletes and actors, as well as the upper echelons of Italian society in San Francisco, through an array of land and sea parades, football games and races, and tours, tributes, and banquets (McBride 1992: 133). La Visita constructs a very optimistic, celebratory, and nationalistic narrative, in which Italian-Americans and immigrants await the Libia, and describe it as an unforgettable event that fulfills their dreams, and brings them great pride, ending in “VIVA L’ITALIA! VIVA LA SUA MARINA!! VIVA LA LIBIA!!!”

“Italia! È nella purissima musica di questo nome che vedendo approdare la LIBIA dal mare alla prodigiosa California, abbiamo sentito battere il cuore di gioia, abbiamo sentito realizzare il sogno da tanto tempo sognato , il desiderio da tanto tempo nutrito di veder sventolare nelle acque del Golden Gate la nostra gloriosa Bandiera! […] E si è colla fede sempre viva nei Marinai d’Italia, colle crociere dei quali passa attraverso il Mondo il simbolo della fecondità inesauribile della nostra stirpe, che l’Italia-Virtus Club, presenta alla Libia questa pellicola-ricordo, non come semplice omaggio d’una breve permanenza fra noi, ma come quella che potrà descriversi nei fasti della Patria come un inno d’amore in cui palpita la fede per la gloriosa Marina d’Italia. […] Ed è così che gli Italiani di San Francisco hanno voluto onorare la LIBIA, lembo viaggiante della loro Patria, e che animati dallo stesso sentimento rivolgono ad essa l’augurio fervido del buon viaggio.”

TRANSLATION: Italy! It is the pure music of the name that seeing the land from the sea to the LIBIA to the prodigious California, we heard the beating heart with joy, we heard realize the dream for so long dreamed of, the desire for so long nurtured to see waving in the waters of the Golden Gate, our glorious flag! […] And it is always alive with the faith in the Italian Sailors, cruises hill of which passes through the world the symbol of the inexhaustible fecundity of our race, which Italy-Virtus Club, presents to LIBIA this film-remember, not as a simple tribute of a short stay among us, but as one that may be described in the annals of the Fatherland as a hymn of love that beats the faith to the glorious Marina of Italy. […] And that is how the San Francisco Italian honored LIBIA, traveling lap of their homeland, and animated by the same sentiment turning to it the fervent wish of a good journey.

As an ally during World War I, Italy experienced a similar wave of nationalism during the early-20th century (which translates to the documentary), with the victories of Italian forces in the Italo-Turkish War (1911-1912), which resulted in the annexation of Libya as an Italian colony, as well as the end of World War I and the rise of the aggressively-nationalistic system of fascism (Mussolini taking power in 1922) (Cunsolo). Significantly, La Visita is the only film Capra worked on that he does not mention or discuss in his autobiography, The Name Above the Title (1971), and instead considers his first film worthy of noting to be 1922’s Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House. He even details his sporadic employment and his temporary occupation as a bootlegger, all in his first three-years in San Francisco, but not the experiences of filming La Visita. Meanwhile, Capra became a naturalized citizen in 1920, taking the more Americanized name of Frank (Francesco) Russell (Rosario) Capra, which according to biographer Joseph McBride, Capra underwent, because “‘It [the name] didn’t smell of the ghetto’” (45).

Twenty-years later, the ebb and flow of history, politics, and diplomacy would reverse dramatically, with Italy and the U.S. becoming foes in World War II. Capra’s Why We Fight series is considered some of the most powerful and effective pieces of propaganda to emerge from World War II, first shown to the army to justify American intervention, and then to the American public. A majority of the series focuses on the dangers, victories, and losses of Nazi Germany on the Western (French and British) and Eastern (Russian) fronts as well as inclusions of Japanese imperial ambitions in China and across Asia. As a member of the Axis powers, Italy is featured significantly less in the propaganda overall, only prominently included in the first installment – Prelude to War (1942), in which Capra criticizes Italian dictator Mussolini as tyrannical, manipulative, and power-hungry, therefore equating him with Adolf Hitler and Emperor Hirohito as exploitative of their people’s ignorance, and as an affront to American ideals and values of democracy. Italy’s failure in the Allied victory in French Tunisia is also cataloged in another Capra propaganda film, Tunisian Victory (1944) (produced by the U.S. War Department, but not a part of the Why We Fight series), as well as its ultimate defeat is briefly caricatured in the official, final installment of the series – War Comes to America (1945).

