Meet John Doe / The Mortal Storm
This program is presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series From John Doe to Lonesome Rhodes: Anti-fascism From the Archive. Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
Meet John Doe (1941)
Director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin’s 1941 political fantasy Meet John Doe feels more prophetic than ever. It’s got it all: a disconnected, alienated (largely white) American working class, a changing media landscape, fake news, an incipient fascist cabal and, of course, mobs. The parting shot of a disgruntled reporter (Barbara Stanwyck) — a manifesto in the form of a suicide note, written by a fictional everyman — inadvertently launches a nationwide political movement after her nervous newspaper finds a patsy to play the part (Gary Cooper). Outwardly well-intentioned, the populist movement urging goodwill and neighborliness is quickly co-opted by corrupt autocrats working from the shadows to seize power.
Director: Frank Capra. Screenwriter: Robert Riskin. With: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold.
The Mortal Storm (1940)
In the concluding chapter of his “Weimar Trilogy,” which began with Little Man, What Now? (1934) and Three Comrades (1938), director Frank Borzage depicts fascism’s ascendance in a small German college town following Hitler’s election to chancellor. The unleashed forces opposed to tolerance, community, reason and freedom of thought fall particularly hard on the family of a beloved professor whose Jewishness is suggested but never stated. The professor’s daughter (Margaret Sullavan) and a family friend (James Stewart) are star-crossed lovers whose resistance to fascism is framed by the film’s prologue as part of the age-old fight against “superstition” and “ignorant fears.”
Director: Frank Borzage. Screenwriters: Claudine West, Hans Rameau, George Froeschel. With: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Robert Young.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
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