In fact, Capra's first 21 features, made between 1926 and 1932, bear almost none of the trademarks of his better-known films of the middle and late 30s. Capra's film career began in 1922 when, as an unemployed chemical engineer and WWI vet, he talked his way into directing an independently produced short, FULTAH FISHER'S BOARDING HOUSE. For the next several years he apprenticed his way up the production ladder, eventually becoming a comedy writer for both Hal Roach (on some of the early "Our Gang" shorts) and Mack Sennett.
Between 1926 and 1927, Capra made his feature directorial debut with three successful vehicles for the popular silent comic Harry Langdon, but was fired when Langdon decided to direct himself.
The following year, a struggling Columbia Pictures made Capra a company director. Over the next ten years he would direct 25 films for that studio, including nine features in his first 12 months alone. But before carving out his niche as a maker of comic fables with a message, Capra became known as a reliable craftsman of efficient and profitable productions, regardless of genre. His early Columbia work included military/action dramas (SUBMARINE, 1928, FLIGHT, 1929, DIRIGIBLE, 1931); newspaper stories (THE POWER OF THE PRESS, 1928); Barbara Stanwyck melodramas (LADIES OF LEISURE, 1930, THE MIRACLE WOMAN, 1931, FORBIDDEN, 1932); and tearjerkers (THE YOUNGER GENERATION, 1929).
But it was the sassy comedy PLATINUM BLONDE (1931) that marked a turning point in the young director's career. The film's dialogue writer, Robert Riskin, became Capra's collaborator on seven of his next ten projects, a successful string of Depression-era comedies in which they perfected the "Capriskin formula": the individual idealist vs. a corrupt institution.
The first Capra-Riskin production, AMERICAN MADNESS (1932), introduced the team's signature theme and idealistic hero: a dedicated community banker (Walter Huston) forestalls a bank run by rallying faithful depositors against the machinations of nefarious big businessmen. But Capra's transformation from house director to New Deal auteur was not immediate. His next film, the remarkably lush and atmospheric THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN (1933), departed from his all-American milieu, featuring Barbara Stanwyck as a missionary whose ideals are overwhelmed by her desire for a Chinese warlord. When Capra's "art film" drew little attention, he returned to work with Riskin on what he deemed a more blatantly commercial project. The result, the snappy comedy IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934), swept the major Academy Awards (much to Capra's surprise) and proved to be a prototype for the screwball genre.
Capra's Oscars elevated him to a new level of prestige in the industry, and he began to produce as well as direct all of his projects. Arguably it was his role as producer that enabled Capra to create the string of celebrated films -- MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN (1936), LOST HORIZON (1937), YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938), MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939), MEET JOHN DOE (1941) and, quintessentially, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) -- most closely associated with his name. However, the director himself recounts that these films of raw idealism and evangelical faith in the common man were the direct result of a personal conversion that followed a prolonged illness in 1935. Whether or not one believes that an anonymous visitor convinced Capra that he was to transform the silver screen into a pulpit committed to a love-thy-neighbor philosophy, the fact remains that these films consistently delivered that unabashed message, often in Oscar-winning fashion.
Capra successfully adapted existing properties to fit his utopian vision of the world: the popular novel Lost Horizon became a lavish film spectacle, with Ronald Colman as the idealistic diplomat who dreams of a warless world, while the freewheeling stage comedies YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU and ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1944) were transformed into paeans to democratic individualism. But Capra's message was memorably portrayed in original material, specifically in his trilogy of films -- MR. DEEDS/MR. SMITH/JOHN DOE -- depicting small-town eccentrics as saviors of such "lost causes" as Christian charity, honesty and community. These celebrations of traditional values in the milieu of everyday life struck responsive chords in prewar America.
In the years since, Capra's harshest critics have found his images of the "wonderful life" to be naïve, simplistic and overly sentimental. Paradoxically, "Capracorn" seems to argue for both extreme individualism (his heroes are non-conformists, like the pixilated tuba player Longfellow Deeds) and for conformity (resolution is attained only when individuals are in harmony with the community, as in the Christmas Eve reunion of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE). Such conflicting impulses have led to a variety of political readings of Capra. His films have been alternately seen as fascistic and libertarian, conservative and liberal, reactionary and progressive.
Finally, although the director's five post-WONDERFUL LIFE features lack the commitment and power of his earlier social comedies, Capra's film career must also be remembered for its landmark contributions to the field of documentary production. Under his supervision, the US government's WHY WE FIGHT propaganda films of WW II proved as emotionally powerful as any of Capra's Depression-era hits, and were exemplary of found-footage montage. Though much less known, the series of educational science documentaries produced, directed and written by Capra for the Bell System between 1952 and 1957 all exhibit this same skill at manipulating banal images into an inspirationally charged, utopian vision of human life.
Nominated for Best Picture 1932-33: LADY FOR A DAY - Producer at Columbia
Nominated for Directing 1932-33: LADY FOR A DAY
Directing 1934: IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
Nominated for Best Picture 1936: MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN - Producer at Columbia
Directing 1936: MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN
Nominated for Best Picture 1937: LOST HORIZON - Producer at Columbia
Best Picture 1938: YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU - Producer at Columbia
Directing 1938: YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU
Nominated for Best Picture 1939: MR. SMITH GOES TO WSAHINGTON - Producer at Columbia
Nominated for Directing 1939: MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON
Nominated for Best Picture 1946: IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE - Producer at Liberty
Nominated for Directing 1946: IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
11 nominations, 4 Awards