It Happened One Night

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A delightful comedy that won five Oscars
Times were hard in 1934 and this light hearted piece of nut cake hit the spot. It is one of the very few films that won all five of the big Oscars: Best Pictures, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay). All films follow certain standard storylines, but the best ones draw you into their story enough that you stop looking at how it fulfills the requirements of its plot. This one combines the duck out of water with a road picture and provides a nice touch of confused romance along the way. Claudette Colbert plays Ellie Andrews, the sheltered, spoiled, and impetuous daughter of a very wealthy and very powerful father who has plans for her life. As the film opens he is upset with her and trying to make sure she cannot follow through on her plans to marry King Westly (Jameson Thomas) because he does not approve of the man or the match. She barely knows her fiancé, but because her father forbids it she wants it all the more and jumps off the yacht to begin her journey to find Westly and marry him. Clark Gable plays a barely-ever-was newspaper reporter who likes to drink too much and was just fired from his job. But he recognizes Ellie Andrews and decides to travel with her and see what kind of a story he can get from her journey to seek her "true love". Of course they start out antagonizing each other and never really admit their growing affection for each other until it all seems too late. There are many adventures along the way that set up opportunities for gags, for the rich girl to get her comeuppance and realize that the world is full of wonderful people outside her social class. And Peter Warne (Clark Gable) learns there is more to life than a story and that his cynicism has probably gone too far. This is a delightful movie and holds up well more than 70 years later. I think the whole family can enjoy it quite nicely. Frank Capra pulled it off on a tiny budget in an impossible time frame. No one thought the picture had a chance, but after it did well and won all those awards, it suddenly found many prophets who had predicted in its success and a large host of people who had contributed to its success. You know, just like the failure is an orphan adage says. The DVD has a nice piece with Frank Capra's son telling us what making the film was really like and what it meant to his father. Enjoy! Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

"Capra-Corn" at Its Best
What to say about a movie like this? Claudette Colbert is adorable. Clark Gable is at his alpha-male finest. Frank Capra used his tried and true formula with humor to make one of the best romantic comedies of the 1930's. A rebellious rich girl, Ellie Andrews (Colbert), runs away from her rich father because of his opposition to her marriage to King Westley, not a monarch but an upper class snob that her father loathes. Who should she run into on a bus while fleeing than none other than a brash just-fired reporter named Peter Warne, played by Gable. Let the war games begin as Colbert and Gable engage in the sophisticated and very funny running banter that makes the movie so appealing. Her flight via the bus, and other forms of travel, is the vehicle for moving the couple and the plot along as their relationship develops. He is using her for a story, ostensibly. She is using him as her protector, ostensibly. What follows are a number of classic comic scenes which, of course, ineluctably lead to true love. Colbert's successful skirt-lifting hitchhike has become the stuff of Hollywood legend, shown repeatedly for every conceivable purpose. What is usually missing from that clip is the whole hilarious build up, brilliantly done by Gable as he demonstrates the tried and true ways of thumbing a ride. He does a wonderful job of setting his large male thumb, and ego, up for the big take-down that Colbert's lovely leg produces. The blanket scenes in various cabins as they make their way across country together were considered extremely risqué in their day. The request for the toy horn is a fittingly excellent double entendre for the dénouement. After all adversities that King Westley and her father pose are overcome by true love the newly-eloped Warnes fittingly turn off the lights in their honeymoon cabin, blow their "Jericho" toy horn, and let the blanket, and the curtain, fall. This is a Frank Capra movie so you can expect the assumptions of privileged wealth (Colbert) to be challenged and scorned by a defender of the little guy like reporter Gable. He refers to Colbert as "brat" in both angry and affectionate ways depending upon the situation. Capra was nothing if not a true-believer in the American ideal that riches didn't make you better than the less-fortunate person seated next to you, in life or on a bus. The movie contains scenes of harmony in the shared hard times of the Great Depression, like everyone singing together on the bus, Gable's aid to a poor boy, and his "you're as good as me" wave to hobos riding on a train. They are the predictable types of scenes which a viewer can find in every Capra movie; corny but no less heartwarming. This is the stuff of good film-making. Throughout his career Capra truly evinced an idealism in his movies that is hard to picture in our time. It is amazing that he was able to preserve that idealism right through to his last movie in 1961, fittingly titled "A Pocketful of Miracles."

Classic
It is a very rare thing when a light-hearted comedy, something that is quintessentially the stuff of a `good movie,' breaches into that territory where the term `good film' can also be applied, but Frank Capra's 1934 film It Happened One Night may be an exception. Today, most people know Capra solely for his rediscovered classic It's A Wonderful Life, made a dozen years later, but this film was his first stab at what most critics would label greatness. This is all the more interesting because the 1930s, with their still newly developed sound technology, were still a transition period, of sorts, with the over the top hammy expressionistic acting of the silent films still dominating more than the more subtle naturalism of later film eras. As a comedy, this is all the more striking, since there was not the manifest symbolism of some of the great silent film comedians, nor was there the social satire of the 1960s madcap comedies, nor those of Woody Allen's intellectualized Golden Era. Yet, Capra's film, aside from its fame as having lifted Columbia Pictures from the bottom of the film studio heap, and being the first film to win the Big Five Oscars in a single year- Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Lead Actor, and Best Lead Actress, is credited with being the first `screwball comedy,' a subgenre of the romantic comedy, that flourished during the Great Depression and World War Two years. The films that this film kicked off all were romantic comedies, but the main focus of the films was on the frustrations the protagonists went through before inevitably ending up together in the end, rather than the stuff of pulp novels. Another aspect of this film, which makes it relevant today, is the brisk pace at which it was filmed, acted, and even edited. It is not as noticeable today, in Hollywood's caffeinated era, but compare it to any of a few dozen other films from that era and the difference is startling.... there are a few cringe-inducing moments when the era is shown at its worst- with a portrayal of a Stepin Fetchit like black railroad character, but that's a minor cavil in an otherwise great comedy, and possibly great film. After all, greatness includes- it does not preclude, humanity, and Capra was as infected by the worst of his times as anyone. But what makes a man great, especially an artist, is the degree to which those times claw at him, and the percentage of times a man of his time becomes a man for all times. The same is true for his art, and this artist and his film pass both of those bars. It Happened One Night is still as funny as it ever was, and the fact that you will get a bit more is the type of bonus feature DVDs alone cannot provide.

Wonderful
This is one of those classics that everyone should see. There was a movie a few years ago that as I watched I saw a lot of the storyline from "It Happened One Night." Needless to say remakes are never as good as the originals. If you are a Gable fan you can't miss this one. It just never gets old.

Just keep your eye on that thumb.
Ellie Andrews(Claudette Colbert) is running away(like she is so good at) from her rich father and on the way meets roughed-up newsman Peter Warne(Clark Gable). Similar to many films at the time, but this one stands the test of time better then most, the witty dialogue is still cunning and smart. Not to mention Claudette and Clark have brilliant chemistry, especially in the scene where they are forced to sleep in the middle of nowhere, both learning the other is not so disagreeable. Also, watching Peter's three different thumbs for hitchhiking is sheer screwball genius! It's a tale that all ages can admire as we watch the 'wall of jericho' fall from in-between them.