Meet John Doe (1941)

This was a very absorbing story and one of director Frank Capra's best efforts. There is some great acting in here, almost mesmerizing at times. The story is a typical Capra-esquire populist one in which the average man is elevated to high status, his worth and valued boosted in a cynical world.

Yes, it's a far-fetched story but it's fun to watch and has some powerful messages, leading with "Love thy neighbor." I was very impressed with Barbara Stanwyck's speech near the end, noting Jesus' words to that effect while pleading to Gary Cooper. By the way, having Cooper and Stanwyck as the leads isn't all bad, either! Adding actors like Walter Brennan, James Gleason and Spring Byington make it all the better.

Photography-wise, the film has an almost-eerie look to it in parts and is very interesting to view. I have yet to see this on DVD, but I plan to soon, I hope. Script- wise, it has a very good mixture of drama, comedy and romance. The story and the convincing actors all make it an involving experience and an emotional film.

As I said, I think this is one of Capra's best films, if not THE best.

Fmovies: Meet John Doe was rudely jerked back into relevance in the Nineties by the emergence of a third party presidential candidate, wealthy enough to finance his own campaign, who ran in two presidential elections.

H.Ross Perot and Edward Arnold's D.B. Norton have some definite similarities. Both men of wealth, both ego maniacal enough to try and eschew the normal political route to the White House. Both firmly convinced they are what the USA needs.

Perot for all those graphs and charts didn't have much going for him in his candidacy other than a grudge against the Bush family. Although his platform isn't spelled out in Meet John Doe, Arnold says quite bluntly there's a new order of things coming and America needs a firm hand in the leadership. 'New Order' in 1941 meant fascism.

There's a marvelous bit of imagery that Frank Capra give us right at the beginning, it's one of my favorite moments in his films. The image of the old Daily Bulletin sign being sandblasted away about a free press guaranteeing a free people and vice versa. Replacing it is something about the new Daily Bulletin being a streamlined paper for the modern era.

Streamlining involves layoffs and the new editor James Gleason is giving out pink slips a plenty. One goes to Barbara Stanwyck who writes an innocuous chatty column. Gleason won't listen to her pleas so she fakes an anonymous letter from a man who signs it John Doe who threatens to jump off the City Hall Tower on Christmas Eve.

Stanwyck gets more than she bargained for and she and Gleason have to come up with a real John Doe. A sore armed former baseball pitcher, Gary Cooper, fills the bill.

This gets bigger and bigger and soon Arnold sees possibilities in it. Cooper goes on radio and delivers some homilies about love thy neighbor and being kind to others. He puts it over and a John Doe movement on these principles commences.

Homilies and bromides they may be. But love thy neighbor is a concept that should never go out of style. As is proved it's quite a bit bigger than the political aspirations of a snake.

This was the first teaming of Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. They followed it up with Ball of Fire another classic. Said to say that their third film, Blowing Wild, from the fifties hardly lived up to the first two.

Capra used a whole lot of familiar faces from his previous films in Meet John Doe. Also one new face who made his one and only Capra film, Cooper's good friend on screen and in life, Walter Brennan. He's Coop's cynical traveling companion on the open road, the Colonel.

Edward Arnold is one cold and sinister force in this film. I'm not sure but that this may be his penultimate role as a screen villain. His ambitions here would warrant that appraisal.

One performance I like is that of Regis Toomey. He plays a soda jerk who starts a John Doe Club in his small town. He has some great lines that he delivers simply and eloquently about how Cooper's first radio speech inspired him to really get to know some of the neighbors he had not bothered with before.

The lessons of Meet John Doe are simple and profound. Love Thy Neighbor and be kind to others are taught in all major religions and philosophies and the power is there when its focused. The other lesson I like is that the ordinary common people have a lot more in common than the things that divide them, be it race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, you name it.

