It Happened One Night (1934)

Credits: Director: Frank Capra Assistant Director: Charles C. Coleman Producer: Harry Cohn Screenplay: Robert Riskin, from “Night Bus,” by Samuel Hopkins Adams Cinematography: Joseph Walker Art Director: Stephen Goosson Costumes: Robert Kalloch Music: Louis Silvers Editor: Gene Havlick

Cast: Peter Warne.  . . Clark Gable Ellie Andrews. . . Claudette Colbert Alexander Andrews. . . Walter Connolly King Westley. . . Jameson Thomas Oscar Shapeley. . .Roscoe Karns Busdriver. . . Ward Bond

image from allposters.com

Other Films by Capra

For the Love of Mike (also with Claudette Colbert, 1927); Ladies of Leisure (1930); The Miracle Woman (1931); Platinum Blonde (1931); Forbidden (1932);  Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936); You Can’t Take It with You (1938); Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939); Meet John Doe (1941); Arsenic and Old Lace (1944); It’s A Wonderful Life (1946); A Hole in the Head (1959); Pocketful of Miracles (1961)

Scenes to Look For in It Happened One Night:

• singing on the bus
• Ellie and Peter’s mock performance as a married couple
• night time scene in the hayfield
• the wedding and subsequent scenes

Terms to Know This Week: screwball comedy; Classical Hollywood Cinema; motion vs. action; causality; causal agents; diegesis; star system; “an obsessively obvious cinema”

Critical Commentary:

“The runaway bride is one of the most joyous, kinetic, and rebellious images produced by mass culture in the Depression. What she signifies is the end of the extravagant, wasteful, snobbish life of the upper classes of the twenties. In rushing away from her wedding, she is unclassing herself to join with Peter Warne in a new kind of unit held together by something besides class.”

--Elizabeth Kendall, The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the1930s. New York: Knopf, 1990.

“One of the most appealing aspects of It Happened One Night is its casual, almost improvisatory humor, conveyed convincingly by a wonderful cast and rendered skillfully by Capra’s camera.”

--Charles J. Maland, American Vision: the Films of Chaplin, Ford, Capra, and Welles,1936-1941. New York: Arno Press, 1977.

“Although any discussion of what appealed to audiences about a film now more than fifty years old can offer no more than a hypothesis, it is possible to see in It Happened One Night the representation of a return to older, more ordered values at a moment when such a representation might have seemed both attractive and plausible.”

--Richard Maltby, “It Happened One Night: the Recreation of the Patriarch.” Harmless Entertainment: Hollywood and the Ideology of Consensus. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1983.

Questions for Discussion

1. One film critic, Thomas Cripps,  has argued that the screwball comedy was America’s “most serious genre” because it took up the “deepest moral and social beliefs of American life” (178). What are the beliefs and values “taken up” by It Happened One Night?  Which of these are promoted by the film, and how are they promoted? And which American beliefs and values, if any, come under attack?
2. When Gable and Colbert, two of Hollywood’s most desirable stars, appeared in this film together, everyone acclaimed them as the perfect couple--and yet, we never see them kiss. Discuss the possible reasons for why Capra chose to employ this kind of self-censorship upon the film.
3. Between 1931, the time he signed on at MGM, and 1942, when he signed up for the war, Gable ranked consistently as one of Hollywood’s Top Ten box office stars--a very rare accomplishment indeed. What about his persona, physical appearance, and acting style do you think accounts for this popularity?  Why would he have appealed to both male and female viewers?
4.  Unlike many other romantic comedies of the 30s, this film closely depicts the lives of the poor and their class tensions with the privileged. How are these tensions played out in the film? How are they resolved by the film’s ending?
5. In many ways, this film centers on Ellie Andrews’ duality, the fact that she conveys both helplessness and privilege at the same time. Please respond.
6. Father figures are largely absent from Hollywood films of the early 1930s. It Happened One Night reverses this trend by making Ellie’s father, Alexander Andrews, a prominent character in the film. How would you describe him as a character? And how would you describe his narrative function in the film?
7. One of the elements that makes the film entertaining is that it both reinforces and subverts stereotyped gender roles. Selecting one key scene, discuss how Capra reverses roles usually assigned to men and women in narrative film.
8. Recent critical work has suggested that Capra, long considered America’s most optimistic and sentimental director, actually represented enormous social contradictions and conflicts that clash with the surface message of his films, even if, perhaps, he was unaware of this fact. Can you find any evidence for this suggestion in It Happened One Night, or if you’ve seen it recently, in It’s a Wonderful Life?