Frank Capra excelled at dramatizing internal conflicts and clash of conflicting worlds within a set of characters. Meet John Doe (1941) is a timeless representative of his talent in bringing bigger-than-life stories to the big screen. Originating from Richard Connell’s story from 1922, the movie’s screenplay was written by Robert Riskin, who collaborated with Capra on several movie projects.
The eponymous protagonist John Doe (played by Gary Cooper) leads the story as a man with a made-up identity, a nobody who overnight becomes the voice of every working class American after he delivers a motivational speech handed to him by a struggling newspaper writer (Barbara Stanwyck). Doe’s sudden rise to the status of a national hero rocks the country’s highest offices and soon he finds himself ensnared in a web whose threads go straight up to D.C.
Complementing the two powerful leads played by Cooper and Stanwyck, Walter Brennan secures a special post in the viewer’s memory as The Colonel, a free-spirited drifter who cautions against the illusion of luxury and convenience as he speaks to reveal the price tags of these deals in modern society. His three-minute scene of a tirade cautioning against “the heelots” rings true to date.
Meet John Doe is one of those movies where every scene organically leads to the next one while remaining its own complete story that fits neatly in the bigger picture right until the end. The characters grow as the plot unfolds by dialogue and reflection. Capra knew the power of human expressions without words and getting the best out of his actors as is evident throughout this movie.
More than 85 years later, the subject of Capra’s Meet John Doe stands out as more relevant and valid in an age of media overload where many John Does, genuine as well as manipulated, scream out to the public about who or what to believe or disregard. And among them, there are the Colonels holding the doors open to real freedom, like Brennan did for Cooper during his first speech on the radio. Capra made us see the door three generations ago.
