It Happened One Night (1934)

Matthew Wesley

While following contemporary production trends, director Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night became a trendsetter itself by making way for a new brand of “screwball” comedy. The story follows Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert), a spoiled heiress who attempts to make her way to New York from Miami in order to reunite with a playboy named King Westley she recently married. The marriage and subsequent journey are the latest acts of defiance on Ellie’s part, and are wholly doomed but for the appearance of newspaperman Peter Warne (Clark Gable), who takes her under his wing in exchange for the rights to publish her story. Each needs the other for survival (and a few life lessons), so they agree to travel together with Ellie’s identity concealed. Along the way, the pair masquerade as a married couple in public but a rope-and-blanket “wall of Jericho” separates them in private. After a series of entertaining vignettes, one in particular including Ellie progressing from student to teacher in the art of hitchhiking, the relationship expectedly moves from professional to personal in nature. After an obligatory mix-up, Ellie enlists the help of her father to avoid re-marrying Westley and has the quick marriage annulled. Ultimately, as any Sunday School student might guess, the walls of Jericho do eventually fall.

The production quality of the movie is high; Capra provides a lively directorial pace and the acting performances exhibit more than enough humanity to allow the comic lines a connection with a willing audience. Gable and Colbert have an excellent rapport and the writing style suits their deliveries perfectly. Of particular note are scenes in which the characters themselves become actors. In one, Peter must get rid of an annoying and prying opportunist who has uncovered Ellie’s identity and takes on the personality of a daring gangster. In another, Peter and Ellie must fool two detectives who have stumbled upon their campsite cabin. The scenes are self referential but not reverential and the audience is happy to play along with Gable and Colbert in their wink-to-the-camera moments.

Ellie’s character transformation from insufferable “brat” (as Warne calls her throughout the movie) to a respectable and sympathetic girl is well played; in the beginning the audience laughs at her, only to find itself pining and hurting with her later on before ultimately blessing the two characters who make each other better people. We learn that there are admirable folks at all levels of the social ladder, from those who patiently wait outside for morning showers to rich fathers with a penchant for speed. In the end, our similarities can overcome our differences and fathers will always want their daughters to marry the right man.