Meet John Doe (1941)

Meet John Doe still contains much of the corniness of Frank Capra's usual fare, but it's actually much much darker than we usually expect from Capra. Meet John Doe is a rather terrifying portrait of anticommunism/fascism and big political money in the United States and the truly evil depths these fuckers will sink to in order to maintain a stranglehold on US American politics.

Also surprisingly, the ending of Meet John Doe is fairly grim. We do not end with a great deal of hope for the potential of the little guy and the honest worker to join together to defeat the cynical politician, and yet the potential is there! The film shows us that it is possible to join together and help each other and redistribute wealth, and if it also shows us that those possibilities are frail and need nurturing and commitment, it still shows us a great many people who are willing to work at them.

I didn't love Meet John Doe: Cooper's ingenuous yokel figure never feels quite honest to me. But the character actor Regis Toomey shows up in act two and gives us a breathtakingly performed monologue. Toomey is brilliant in this movie.