Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

Frank Capra, director (1939)

It’s the annus mirabilis, Hollywood’s greatest year of all, 1939, a year when any of the ten or fifteen best films — say, The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Golden Boy, Ninotchka, The Hunchback of Notre Dame — would sweep the field in any year now, and some might even sweep the decade. America had struggled in the mire…