SILVER

In director Frank Capra's decidedly dark allegory, soon-to-be-downsized journalist Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck) publishes a fake letter, a desperate cri de coeur from the Common Man that threatens a Christmas Eve leap from the roof of City Hall to protest the ills of the world, signed "John Doe." When the letter causes a grassroots phenomenon, her newspaper hires her back to keep the story alive, including casting former baseball player/current bum Long John Willoughby (Gary Cooper) to play the role of the fictional John Doe. As manipulative political forces seek to hijack the movement, Mitchell faces the crisis of falling in love with the man she's in danger of destroying. DIR/PROD Frank Capra; SCR/PROD Robert Riskin, based on a story by Richard Connell and Robert Presnell, Sr. U.S., 1941, b&w, 122 min. NOT RATED
35mm print preserved by the Library of Congress.

AFI Member passes accepted.