Visually satisfying I don't know why I didn't like it when I first saw it nearly two decades ago. At the time I felt that it was an inferior version of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, which I had seen years earlier and loved. I felt, that far from naive, Mr. Smith was hysterical, self-righteous, megalomaniacal, manipulative, humorless, and downright fascist with his intransigent zealot's zeal for cleaning up government corruption and his private army of "boys". The casting is certainly typical Hollywood: the good are extremely handsome, the evil are extremely homely, and guess who always wins. Poor Eugene Pallette elicits sympathy just because of his ungainly appearance, and his incessantly demeaning casting as a goon. I still have some of those misgivings after seeing the film recently, but this is a very well-made one, particularly, the cinematography. It is absolutely amazing that Hollywood should have gotten so good, so early, and that such an art should have been lost so long ago. No camera work in the last forty years remotely compares. It is not just the black and white, it is the shades of gray, the contrast, the lighting, pacing, angles, composition, a very sophisticated art. The scene where Smith weeps at the Lincoln Memorial is very moving. I think it would have been more moving if the lady hadn't appeared to console him. But why highlight Lincoln, why not Washington? Indeed, isn't it astonishing, that no movie has ever been made about Washington? (I am not saying it should be made, just wondering why not). Harvey is still my favorite Jimmy Stewart movie. Far more humor in that one. As a movie, on a similar subject, I thought "Storm Center" (1956) more satisfying than Mr. Smith: "dumpy" woman hero, small town, low key, bolder message.
In real life I only saw Jimmy Stewart as a dog-lover. He appeared on TV with his dog on Dinah Shore's pet show. The last time I saw him was on Johnny Carson, reading a poem he wrote about his late dog, and choking up. I felt so sorry for him. A rather inscrutable man, who flew missions not only over Germany, but also over Vietnam. I think his son died in that war. It is amazing that such a long-lived, accomplished man was never interviewed about his movie career, nor wrote anything about it, or his life. So public, yet so private.