1. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)
Frank Capra was known for his sentimentality and flag-waving patriotism, but his most iconic films tend to be a lot darker and funnier than their reputations suggest. For instance, remove the divine intervention from the third act, and It’s A Wonderful Life becomes a film about a good man betrayed by a flawed capitalist system that favors the wealthy and crushes idealism. State Of The Union is less about the triumph of American values than it is about all the harm that could easily be done by politicians willing to compromise those values. And Mr. Smith Goes To Washington is rightly acclaimed as the quintessential love letter to democracy, but it balances its fierce idealism with a deceptive undercurrent of cynicism about the way our values can be corrupted by powerbrokers only pretending to work in our best interests. James Stewart plays an overgrown boy scout—in one of the film’s signature scenes, he makes a quasi-religious pilgrimage to the Lincoln memorial—chosen to replace a deceased U.S. senator because his clean-cut image plays well with the rubes at home, while his unworldliness ostensibly makes him easy to manipulate and control. But the political bosses’ would-be lapdog proves he’s a pit bull instead, and turns on the Senate’s power structure when they try to thwart his plans to establish a national boys’ camp that would interfere with their corrupt schemes. In spite of its flaws, the system ultimately works when Stewart embarks on an epic, heart-wrenching filibuster on the floor of the Senate in a desperate effort to prove his innocence after his enemies try to depict him as a cynical opportunist. Stewart strikes an unmistakably Christ-like pose as he fights for his political life, becoming a martyr for democracy, and the gold standard against which all future cinematic patriots would be measured.