Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

Frank Capra’s “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town”

Thematic Elements: 

Frank Capra’s ‘Mr. Deeds Goes to Town’ is a film about how an individual can have his individualism stripped away and replaced with something that more conforms to society, allowing that society to control and even distort his own image entirely. Longfellow Deeds is a small-town individual with simple perspectives and simple luxuries placed in a contemporary world full of bureaucracy and technology. This presents the destruction of the individual and replaces it with the need to adapt and conform to the treachery and deceit the modern world rewards. Deeds must conform to the society he is now placed in and play by the rules of the game this society has presented; a game of winner take all – a dog eat dog world. As Deeds is getting fitted for vests and jackets to wear for public events, he comments that one of the tailors is trying to get him to wear a ‘monkey-suit.’ This notion is a theme present in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, one in which both the public and the media present an image of Mr. Deeds in whatever fashion they like, thereby making him their personal monkey boy to be used however they wish. The businessmen trying to extract the money from the estate present in the courtroom the image of Deeds as being of someone who is not mentally stable to discredit his ability to run the company. The newspapers portray Deeds as the ‘Cinderella Man,’ someone whisked away from poverty to fortune and is now exhibiting humorous simpleton behavior in the face of his newfound wealth. The very perception and image of Deeds is completely out of his control – until he takes back control of his own image at the end of the film when he takes the stand to defend himself. In a way, Deeds has lost control over his own identity. When he was in Mandrake Falls, everyone knew Deeds very well and he had full control over his own identity and was fully free to be himself. In the face of this new society, everything that made him unique to his identity was now perceived as a sideshow or grounds for mental instability. The money and the press took Deeds identity away from him and presented to the public a new identity, one that they could control. Capra shows us how our modern society strips us from our personal identity in favor of a more controlled and moderated public identity – especially when it comes to fame. The only remedy to this crisis is for Deeds to conform to the standards of the society around him, thus erasing his identity completely. However, Deeds utilizes the witness stand to take back control over his identity and to express the individuality present in everyone in the courtroom. Where all of his quirks were perceived as alien and unnatural given the modern standards of how one should behave, Deeds points out the hypocrisy of that notion by pointing out the quirks of everyone else in the room. The way people doodle, circle in O’s, twitch their noses, and pop their fingers are all symptoms of individualism acting out without the self-awareness of doing so. Deeds points out that he is as much an individual as everyone else is, shattering the illusion of a conformist society. The theme of anxieties dealing with social conformity continue to be present in Frank Capra’s films. As Ray Carney points out in Ray Carney’s American Vision: The Films of Frank Capra, the characters are “patronized by other characters or by viewers of their films as long as they fail concretely to engage themselves with the bureaucratic and social realities of their worlds.” Deeds is unable to escape the scrutiny and criticism for being his own unique self, participating outside the social norms of what is expected of him. He goes from total freedom that presents itself to him in the form of the small-town Mandrake Falls to the more controlled environment of New York City restricting his ability to be free to act in his own accordance. Capra shows us the fallibility of social conformity in the face of rapid metropolitan expansion. 

Camerawork:

 Frank Capra utilizes Deeds in various spaces to convey the balancing act of conforming in the society versus being an individual separate from it. He puts Deeds in various situations and settings that either rebel against him or drown him out completely. Deeds out in the city of New York gets drowned out by the hustle and bustle, the cars and people overpowering his own voice. Capra is showing us how Deeds cannot maintain his own self over a society that simply overpowers and overwhelms him. Capra also shows Deeds childishly excited over fire engines, even hopping on one as it races by. The visual displays of Deeds’s ‘improper behavior’ with the conformity of the etiquette of the modern metropolitan world presents an incongruity in the mind of the viewer – one that forces us to realize the difference between the society and the individual. An example of a visual motif Capra presents include Deeds sliding down the stair banister which visually displays the disregard for the usual proper etiquette that comes with the visual style of the interior of the building.  Capra uses Deeds to actively embattle against these conformed structures.

Capra mirrors Deeds’s rebellion against the contemporary structures in his directing. The scenes involving Deeds seem to radiate with spontaneity, as Capra allows his actor to behave more impulsively, even improvising on some occasion. This creates a sense of unexpectedness in the audience as they are not certain of what will happen next. On the flipside, Capra shoots the lawyers and businessmen in the opposite way. The camera moves according to traditional structure as it captures them very statically. Capra presents us with characters of utmost predictability – we the audience always know how they will behave and what their responses will be. This contrasting style gives the same effect that Deeds’s rebellion against his visual and audible surroundings – it presents a combating congruence in the mind of the audience, constantly competing with the idea of what is expected versus the spontaneity of the unexpected. This mental battle presents us the theme of the film, the battle between the individual and the individual’s ability to act uniquely to their self and the conformity of society and the desire to strip the individual and replace it with something known, certain, and expected. As Deeds continues to defy the lack of freedom this modern society presents, his behavior begins to affect the characters around him as they realize a freedom they lack that exists in Deeds. In Ray Carney’s previously mentioned book, he notes a specific scene involving the breaking of this traditional structure to implement a sense of visual freedom for Babe Bennett, portrayed by Jean Authur. He writes, “There is a striking moment in a scene that takes place in a park between Bennett and Deeds. They are sitting side by side on a park bench talking when at one point Jean Arthur pivots her body ninety degrees away from the camera's line of sight to turn to speak to Cooper more intimately. There isn't one director in a hundred who would not have yelled "cut" and taken this opportunity to cut on motion to make a new camera setup at a right angle to the first. But Capra stays with the take, and the uncanny effect is of the character having momentarily freed herself from the confining grid of the filmic gaze itself, exercising a capacity to move independently of the camera or the frame space, turning away from the potentially imprisoning technology of the well-composed shot to share a private moment, as it were, with the other character in the scene.”

Best Shot: 

There is a scene in which Deeds starts yelling in his mansion and listens to his echo bouncing off the vastness of the space. He then gets the help to join in as well. This audibly illustrates the rebellious nature of Deeds as he rebels against the conformity of the setting around him. The help cannot help but be confused by this situation as it is not what one would normally do. Capra uses Deeds audible childish game of yelling and echoing throughout the large mansion to represent Deeds frustrations of his individual confinement and defying those controls by behaving however he naturally wants to.