In this case study of Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, an immigrant narrative will be defined as such: a naive, young, and idealistic young man (or woman) will migrate from an equally naive, rural area, to the urban symbol of the dominant culture, where they will be mesmerized, alienated and “othered,” condescended to, taken advantage of, and their perception of the American Dream and ideals questioned, until they achieve some level of assimilation or retreat home to their rural utopia (or even their literal or cultural death), a general template found in films about immigrants and immigration throughout film history – whether for Italians, in The Italian (1915), Give Us this Day (1949), Big Night (1996), and more implicitly in Golden Door (2006); or others, such as in West Side Story (1961), Coming to America (1988), Edge of Heaven (2007), and The Immigrant (2013). Prior to the film’s public screening, Capra explained that “it was a great dream come true,” and how he “wished Papa could have lived to see the day when America’s leaders would honor the work of his youngest son” (281). This immigrant narrative unfolds in Mr. Smith, the replacement of actual immigrants with imagined ones.

Capra’s film begins with the death of elderly U.S. senator Sam Foley, and the power vacuum that must be filled in the “New World” by something/someone new (and yet from the “Old World” of the Western frontier), exemplified by the backroom discussions of the state’s veteran senator, Joseph Paine (Claude Rains), the state’s governor, Hubert “Happy” Hopper (Guy Kibbee), and political boss James Taylor (Edward Arnold). Governor Hopper’s choice for the replacement is the head of the Boy Rangers (a fictitious version of the Boy Scouts) Jefferson Smith (James Stewart). The cohorts view Smith as the perfect choice – a young, naive, and idealistic “migrant” who can be appointed, with the help of Taylor’s powerful political machine, and whose expected ignorance of the “real” America and submission to his own idealistic perception of the “imagined” America will make him ideal for taking orders and not asking questions. The political machine is a “party organization, headed by a single boss or small autocratic group, that commands enough votes to maintain political and administrative control of a city, county, or state;” and in American history, is commonly associated with systems of clientelism and corruption in the 19th- and early-20th centuries, who accumulated the powerful voting blocs of new immigrants amassing on the nation’s shores (“Political Machines”). While providing services for assimilation, such as financial assistance and jobs, the machine would also antagonize hostilities in areas “divided along ethnic or racial lines,” in order to maintain control and power over immigrant populations – hence the historical importance of the relationship between political boss Taylor and the alienated “migrant” Smith.

Upon his appointment, Smith is depicted as scrawny (bordering on malnourished) to the point where neither his suit nor hat fit him, has difficulty speaking in public or in the sophisticated, political language of other Washington politicians, and possesses all the honesty, earnest, modesty, patriotism, unquestioning trust, idealism, and naiveté befitting the migrant of the outlined immigrant narrative. In fact, on his arrival to the capital (and capitol), Smith wanders off and gets lost, as he is dazzled and mesmerized by the exteriorization of the American ideals and promises he holds dear (similar to the oft-portrayed wonder of immigrants’ first sight of America and the Statue of Liberty), found in the extreme close-ups of their iconography – statues, documents, monuments and memorials, and even symbolic images of the waving flag and the eternal flame of democracy. He even experiences the awe-inspiring “power” of the Lincoln Memorial, where he sees a grown man cry, in the shadow of the words of another young, naive and self-taught rural boy who made the journey to the nation’s capital: Abraham Lincoln. Capra shared identical feelings while location-scouting during pre-production:

“I’m a silly goose about things patriotic, so it was a natural–I got a bad case of goose pimples. There it was, spread out below me, as silent and awe-inspiring as an empty cathedral– the Senate! … We could touch it. […] The White House! America’s hallowed symbol of the people’s power to elect one of their own to the world’s mightiest office. And let me shout it from the housetops and publish it in Gath: Be a hard-boiled cynic or an insensitive ox–the White House will get under your skin” (256-8).

Smith is condescended to for his rural origins, mocked with names like “Daniel Boone,” “Boy Ranger,” “squirrel chaser,” and “Don Quixote,” and is taken advantage of by the press, where he is made a spectacle of as a violent, impulsive, bumbling, idiot bumpkin. Typical of depictions of the Italian male, Smith sees the press coverage as a humiliation to his honor, which he then handles with extreme emotional volatility (a.k.a. his fists). He cannot express his ideas in a very articulate manner, but he breathes a simple poetry into his romantic notions and ideals, making the earlier immigrants (Clarissa Saunders and Joseph Paine) as well as the “natives” (other Senators) appreciate what they have. Capra’s own experiences, as an immigrant, with confronting the breathtaking awe of his democratic ideals is embodied in his first encounter with President Roosevelt: “I was standing not more than fifteen feet from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States of America! Foreign-born Americans more fully appreciate the awesome aura of that title” (259).

