Well, we all know Hoover was such a role model for the youth of the time.../sarcasm.
If you want to see liberal communist crap watch Spencer Tracy or Katherine Hepburn ,or both together.
What I got from that was a person, possibly within the FBI whose name is blackened out, sent a memo to the director regarding communism in Hollywood and in that person's OPINION, IaWL is communist propoganda. That IN NO WAY means the FBI believed this or supported this person's opinion.
Notice how this non-story ties right in with the blogger's rhetorical questioning:
"We can look back at the FBI report with scorn and ridicule. But are we really that much more enlightened today as a society?"
Never mind that it's not a "report", it's a memo.
Anyone who watches the movie can see it as a serious story about a man's finding purpose in life, and an optimistic sermon on the possibility of goodness in ordinary citizens. It is actually quite anti-materialistic.
Frank Capra gradually became more conservative, and I understand that he was to that extent progressively shunned by many Hollywood pseudo-intellectuals.
Mr.Potter is a villain: he is not just a big-city banker, but he essentiaslly steals, and he has no regard for the values and traditions of the local people. Today he would probably be one of those rich contributors to liberal causes. It is interesting that in the end, he is not redeemed at all. No liberal mush here!
There are many good people of wealth, but there are some bad ones, and this film does not feed the blind worship of wealth and celebrity which is so rampant today. The film in its anti-materialism is very conservative.
I call bullshit
Well, it is a common trick, but the rich banker/landowner/railroad man was the stereotypical villain in just about every single Western made during the same period, including most of John Wayne's. So was it the Communists or just an early edition of Hollywood liberalism in action?