It Happened One Night

Over the next few weeks I'm going to take a look at some more of the Oscar-winning Best Pictures. I'm picking things up in 1934, when It Happened One Night was the first film to sweep the major awards: Picture, Director (Frank Capra), Actor (Clark Gable), Actress (Claudette Colbert), and Screenplay (Robert Riskin)--this has been matched only two other times, by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs.

The film was made by Columbia, which at the time was one of the "Poverty Row" studios, meaning that they were kind of a second-rate outfit, and when they got major stars it meant they were being loaned out by other studios. Gable and Colbert were not the first choices for the roles, Robert Montgomery and Myrna Loy were. Capra had read a story in Cosmopolitan called Night Bus, which was the genesis of the script.

The film, viewed today, is still a breezy entertainment with most of the scenes still managing to sparkle. It was also one of the first examples of screwball comedy, and includes many elements that have become extremely trite over the decades, but were still fresh here, such as the romantic pair meeting by being forced together and initially hating each other, the road picture, and the interrupted wedding. If you end up watching this and thinking, "Didn't I see a Jennifer Lopez movie like this?" you probably did, but this was the far-better original.

The plot is pretty simple. Heiress Colbert is kept under lock and key by her father, because he disapproves of her hasty marriage to a famous aviator. This kind of thing wouldn't play today, because since she's over 21 most jurisdictions would consider this kidnapping, and a movie today would have her hiring a battery of attorneys. She escapes, though, and she hops a bus in Miami to try to get to New York. On said bus she meets Gable, who is a wastrel newspaper reporter. He recognizes her (her story is front-page news) and offers to help her if she gives him an exclusive. Of course, over the course of the story, these opposites end up falling in love. True to the genre even then, though, there is a misunderstanding that must be overcome.

The two characters endure hardships along the way, trying to keep her identity from being known and dealing with a lack of funds (the most famous scene is certainly the one where Gable tries to show his hitchhiking prowess but fails miserably, while she stops the first car that goes by flashing some gam). The fact that America was in the midst of a depression creeps through as they meet some folks down on their luck, and it's interesting to see the old motor courts (two dollars a night). I also liked scenes on the bus, which was a more more frequent mode of travel than today. There's a charming scene in which the passengers sing three choruses of "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" and it seems like so much fun. This movie was made pre-code, but the script makes central use of the lingering Victorian attitudes, as the characters split a room but hang a blanket between their beds, which Gable refers to as the "walls of Jericho."

Both leads are terrific. Colbert gives her character the right amount of haughtiness but also a madcap spirit, while Gable is great as a guy who thinks he knows all the angles but is really a sofite underneath. Capra would go on to make a number of pictures that centered on sentimentalized Americana, but this one reins in the sentiment and instead simply presents a nice love story. A very nice picture.