The USPS has issued a set of four stamps honoring great film
directors and the films for which they are most remembered. The four selected
are: John Ford (The Searchers), John Huston (The Maltese Falcon), Frank Capra
(It Happened One Night), and Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot). We will be
exploring the lives and work of these directors over the next several weeks. In
this post LR Simon discusses It Happened One Night (1934).
Frank Capra’s screwball comedy It Happened One Night was the
first film to win all five of the top Oscars (Best Picture, Director, Lead
Actor, Lead Actress, Screenplay), an accomplishment that was not repeated until
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975, and then again in 1991 with The
Silence of the Lambs.
The film stars Claudette Colbert as Ellie Andrews, an
heiress who marries “King” Westley (Jameson Thomas) against her father’s
(Walter Connolly) wishes. Exercising his influence, Alexander Andrews has the
marriage annulled. After a spat with her father on his yacht, Ellie dives off
the boat to try to meet up with her would-be husband. She becomes a news story,
and when she boards the same bus as unemployed newspaper reporter Peter Warne
(Clark Gable), he gets her to agree to let him write her story exclusively.
Ellie soon finds herself penniless and entirely dependent on
Peter, who tries to teach her a thing or two about being ordinary. One of the
most famous scenes involves Peter trying to show Ellie how to hitchhike; all of
his attempts fail even to slow down a passing vehicle. Ellie then hikes up her
skirt to show some leg, and immediately the next car stops and picks them up.
Another famous scene takes place at a motel where Peter and
Ellie pose as a married couple in order to hide her whereabouts. Peter sets up
a clothesline between the twin beds in their room and hangs a blanket on it. He
calls it the “wall of Jericho,” not as strong as a stone or brick wall, but
sufficient to provide them each some privacy.
Several themes in this film would feature in many of Capra’s
later works, especially the mixing of the socioeconomic classes. The
differences and similarities of people in different classes and what people can
learn from others’ experiences remain the most relevant parts of his films,
even as some of the treatment of the sexes and the races remain entrenched in
the time in which the films were made. (Capra was a favorite for actresses at
the time, as he did feature intelligent female characters who had more
intelligence and more business than female characters in other films, and while
he rarely featured an African-American actor in a significant role, he relied
less on stock stereotypes than some of his contemporaries. Still, some of the
humor related to sex and race is dated.)
It Happened One Night may not be the first film people today
think of when they hear Frank Capra’s name – they likely think first of It’s a
Wonderful Life or perhaps Mr. Smith Goes to Washington – but it’s certainly a
must-see for any Capra fan, or any student of film history.
References:
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