A film director interested in technology
Frank Capra recounts in his Autobiography that when he was filming his first movies at Columbia Studios, he had doubts about whether this was his true calling or whether he should return to engineering school. The studio tycoon, Harry Cohn, sharply challenged him: “School? For God’s sake… that’s for boys! […] You can’t leave the cinema, even if they put a gun to your head”[1]. The anecdote is illuminating because it shows that someone interested in technology as a driving force of progress, as was the young director of Sicilian origin who emigrated to the United States, found in cinema the possibility of proposing that this development had a human face.
Cinema was already the first technological art to benefit from the discoveries of scientists such as Edison, but it was increasingly showing a greater capacity to appear as an agent of humanization. The same technical discoveries that in the industrial context were going to be able to improve production, in the cinema were going to offer spectators opportunities to experience their humanity more deeply.
A literature in which “love thy neighbor” collided head-on with social disorder
Especially, as Capra also reflects in another passage of the book of his life, to the most humble of society, but considered from their personal dignity.
“I would sing the songs of the workers, of the vulgar individuals, of those born poor, of the afflicted. I would speak of the losers who spread sails to the wind, and resent being pushed because of their race or their origin, above all, I would fight for their causes on the screens of the world. Oh, not like a bleeding heart with an Olympic call to “liberate” the masses. Masses is a term that equates to “has won”… unacceptable, insulting, degrading. When I see a crowd, I see a collection of free individuals: each a unique person; each a king or queen; each a story that could fill a book; each an island of human dignity.
Yes, let others make films about the great moments of history. I would focus on the guy pushing the broom. And if this guy is a sinner of conflicting contrary feelings; if his physical genes impel him to survive, to devour his neighbor, while his reason, will and soul impel him to love his neighbor… I think I can understand his problem. That was the kind of film material I was looking for: a literature in which “love thy neighbor” collided head-on with social disorder. I found it.»[2]
The quote is taken from his autobiography (1971, in its first edition), in the chapter dedicated to a ten-year-later film, You Can´t Take it with You (1938). But some of its roots are already noticeably found in these early films. As historians Stan Taffel and Bryan Cooper point out, who make an audio commentary in the Sony edition, So This is Love (1928)[3] is set in a poor Jewish neighborhood in New York. Its protagonists share that spirit of struggle and overcoming in which Capra as an immigrant grew up. And the filmmaker knew how to include in it, as in the immediately subsequent film, The Matinee Idol (1928), a little love story. And he indicates later in his autobiography[4]: Along with which I ‘discovered’ another director’s trick: don’t let the backstage machinery distract the fluttering of the heroine’s eyelashes. Don’t let technology impose itself on people: guide it so that it puts itself at your unconditional service.
So This is Love and The Matinee Idol form an early diptych on the strength of the human face… in the face of its masquerades
In times like ours, in which some of the realities that are sheltered under the ambiguous umbrella that is spread today as Artificial Intelligence, So This is Love and The Matinee Idol form an early diptych on the strength of the human face… in the face of its masquerades. As Vladimir Soloviev penetratingly points out in The Meaning of Love, it is precisely the loving relationship between man and woman that shows the true development of people, of humanity. José Noriega, in the Preface of the Spanish edition of the work, adequately introduces Soloviev’s vision of love.
… love is a revelation, which allows us not only to know, but above all to recognize who the person is, their ultimate destiny: who we are, and our ultimate destiny, a communion to be built. Without this vision, life continues mired in a pile of unconnected fragments: stories and tales that reflect the beauty or the difficulty of living the everyday, but which do not constitute any biography. Beautiful flowers, already withered by evening, but which sprout again in the warmth of the sun. [5]
Capra fully agrees with this approach. Focusing on So This is Love —and leaving The Matinee Idol for the next contribution— we see from the first approach that the core of the story is woven around the revelation of the face. Hilda Helson (Shirley Mason) appears cleaning the glass of the shop window of the delicatessen where she works. We see that all the glass is covered by a white layer, except for the small circle on which her face emerges. A face with a love-struck expression because she sees what is being pasted on the wall across the street: a poster advertising a fight by the neighborhood boxer, Spike Mullins (Johnnie Walker, who will once again star in The Matinee Idol). The intertitle explains: “Hilda Helson had heard of many heroes // She knew only one, the local champion. // And she silently adored him.”
