Watching a Frank Capra film is a bit like drinking a light beer. It is not an unpleasant experience and it can be rather refreshing but it clearly does not have the finesse, subtlety and richness of the real thing.
So if you feel like sipping on patriotic, feel-good, we-are-all-wonderful-people-if-we-pull-together type messaging, Meet John Doe should about do it. Barbara Stanwyck pulls a fairly entertaining performance and Gary Cooper, who was nominated for an Oscar for this film (????) and ended up winning the Oscar that same year for Sergeant York, does what Gary Cooper usually does: be his stoic self and let his good looks and imposing stature do the rest.
Not for the cynics.

For anyone other than Ayn Rand herself, the idea of bringing her tedious and radical 1943 novel to the screen would have seemed a gargantuan and impossible task.

Rand’s novel about the powers of egoism and reason as the ultimate tools of human happiness is a laborious and fascinating read that packs enough philosophical verbosity to make any screenwriter cringe. How does one effectively condense 700 pages of philosophical discourse into a less than 2 hours film and still manages to keep the cinema audience entertained? How do you lead your actors to act like the ultimate reasoning and rational egoists (and therefore, by all traditional standards, with a high degree of coldness) without resorting to dull and expressionless simulating (Brad Pitt attempting to play a blasé vampire for instance)?
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With its ravishing black and white cinematography, this early and uncredited adaptation of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice is sexy and gritty and offers a fascinating look at Italy in the 40’s….

Sorry but i don’t get it. I am not going to make many friends in the film connoisseurs community by saying this, but the usual dose of exaggerations and over-the-top and unrealistic situations that come with many Powell/Pressburger films leave me cold, and, often, with a migraine as well.