A Film Canon

The Great McGinty plays like a parody of Capra's American Gospels, collapsing their distinction between jingoism and political corruption, and relocating the 'people' to all the non-voters that the eponymous bum embodies for a quick buck on election night. This commences his ascent through the ranks of a surreal, graft-fuelled, criminal-political structure, in which payment is extorted from the most minor professions (fortune tellers, interior decorators, bail bondsmen) for 'protection' against basic civil services (plumbing, fire fighting, healthcare), and every ethical act is continuous with an unethical one: "What you rob, you spend, and what you spend goes back to the people, so where's the robbery?" Although romance illuminates this insidious circularity, it is unable to escape it, McGinty's love and respect for his wife (Muriel Angelus) arising from a marriage that is motivated, initially, by a mutual desire to deflect other offers of marriage, as well as a need to appease the female demographic that might contribute to his election as governor. From this perspective, the index of McGinty's patriotism is his decision to leave America altogether - although even this is as much a matter of necessity as heroism. That said, Brian Donlevy's offbeat screen presence, combined with Sturges' nascent taste for miscommunications and cross-purposes, ensures that McGinty is already a departed entity, as evinced in the mild oblivion with which he greets the world ("Don't make me say everything twice again, will you?"), taken to its logical conclusion in his drunken victory speech. The result is a tour of American institutions - child labour, sweatshops, tenements - absent from Capra's universe, as well as a profound cynicism about the rhetoric of reform.