So - Deeds strikes me as an odd film - it's right there in the middle of Capra's career, and it seems to wobble a bit. The tone is very uneven, the ideas sort of vague and half finished - the formula is a bit more obvious than in some of the other films. The opening sections are quite fine - but after Jean Arthur shows up, things start to go wrong. Deeds starts acting up, and the film goes a bit sour. Beating up the literati is a kind of turning point - Deeds stops looking like a yokel who happens to be smarter than the sophisticated New Yorkers and starts looking like a bully. The impression never entirely goes away, not until the end...
What’s worse is that in that middle part (and even through some of the end), the film starts to depend a bit too much on Deeds getting dumber when the plot requires it. That’s a problem with a lot of recent comedies - people get smarter or dumber depending on where they are in the plot. That afflicts this film - Deeds starts very smart - but starts to get weird - some of which is harmlessly weird, but a lot of it requires him to really behave - stupidly. (The Coen brothers, remaking this, got around it by letting Norville Barnes be an imbecile from the beginning.) This is, though, a danger Capra often runs up against - he’s responsible for some if it, I’m afraid. He (and Riskin and Swerling and their other writers) were always trying to play on this line - to make characters who are genuinely divided, complex, pulled by multiple forces - smart but naive; innocent but clever, or cynical but good-hearted, etc. - in stories that balance comedy, tragedy, melodrama, politics, farce, and so on - it’s a constant element in their work. And that division puts all their films in danger of doing what this one does - relying on a kind of inconsistency to work...
Mr. Deeds, I think, is less successful than most of their films - they usually pull off the balancing act. Mr. Smith also works the yokel in the big city angle for all it is worth - but it never requires Smith to be an idiot, or to become a different person from scene to scene. Ditto George Bailey - there, Stewart (and the script) always keep the division, the multiple forces pulling at him, always present, in every scene. Some of this, I think, is Jimmy Stewart - who always carries an air of barely suppressed psychosis in his films - he always plays multiple registers. But a lot of it is the script.
The fact is - Dr. Van Haller isn’t far off - Deeds does bounce all over the place. Granted - most of the time, Deeds has a sharp sense of where he is on the cycle - he rides the waves deliberately. That too depends on the actor - Cooper always seems cool and aware, in control of something - he can brood, but he always seems to know where he is. (Unlike Stewart, who can give the impression of barely holding it all back.) Unfortunately, this very quality - Cooper’s calm, his thoughtfulness, the impression of awareness he gives - confuses the meaning of the wilder scenes. When he starts taking swings at people - he comes off as too cool and deliberate to quite believe that he was losing his shit. It makes him a bully...
This is a minority position, I am sure, but I think Meet John Doe is actually a better film. It has more of the edge that Stewart’s films have - Cooper seems too grounded in Mr. Deeds. In John Doe, his character seems to work better - he comes off both as more of an innocent among the wolves, and as a bit of a wolf himself. I don’t ever believe that Mr. Deeds is in danger of cracking - but John Doe - yes, I can see that.
Still - I think Cooper is quite marvelous in Mr. Deeds - he has a way of conveying common sense - looking at things in a way that makes you see that he isn’t fooled. (Though when they need him to be fooled, they have him play dumb.) I think this works a bit better in John Doe, I admit - I think in Mr. Deeds, he’s supposed to be too much a yokel - in Doe, though he’s an innocent of sorts, he’s one who’s been around. His knowingness and his innocence both make more sense. Though as far as Cooper goes, he plays knowing innocence to perfection.
(I should say - though I think Meet John Doe is a more interesting, powerful film, Capra is more in control of Mr. Deeds. The politics in John Doe are a mess - Capra tries to do way too much. He's trying, at the same time, to champion something about America and its political life, while criticizing it - now, that's an important part of what makes Capra's films so powerful. He returns over and over to the ways what is good in true in American politics is co-opted by cynical politicians, newspapermen, businessmen [all professions he rather admires, though], who turn ideals into slogans to cover their own greed and quest for power. Anyone who tries to inject something innocent, pure, good - is soaked up into the system... Okay - and alongside this already dividedlook at American politics, I think Capra tries to take a look at how fascism works. I think this is quite explicit at times - the big John Doe rally in the rain strikes me as a fairly deliberate parody of Triumph of the Will - or at least, of Nazi iconography.... I suppose, if I wanted to write about John Doe, I should have written about John Doe, [UPDATED, with that link] though...)
So, to try to get to the end of this - what? I do think Mr. Deeds is a great film - just a bit squishy. There's so much right - funny lines and bits of business and people, a nice (complicated) love story, all those wonderful bit players Capra always featured - and - don't get me wrong, some real sting in the tail. The scene when the man breaks in on Deeds with a gun and a tale of woe is great stuff - Capra does desperation as well as anyone....
But it's not up with his best (before or after) - because - too much of the plot requires Deeds (and other people) to get smarter or dumber between scenes... Because Capra and his collaborators (Riskin etc.) were urban sophisticates playing up the small town yokel salt of the earth hokum. Capra can never quite lose his real abiding love for fast talking newspaper men and women - he’s never particularly convincing here. Jean Arthur too has to change for somewhat arbitrary plot reasons. (Unlike in Mr. Smith, where her evolution seems much more organic.) So - something of a lesser film from one of the giants of American cinema.... There are worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.
