"Frank Capra had no sooner inaugurated the screwball comedy style with It Happened One Night than he turned his back on it. Beginning with Mr. Deeds Goes to Town in 1936, Capra made the sort of film that looked like screwball comedy, even sometimes sounded like it, but whose intentions were inspirational...It's this Capra, the Capra of Mr. Deeds and after, the artist of 'Capra-corn' and the laureate of 'Capra humanity,' who becomes the Capra of fame and legend, the Capra who is somehow in all our pasts...Because Capra (in Mr. Deeds) is not just departing from screwball comedy-he is making war on it...The screwball comedy was a modern culmination of the skeptical mode. And it was the Capra version of the folksy comedy that now entered into debate with that skepticism, speaking up for simplicity and ingenuousness and a pastoral-idyllic vision of America, and against the smart alecks." James Harvey, Romantic Comedy