The Frank Capra movie, “The Fallbrook Story,” is a 20-minute film of Cold War-era uneasiness in which Capra rails against what he calls the evils of Big Bureaucracy.

Capra is the director of film classics such as “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Capra also lived in Fallbrook and had a piece in a local fight over the Santa Margarita River.

In 1951, he lived here on his 1,000-acre Red Mountain Ranch farm filled with olive groves. The federal government, which had purchased the old Rancho Santa Margarita land in 1941 to build Camp Pendleton, was concerned that ranchers upstream would take or pollute the Santa Margarita River, which ran through Camp Pendleton. Capra’s film documents how Fallbrook residents fought back against the federal government.