#Mr. Smith Goes To Washington Is Chicken Soup For The Cinephile’s Soul

In “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” politics are shade and window-dressing for a story with more universal themes. This is a movie with a great humanist spirit and charm that has kept people coming back to it for over 80 years.

When the Governor chooses Smith to be the new Junior Senator for his state, he expects Smith to be a stooge, much like Lasso, the American football coach set up for deliberate failure with a British soccer team. Smith, too, has people conspiring with the press against him, and it leads him on a journalist-punching spree. For some viewers, this might serve as an uncomfortable parallel to contemporary demonization of the “fake news media” by real-life politicians, but in Smith’s case, it ends with self-reflection and the realization that he has a room full of reporters confronting him with harsh truths.

In 2021, the idea of “a young patriot … turned loose in our nation’s capital” obviously has a different connotation to it, thanks to the storming of the U.S. Capitol by a riot mob back in January. This is the same building where Stewart’s character stages his own form of nonviolent resistance in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” When he first arrives in D.C., before he becomes the target of unflattering photos and headlines, the mere sight of the Capitol inspires childlike wonder in him in a way that would almost be quaint were it not so tainted by recent events.

We see the city’s landmarks fresh through black-and-white eyes as he makes his way around town. That’s very different from how his firecracker secretary, Miss Saunders, sees them. “When I came here,” she says, “my eyes were big blue question marks. Now, they’re big green dollar marks.”