Meet John

This is a great movie. Gary Cooper is wonderful as John. At first, he does it for the money, but then, he feels bad because some people really have faith in him, and trust him. He feels guilty about being a fake. My favorite part is when he says:

"The John Doe idea may be the answer though! It may be the one thing capable of saving this cockeyed world. Yet you sit back there on your fat hulks and tell me you'll kill it if you can't use it. Well you go ahead and try, you couldn't do it in a million years with all your radio stations and all your power. Because it's bigger than whether I'm a fake, it's bigger than your ambitions and it's bigger than all the bracelets and fur coats in the world!"

I also think Barbara Stanwyck gives a wonderful performance as Ann. I love it when he's standing on the building, threatening to jump, and she tells him that she loves him, and the world does too, and they'll forgive him for lying. I cried so much!

I first saw this movie on Christmas Eve and I loved it. I guarantee it will be a tradition for many Christmases to come!

Meet John Doe fmovies. After doing Mr Deeds Goes To Town and Mr Smith Goes To Washington for Columbia, Capra quit and made this third film about an average Joe thrust into a powerful world where exploitation is high on the agenda, but in true Capra style the story unfolds to a customary flip flop triumph.

Ann Mitchell is a struggling journalist who gets fired from her newspaper job by new editor Henry Connell, by way of venting her frustrations she writes in her stinging last article about a man called John Doe who is tired of being pushed around and held back by the big bosses, she finishes the piece by claiming that Doe will commit suicide on Christmas Eve by leaping off the roof of city hall, the public react to the letter with tremendous heart and Doe becomes a champion of the people.

After Connell gets interested in the letter Ann has to confess that she made it up, they hatch a plan to turn a real unemployed drop out into John Doe so as to continue the story and sell more papers, and of course Ann gets to keep her job. This brings in ex minor league pitcher Long John Willoughby, who is down on his luck and very short of cash, and this is when the story shifts from amiable comedy on to a much darker path, the result making for a riveting watch.

Whilst not being up with the best Capra films in his armoury, it is, however, one of his smartest. The portrayal of the human spirit in many guises is stark and poignant, whilst thematically Capra got his point over about the unsavoury elements blossoming in America. The cast are nailed on watchable, Gary Cooper is John Doe, the right amount of sympathy and guts is garnered from his performance, and in one rousing speech he has the viewers in the palm of his hand. Barbara Stanwyck is Ann Mitchell and she delivers a great turn that calls for a number of emotions to be performed convincingly, while the support cast are all solid with the stand out a bizarrely unnerving Edward Arnold as D B. Norton; a man wishing to be a dictator if ever there was one. 10/10

There's an Italianate "cinema verite" in Capra's work, perhaps genetic . . . I find this film so powerful, and its characters so sympathetic, that I can hardly watch the riot scene. It's almost too terrifying.

Cooper's performance at first seems wooden, but he's an actor whom you need to watch, like a pond, to see the emotions swimming beneath the surface. Barbara Stanwyck is one of my favorite actresses--she never makes a false move and is beautiful to watch from any angle.

I find some lines of dialogue chilling in this age of Patriot Acts I and II and corporate globalism/global corporatism: "The American people need an iron hand," declares D. B. Norton, whose sneer looks like Cheney's.

There is so much to recommend this film, especially in repeat viewings. I'll try to touch on things rarely mentioned. The opening credit montage that ends with a solitary newborn in a hospital ward speaks volumes, as does the opening scene: the jackhammering of the old Bulletin cornerstone. The dream that Long John tells Ann about, in which he plays a dual role, is a warm and economic device for letting us know about what he feels for her and why she could go for her. The near-monologue of Bert, the "soda jerker," is as masterful in its sustained understatement as the small-town mayor's bumbling is hilarious. All of Capra's sound films starting with "American Madness" employ an effective, trademark montage, but "Meet John Doe" overflows with three. The Colonel's joyous Three Little Pigs dance inside the freight car to the rhythm of the rails is joyous. The Jesus metaphor throughout becomes heavyhanded at the very end but is saved by the dead-on final line about "the people." Finally, the movie succeeds not just because of its attributes that can carry over to other forms of art such as books or plays, but also because it is a uniquely cinematic experience.