#26 ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’

Filibustering for Freedom While the Women Take Notes

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) is Frank Capra’s masturbatory love letter to American idealism, starring Jimmy Stewart as a wide-eyed hayseed who stumbles into the Senate like a deer into oncoming traffic—and proceeds to gum up democracy with the power of earnestness and male tears. It’s supposed to be a heartwarming tale of one man’s moral courage against a corrupt system. What it is, in reality, is a two-hour lecture on civics through the mouth of a sanctimonious man-child, while the women type quietly in the background.

Stewart plays Jefferson Smith, a wholesome Boy Ranger leader who’s appointed to the U.S. Senate as a political pawn, but instead of playing ball, he decides to read the Constitution out loud to grown men until they admit he’s right. And somehow, this is framed as heroism. Smith is woefully unqualified, emotionally unsteady, and allergic to nuance—but because he’s honest, he’s instantly more virtuous than the experienced politicians who actually understand how legislation works.

Cue the grandstanding.

Smith filibusters for liberty, the press, the youth of America, and whatever other sepia-toned virtues Capra can cram into a monologue. He sweats. He collapses. He shakes a stack of papers like it’s a sacred text. Meanwhile, the women—specifically Jean Arthur as Clarissa Saunders, a brilliant, cynical secretary who’s seen it all—are expected to hold their applause, their tongues, and their own ambitions while Smith has his big emotional breakthrough.

Clarissa is the only adult in the room. She’s smart, savvy, and capable of dismantling the entire plot in three sentences. But she’s also a woman in a Capra film, which means her role is to fall in love with the overgrown boy scout once he proves his heart is pure—never mind that he’s been whining and stumbling through Senate protocol like a toddler in a marble hallway.

Let’s not forget the villain, Senator Paine, a father-figure-turned-betrayer, whose great crime is being pragmatic. In Capra’s world, realism is corruption, and idealism—particularly when it’s voiced by a white man with a warble in his throat—is the cure for everything from graft to despair.

The film wants to be a David-and-Goliath tale of one man standing against the machine. But it ends up being yet another paean to male innocence, where moral clarity is found in naiveté, women are relegated to the shadows, and systemic change is reduced to a really good speech. Spoiler: a real filibuster doesn’t end corruption. It ends bathroom access.

Yes, it’s gorgeously shot. Yes, Stewart delivers a performance that shaped a thousand civics class daydreams. But Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is not a radical film. It’s a bedtime story for a democracy that never really existed, told from the point of view of a man who has never had to listen, compromise, or share the podium.

2.5 out of 5 American flags
(One for Jean Arthur, wasted but radiant. One for the cinematography. Half a star for Stewart’s commitment to the bit. The rest? Lost in the echo chamber of moralizing men who believe the system works if they just yell into it long enough.)