Hokey, consciously manipulative and utterly preposterous, Frank Capra’s love letter to the filibuster is the greatest movie ever made about American politics for one simple reason: Jimmy Stewart. As Jefferson Smith, the idealistic Junior Senator from an unnamed Western state, appointed by a corrupt governor to fill the seat left vacant by a recently deceased pol, Stewart turns what might have been an unbearably saccharine film into the sort of irresistible entertainment for which Capra is justly famous. The supporting players here are, unsurprisingly, terrific: Claude Rains as Smith’s slippery, conniving, fallen mentor; Jean Arthur as the wry, knowing secretary and Washington insider with the heart of gold; the inimitable Thomas Mitchell as the disheveled beat reporter who’s seen it all but can still be thrilled by a good underdog story. But it is Stewart’s Jefferson Smith, with a drawl as wide as the Missouri and, despite everything he’s seen, a bedrock trust in the essential decency of his fellow Americans — and in the turbulent, boisterous American political system itself — that lends Mr. Smith its enduring, inimitable charm.
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