With an astonishing economy of resources, Capra is transmitting to the spectator the contrast between the presence of Hilda and that of Spike. From the painting we move on to the image of Johnnie Walker bragging with some friends. And again the intertitles focus with humor and wit on the course of the plot: “Only one person loved Spike Mullins more than Hilda. // And that was Spike Mullins.”
A failed relationship and another that takes time to be discovered
The story will soon show that the boxer’s initial interest in the butcher is due to the fact that he is constantly hungry due to the diet he has to undergo to stay in shape. When he approaches Hilda’s establishment, the unromantic image that is presented to him is that of a roast chicken. A fact that refutes those who consider food to be a sexual metaphor[6]. Perhaps it is worth bearing in mind that in those twenties, despite the fact that the crisis of 1929 had not occurred, food shortages were not a strange social fact in the poorest neighbourhoods. And what in Spike Mullins’ character appeared for sporting reasons, was still present in the daily reality of many spectators.
In contrast to this relationship that is soon announced as a failure, Hilda has a shy lover in the figure of Jerry McGuire (William Collier Jr., in the Buster Collier titles), who, as one might expect, is not reciprocated by her at first. She works in a tailor’s shop, and only because her boss has been blackmailed by Spike Mullins to buy tickets to the Boxers’ Ball, does she agree to let him resell them to her at a lower price, in the hope of inviting Hilda. Previously, the young butcher had been scorned by the boxer, who considered that she had too little IT[7], to go with him to the ball. So, when the young dressmaker invites her, she accepts and asks him, since it is his job, to dress her so that she looks very good, because she intends to impress the boxer.
This repeats one of the themes of That Certain Thing (1928)[8]: the humble woman who, thanks to a spectacular dress, is transformed. Something from the Cinderella story. But like the previous film, the result ends in failure. Hilda leaves Jerry unattended during the ball to abandon herself in the arms of Spike Mullins. The boxer takes advantage of her surrender to take her to his apartment with the intention of making a move on her. When Jerry realizes this intention, he bursts into the room and protects the young woman, saying that she is his girl. But the boxer reacts violently, brutally hits the tailor, and carries him off his feet until he falls into a puddle of mud at the door of the ballroom. He only calms down somewhat when Helda says that she is not really Jerry’s partner, but Spike’s.
Sexual love is distinguished by its greater intensity, its more fascinating character and the possibility of a fuller and more complete reciprocity.
But in the midst of failure, a gesture of redemption occurs. Hilda escapes from the ballroom and goes to Jerry’s home/studio to thank him for his intervention and care for her, and to confess to him
that she has nothing to do with Spike. A double transformation takes place in the room. On the one hand, Hilda, who had been fascinated by the boxer’s strength, is now moved by Jerry’s painful expression, bruised by the boxer’s violence. On the other hand, the young woman discovers that in all the models Jerry has painted on the wall, the women’s faces are always hers. And she asks: “Why am I in all those drawings?” Jerry answers, already opening his heart: “Of course there’s you, Hilda. I love you, that’s why.”
A scene of simple intimacy between the two young people follows. Hilda has quickly understood the difference between a face that loves another and a face that is pure self-reference. Soloviev explains it in a way that is difficult to improve.
The meaning and dignity of love, understood as a feeling, depend on the fact that it forces us to recognize in the other, really and with all our being, that same central and absolute value that, because of selfishness, we admit only in ourselves. Love is important not as any of our feelings, but as a transfer of all our vital interest from ourselves to the other, the displacement of the very center of our personal life. This is proper to all love, but it is essentially so in sexual love, which is distinguished from all other kinds of love by its greater intensity, by its more fascinating character and by the possibility of a fuller and more complete reciprocity. Only this love can lead to a more real and indissoluble union of two lives in one, and precisely only about this does the word of God say that “the two will be one flesh,” that is, they will be one real being.[9]
The strength of the woman’s character
But this sweet communion lasts only a short time. Spike Mullins breaks into Jerry’s apartment to claim Hilda as his girl and to beat up the dressmaker again. The young woman once again protects the man she is already in love with, making the boxer believe that she is his. But from this moment on, everything is going to change. Jerry feels strong enough to learn boxing and challenge Spike. He will manage to face him in a random way, replacing the initially planned opponent who has been injured. Hilda, who knows that the tailor has no chance of winning and who recognizes that he is doing this madness for her love, designs a strategy that will be successful. She will make the boxer, sure of his victory, eat until he bursts in the run-up to his fight with Jerry. The young woman warns her true lover that he will only have to hit Spike in the stomach to knock him out. And so it happens and Jerry wins the fight.
