Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Capra, 1936)
My Winter Movies # 20
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It is in the final courtroom scene that we find the most complex instance of language used in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and perhaps the most sustained and sophisticated treatment of spoken language in any of Capra’s film. As Carney has observed, it is the courtroom scene that finally gives the lie to the vision of Deeds - held by the film’s other characters and to some extent by the audience as well - as a country bumpkin unable to understand the complexities of life in the urban fast lane, and lacking the verbal sophistication to counter the attacks of articulate lawyer like Cedar. In this scene, Deeds demonstrates his «ability to play… with linguistic tones, styles, and metaphors […]» Unlike Capra’s earlier comedies, this film does not allow its protagonist simply to rebel against society and its arbitrary codes of class, privilege, and status, or to run away in pursuit of some pastoral or imaginative world: «Codes are everywhere, and everything is encoded. There is no nature, or reality, to run away to. Any momentary leverage over social discourse can and must be achieved from within the system.»
Christopher Beach, Class, Language, and American Film Comedy, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 90-91