Smith’s poeticism is evident in the description of his plans to create a national boys’ camp in his home “state,” where he can bring his love for American ideals to his “state” of origin:  “The prairies, wind leaning on the grass. Lazy streams, angry little midges of water up in the mountains… Cattle moving down the slope against the sun, campfires and snowdrifts… Everybody ought to have some of that.” Smith endows nature with a rural purity where the dominant ideology (at least the one he imagines) can be married to his “immigrant” values and perception of America. Vitally, Smith’s appreciation for the beauty of democracy (aligning with Capra’s, as exemplified in the Why We Fight series) makes the “immigrant” more than a spectacle, but an alien to the dominant culture of Washington, an alien that threatens to be swallowed by the masses (of senators and the dominant ideology):

“You see, boys forget what their country means by just reading The Land of the Free in history books. Then they get to be men they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books, Miss Saunders. Men should hold it up in front of them every single day of their lives and say: I’m free to think and to speak. My ancestors couldn’t, I can, and my children will. Boys ought to grow up remembering that.”

Mr. Smith’s supporting characters can also be interpreted as components of the immigrant narrative, such as Smith’s assistant Clarissa Saunders, Senator Paine, Paine’s daughter, Susan, and the aforementioned political boss Taylor. Clarissa migrated from the northern urban hub of Baltimore, Maryland (where she entered the labor market very young to survive), but like the “immigrant” Smith, she came to Washington with hopes and dreams, but has become savvy and incredibly cynical in the face of the “real” America: “Look, when I came here, my eyes were big blue question marks. Now, they’re big green dollar marks.” Only through exposure to a newer “immigrant,” does she realize what she has lost and become, a heritage of trust, innocence, and optimism. Similarly, Senator Paine (from the same fictional Ambrose County where Smith emigrated from) was once a shiny, new migrant, but whose identity has been compromised and corrupted by the dominant culture, to the point where he would turn against a kinsman to maintain his assimilation. His daughter, Susan, is a second-generation “immigrant” – an assimilated and Americanized symbol of the dominant culture – who must ensnare and seduce the naive Smith; her presence and expectations are meant to strip Smith of “immigrant” trappings, complete with a new suit, haircut and manicure, and guaranteed date. When Smith threatens to reveal Paine’s and Taylor’s grafting scheme (involving the exploitation of resources in his “state”), Taylor puts the full power of his political machine to work – turning the big guys against the little guys, silencing and hurting children, using hoses on protesters, and using the press to turn the people of Smith’s home state against him (“immigrant” against “immigrant”). From Taylor’s side, he is colonizing Ambrose and capitalizing on the future-colony’s resources and ignorance; while from Paine’s side, the senator is utilizing every level of the bureaucracy to tear down the one “immigrant” who dares to speak and resist.

At the lowest point in the narrative, Smith is jobless, homeless, and hopeless, and finds himself once again in the shadows of the Lincoln Memorial, which is now a mockery to all the ideals and values he brought to and projected onto Washington. However, by partially assimilating – in using the arbitrary rules of Washington bureaucracy to his advantage in his 24-hour filibuster – he is able to triumph over the moral corruption of his ideals, and through which, he reaffirms the value and promise of the dominant ideology – the American Dream. The film concludes with Paine’s renewal (via confession) and a heartfelt orchestra of patriotic music. In the bolded quotation above, “My ancestors couldn’t, I can, and my children will,” Capra succinctly synthesizes the ultimate fulfillment of the immigrant narrative, that in migrating, assimilating or resisting, future generations will reap the benefits of the new world.

 

In conclusion, director Frank Capra is not often touted in the line of great Italian-American directors, at least thematically, in contrast to Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and even, Sergio Leone, as well as the lesser-known John Turturro, Nancy Savoca, and Stanley Tucci. However, despite the lack of study into the subtextual Italian-ness within his films, this paper has perhaps succeeded in critiquing, questioning, and decoding the potentiality for covert, negotiated interweaving of Capra’s Italian-American immigrant heritage into the fabric of his ostensibly and profoundly American films.

And here we are again, the end. May January 20th, a date which will live in infamy or esteem, be not as bad or as good as you hope it will be. Hope is all we got and what desperately need now more than ever, along with empathy, sympathy, compassion, and tolerance. Ciao, arrivederci, buona fortuna, e viva l’America e democrazia!

Works Cited

1. Capra, Frank. La Visita Dell’Incrociatore Italiano LIBIA a San Francisco, California. Italia Virtus, 1921. 1, 2. Film
2. —. Mr.  Smith Goes to Washington. Perf. James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, and Edward Arnold. Columbia Pictures, 1939. Film.
3. —. Name Above the Title: An Autobiography, The. NY: The Macmillan Company, 1971. Print.
4. —, and Anatole Litvak. Why We Fight. U.S. War Department, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), & U.S. Army Special Service Division, 1942-5. Film.
5. Cunsolo, Ronald S. “Italian Emigration and Its Effect on the Rise of Nationalism.” Italian Americana, vol. 12, no. 1, 1993, pp. 62–72. jstor.org/stable/29776198.
6. McBride, Joseph. Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1992. Print.
7. “Political Machine.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Eds. The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 18 Nov. 2014. Web. 7 Dec. 2016.