Loucura Americana

NRA cheerleader Frank Capra condenses FDR's march out of the depression with this hokey drama about keeping faith in the banking industry which in 1932 were collapsing daily throughout the country. Bank President Thomas Dickson is a typical Capra idealist, friend of the little man and bane to the greedy board of directors whom he suggests (anti-semitically?) are "acting like pawnbrokers". When the bank is robbed by an insider, the chief teller, an ex-con hired by the trusting Dickson is the primary suspect. Meanwhile in a well edited montage a run on the bank ensues as a rumor runs amok on the size of the banks loss. Dickson gallantly attempts to keep the institution solvent but is suddenly blindsided by the strong possibility his wife has been sleeping with one of his officers. Close to being crushed by both sides of his existence Dickson, like all Capra heroes begins the Sisyphean task of recovering.

Of all thirties Hollywood pantheon directors, Frank Capra's work has aged as poorly as any with its saccharine sentimentality and noble, naive protagonists. In his day though he provided a depression era audience with an upbeat message and faith in mankind that made him right for the times. He had an armful of Oscar's to prove it. There's a bumper crop of corn in Madness but it moves along at a decent pace with reliable performances from Walter Huston, Pat O'Brien and Constance Cumming. Twenty-eight year old Kay Johnson looks fifty and Gavin Gordon's bank officer predates the metro sexual by nearly 70 years.

The photography of the highly underrated cinematographer Joseph Walker is the film's most attractive element. The opulent bank is lovingly phototgraphed with the vault taking on a role as important as any of the characters, giving it an almost Hal like quality. Walker also provides the chiaroscuro portraits work that helped make the Capra everyman in his films so compelling. Overall American Madness is a liberal leaning, well intentioned good looking fairy tale.

I like the early Frank Capra films like this one and It Happened One Night better than his later films like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and Meet John Doe. This movie stars Walter Huston as a bank president who's partners don't like the way he runs the bank and want him to resign. They can't make him and there's really nothing they can do. When an employee gets in debt to some gangsters for $50,000 dollars and he doesn't have the money, the gangsters tell him what to do so they can sneak in that night and rob the bank. During the robbery, a security guard is killed and word gets around town that the bank is broke. A mob of people show up and want to take their money out. They run out of money pretty quick and they have a hard time finding some more. Pat O'Brien also stars as Huston's friend and an employee who's in charge of the money. There's even more plot that deals with Huston's wife and the employee who was in debt with the gangsters.

Fast-moving story about how a banker (Walter Huston) with down-to-earth values weathers a financial storm. Plusses: Huston's consummate performance. The bank itself: grand and gleaming in the style of a great palace. The care with which the cumbersome, downright ritualistic opening and closing of bank's massive vault is photographed. A nicely written part for Kay Johnson as Huston's neglected but gallant wife. A more or less constant parade of bit players that at one point ricochet across the screen, in a sequence illustrating how a rumor can start a firestorm of exaggeration - hence the title, "AMERICAN MADNESS." Robert Riskin's realistic, casual-sounding dialogue presented in overlapping fashion - an early Capra trademark. Exciting mob scenes as the depositors rush into the bank in panic. Cinematography from many different angles and plenty of tracking shots through busy frames. Supporting player Gavin Gordon's curiously plucked eyebrows. A minus: The resolution of the plot's financial crisis is too sudden and arbitrary, but the way the personal relationships work out is clever and believable. The positives, however, far, far outweigh the negatives and again it must be said that this is an outstanding Huston performance which shows his great range; for him alone the movie is well worth seeing.

Frank Capra was just starting with his theme of the little guy trumps power, and corruption. It was the first collaboration with Mr. Capra, and his favorite screenwriter, Robert Riskin. This is a seamless screenplay to be sure. great attention is paid to detail... with only one blunder with John Huston's wife showing up with different dress only moments after she appears in different dress. Which brings up a point with the previous commenter... Constance Cummings was NOT John Huston's wife in this movie. Ms. Cummings was Helen.

Helen was Mr. Huston's secretary, and fiancée of Pat O'Brien's character Kay Johnson played the wife, and, VERY well. Ms. Johnson only made 24 movies before she quit in 1944.

American Madness is a somewhat dated film from the Depression made dated by the banking legislation of the New Deal. This film was made in the last year of the Herbert Hoover presidency. In the following year, in one of the landmark reforms of the first hundred days of Franklin Roosevelt was the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Banks in fact have failed since then, but we've never seen the disastrous runs on them that characterized previous times, that are shown so graphically in this early Frank Capra film.

Comparing this with another Capra classic, imagine if you will instead of old man Potter running the bank in Bedford Falls, we had kindly old Peter Bailey instead. The man who believed in investing in his clients at the Building&Loan and passed that philosophy on to his son George.

That's what bank president Walter Huston believes in as well. But he's got a board of directors on his case just as Samuel S. Hinds as Peter Bailey. But he's got one thing that Hinds didn't have, a bored and flirtatious wife in Kay Johnson, ready to respond to the amorous advances of Gavin Gordon, one of the bank vice presidents.

Huston has a surrogate son though, like his George in the person of head teller Pat O'Brien. Pat works some wonders, save's Huston-Johnson marriage, helps stop a bank panic that results from a holdup that was clearly an inside job, and gets out from under suspicion of being involved in that same crime.

The climax of American Madness might be tied up a little too neatly, but Capra was honing his populist movie making skills in this film.

And if it's dated, there's reason to be thankful it is.