Frank Capra has long had a reputation as being the quintessential American director - the man who perfectly captured the core values of the United States with classic films including It Happened One Night, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life. However, as Elizabeth Rawitsch argues, Capra's construction of national identity did not occur within an exclusively national context. She points out that many of his films are actually set in China, Latin America, the Philippines and the South Seas.
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