The character of Shirley Mason (who in real life was the sister of Viola Dana, who plays Molly Kelly, the protagonist of That Certain Thing) shows a woman with a singular strength that anticipates that of Mary Hatch (Dona Reed) in It’s a Wonderful Life. The capacity to love of her face strengthens Jerry’s and denounces Spike’s. The beauty of the female face is not exhausted in itself, but has the capacity to bring out the best in men. It is advisable to bring up again the quote from Guardini that we already presented in the previous contribution: “Beauty is the way that the being has of taking on a face before the heart and with it making it eloquent. In beauty, the being becomes powerful through love and by moving the heart and the blood it also moves the spirit.”[10]
So This is Love has slapstick resources. But Capra manages them admirably. Hilda and Jerry’s first encounter also involves a fall, like Molly and Andy’s in That Certain Thing. Here the young man doesn’t manage to hold her up when she hangs from a marquee after losing her balance on the stairs. This is why their bodies come together, which anticipates what will be the final touch of the film when Hilda holds Jerry on the canvas of the ring, convincing him that he has won the fight. There is also no shortage of comic gags that pepper the plot with secondary characters (a boxer with a towel who runs away modestly in his repeated attempt to cross the corridor without Hilda seeing him, or the contemptuous spectator who keeps making fun of her throughout the fight, until Jerry’s boss punches him.) Healthy humor is a faithful ally of the humanization of relationships.
Conclusion
Capra was able, like few others, to capture that dimension of mystery that elevates, proper to the female face, and that runs through the entire plot of So This Is Love. Something that can hardly be better expressed than with this text by Emmanuel Levinas, which unites the female face with a discreet withdrawal, with modesty and mystery.
What seems important to us in this notion of the feminine is not only the unknowable, but a certain way of being that consists of hiding from the light. The feminine is, in existence, an event different from spatial transcendence or from the expression that is directed towards the light. It is an escape from the light. The way of existing of the feminine consists in hiding itself, and the very fact of this concealment is precisely modesty… The feminine is not realized as an entity in a transcendence towards the light, but in modesty… The transcendence of the feminine consists in withdrawing to another place, it is a movement opposite to that of consciousness. But it is not unconscious or subconscious, and I see no other possibility than to call it mystery[11].
Gracia Prats-Arolas – Professor and researcher in Philosophy and Cinema – Catholic University of Valencia
Jose Alfredo Peris-Cancio – Professor and researcher in Philosophy and Cinema – Member of the Bioethics Observatory – Catholic University of Valencia
***
[1] Capra, F. (2007). Frank Capra. The name before the title. Madrid: T&B Editores, p. 113
[2] Capra, F. (2007). Frank Capra, cit., p. 261.
[3] Also accessible on YouTube.
[4] Capra, F. (2007). Frank Capra, cit., p. 113.
[5] Noriega, J. (2024). Preface to Vladimir Soloviev’s “The Meaning of Love“. In V. Soloviev, The Meaning of Love (pp. 9-14). Madrid: Didaskalos, p. 13.
[6] Girona, R. (2008). Frank Capra. Cátedra: Madrid, p. 98.
[7] A term from the time linked to the title of Clara Bow’s film It (1927). An allusion to having class, personality or, better, snobbery. Yes, another masquerade of the face.
[8] Cf. on this same page, Moral Economy as a Criterion for Bioethics in “That Certain Thing” (1928) by Frank Capra, https://www.observatoriobioetica.org/2025/01/la-economia-moral-como-criterio-para-la-bioetica-en-that-certain-thing-como-se-corta-el-jamon-1928-de-frank-capra/10003099
[9] Soloviev, V. (2024). The Meaning of Love. Madrid: Didaskalos, p. 65.
[10] Guardini, R. (1954). The Religious Universe of Dostoyevsky. (A. L. Bixio, Trans.) Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 272.
[11] Levinas, E. (1993). Time and the Other. (J. L. Pardo Torío, Trans.) Barcelona: Paidós Ibérica, pp. 130-131.
