It Happened One Night (1934)

• Review: **** (out of ****)
• Starring: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns, Jameson Thomas, Alan Hale, Arthur Hoyt, Blanche Friderici, Charles C. Wilson
• Director: Frank Capra
• Screenplay: Robert Riskin (Story: Night Bus by Samuel Hopkins Adams)
• Length: 105 min.
• MPAA Rating: N/A

Comedy has rarely had an easy time at the Oscars. It Happened One Night became the firstof its genre and also set another record.

Trying to escape his doomed job as a journalist, Peter Warne(Clark Gable) stumbles upon a most unlikely and unusual story. Ellie Andrews(Claudette Colbert), a rich socialite on the run from her father who’s tryingto annul her marriage to tycoon King Westley (Jameson Thomas), happens to betraveling incognito on Warne’s bus to NewYork.

At first, he sees only his meal ticket to a great articlethat will net him plenty of money. When he begins to fall in love with theheadstrong woman, his thoughts of success begin to fade and all he can see isthe chance to make her love him. Ellie, on the other hand, sees Warne as onlyan arrogant opportunist. However, as love often blooms out of mutual loathing(at least at the movies), Ellie begins to love him as well.

Gable’s personality has always been charming with a roughedge. It’s why his performances in films like Mutiny on the Bounty and GoneWith the Wind stand among the screens most iconic. He creates a sense ofmystery blended with a hint of misogyny. It’s obvious his characters don’t hatewomen. He loves them to be strong but not so strong that he can’t control them.It’s that conflicting personality, epitomized in this film, that cements hischarisma in the minds of the audience.

To make a strong leading man stronger, it requires a strongleading lady. Colbert fits that description perfectly. Ellie is both tenaciousand naïve. Colbert gives her the resolute carriage of a woman well above hermeans while simultaneously capturing her utter inability to grasp thedifficulties of being without her money and influence. Her trip to New York is eye-openingand while she learns more about the world around her, Peter learns more abouthimself.

Frank Capra’s first Academy Award came for It Happened One Night. Forget the factthat the previous year he’d been embarrassed thinking he’d won when presenterWill Rogers announced the winner saying “Come up and get it, Frank.” The awardhad gone to Frank Lloyd, one of Capra’s competitors. Nevertheless, Capra earnedhis first Award for an amazingly astute picture about love blossoming throughadversity and between two people who never could have met had circumstances notdictated. Capra would carry on his common man theme with films like It’s a Wonderful Life and You Can’t Take It With You.

Capturing the top five Oscars (Picture, Actor, Actress,Director and Writing), It Happened OneNight remains one of only three pictures to achieve such an outcome. Itwould be 41 years before the next film would do so (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and then sixteen before The Silence of the Lambs won the same. It Happened One Night remains one ofOscar’s all-time best decisions. Although seventy years have passed since It Happened One Night graced the screen,its message and themes are still universal today.

Even though a few phrases feel dated and it features a castand crew of classic Hollywood names, this filmcould easily have been made today and might still have won the same AcademyAwards all over again. It Happened OneNight is a film for any generation and it is thankfully an indelible partof film history.

-Wesley Lovell (October 10, 2006)