“It Happened One Night” is one of the most charming American movies from the 1930s. It was so enjoyable that it won five Academy Awards in 1935, including Best Picture. It's 82 years old, but is still as quick-witted and endearing as when it first came out.
This film is centered on Ellie Andrews, an heiress who takes a bus from Miami to New York to be with the aviator with whom she eloped. The only problem is that she jumped off her father’s boat to be with him, and her dad offers a $10,000 reward for anyone who can find her.
To avoid the manhunt she teams up with fellow passenger Peter Warne, a reporter who gets the exclusive on her story.
Andrews and Warne bicker until they fall in love. It’s the type of thing you’ve seen over and over again in movies. But Robert Riskin’s script for “It Happened One Night” created these narrative tropes for romantic comedies and arguably used them best.
Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable play Andrews and Warne, respectively. They have great chemistry and make the most of their conversations. Some of them, like one about how to properly dunk a doughnut, have a great “Seinfeld”-like attention to the mundane.
Colbert is great at straddling the film’s tone between witty and sincere. She has some hilarious sarcastic quips, like “there’s a brain behind that face of yours.” She’s also good at making you feel the love that she eventually develops for Warne.
“It Happened One Night” shows how different mass media was in the '30s.
Today, Andrews would probably be found in a few hours after someone put a picture of her on Instagram. The language dates this movie in a very 1930s way with expressions like “holy jumping catfish!”
Nevertheless, this movie has a freshness that can’t be erased by time.
Every gag and funny exchange between Andrews and Warne seems spontaneous. “It Happened One Night” feels like it is effortlessly inventing itself before your eyes.
Frank Capra directed this movie. He would later go on to make more message-driven films like “Meet John Doe” and “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
Though there are some mentions of the Great Depression in this film, they do not dominate the story. This movie is Capra at his lightest.
One sequence that perfectly sums up this movie as a whole is when the entire bus sings “The Flying Trapeze.” Their rendition is fun and breezy, and you can feel the joy the characters get from singing it.
Like “It Happened One Night,” this sequence exists just to make people feel happy.
jpastern@indiana.edu | @jessepasternack
