Meet John Doe (1941)
Gary Cooper plays a destitute man who is asked by a newspaper to impersonate a nonexistent person who said he'd be committing suicide as a protest, and a political movement begins.
Frank Capra's film reminds of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946) with it's story of a man out of his depth politically whom the people look up to before it all goes badly wrong on Christmas Eve in the snow. The film has a lot to say on media exploitation but is let down by frankly dull sequences where nothing happens. A lengthy baseball sequence (without a ball) in a hotel is a case in point.
However unlike those two films this manages to be overlong and quite boring following a promising opening half hour. It's almost redeemed by it's George Bailey-esq ending but even that can't really save Capra's film from being a movie which doesn't know what direction it wants to take us in.
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