Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

This contender for Academy honors has warmth as well as wit, beguiling charm as well as pointed satire, and it rekindles a few patriotic ideals that have long slept un der the smothering blanket of political scandals and governmental misdeeds.

Get set, folks, for a "rave" notice, for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington deserves no less than a bushel of raves.

Mr. Smith is one of the best shows of the year. More fun, even, than the Senate itself.

Adroitly seasoned with the awful truth, it emerges sizzling from the oven of timeliness... Burned craws a-plenty there were in the nation's capital following the film's release and no wonder.

The plot, as you see, is shop-worn and the sentimental philosophising dear to Mr Capra’s heart is as obtrusive as in Lost Horizon and You Can't Take It With You. By way of compensation he gives us a score of delightful human touches with dashes of wit.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington may trod heavily on some sensitive political toes but In the doing it provides the most exciting, the most masterful, building of suspense to come along in any movie this season.

Through Capra’s eyes, we imagine the hopes that our forefathers had one day dreamt for us. Using our voices to stand up for those that need our help.

Capra’s most astute use of Jean Arthur’s sly, sophisticated charms to temper a movie that would otherwise be a bit much.

The Capra genius for creating unforgettable incident manifests itself in a dozen sequences in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is bang-up entertainment -- if we were one to scatter around stars we'd give it four of them. It is swiftly paced and bright with humor to balance its more serious implications.