Meet John Doe (1941)

I always start out watching Frank Capra films with a sense of 'yeah, this could be good', only to end up with a feeling of disappointment, a feeling of having been tricked into something. Capra is unabashedly populist and Meet John Doe is certainly no exception. It all starts out with an angry column about 'John Doe', a guy who says he will commit suicide because of the corruption of society. The author of the column, Ann (great Barbara Stanwyck), has been laid of from the newspaper and 'John Doe' is her attempt to keep her job by creating some sensation. Sensation she gets. The newspaper is accused of fraud and now they need to hire a guy to stand in for 'John Doe'. A former baseball player named John gets the job. He's short on money and willing to go through with the thing. Doe becomes a celebrity, a representative of society's ills. John goes from being a tramp to being the guy eveybody try to manipulate. He is paid to deliver an emotional radio speech but after pulling it off he runs away with his pal, regretful of the big fraud he's complicit in. Meanwhile, 'John Doe' becomes a national hero. Capra's favorite character is the innocent guy who ends up in a series of events that change him drastically and that makes him lose his innocence while he is also learning something about himself. The film succeeds in criticizing a dangerous desire for national heroes. But in some weird way, that same desire is also confirmed - in the end, we are lead to think that we all need our John Does to comfort us, and somebody's got to step up and take that position. Capra unmasks the scheming that goes on behind such national heroes, but the hope of some kind of collective narrative is preserved. Capra wants to say something about leaders and the risks that strong leaders bring with them in a democratic society. He thereby also shows the sinister sides of collectivity. However, my complaint is that Capra never goes far enough. His critique of cynism never goes to the heart of things, it remains at the level of 'a few bad guys'. The biggest flaw of his film is that the perspective is never changed: the little people on the one side and the corrupted elite on the other hand. My idea would be that there is something deeply troubling about this kind of dichotomy and that Meet John Doe doesn't unearth that kind of dynamic. In the end, the film reintroduces a sort of contempt that it seemingly also assesses: the little people need their reassurance and faith. 'Let's not take that away from them,' Capra seems to say.