It Happened One Night

It Happened One Night (1934)

Runtime: 105 minutes

Directed by: Frank Capra

Starring: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karnes, Jameson Thomas

From: Columbia

It was about time I saw this movie again and gave it a review here; it is a great film. I talk all about it below: 

This is a classic comedy I have seen before, albeit that viewing was years ago, so it was time for a revisit. Comedy is definitely subjective but I much rather experience the humor offered by these movies of old rather than all the vulgarity and filth that seems to permeate throughout comedy in these modern times.

The plot may have been already cliché in 1934: a rich girl who is tired of daddy's way overbearing presence escapes his grasp so she can elope with a hotshot pilot, only to meet up with a straight-shootin' newspaper reporter while on the journey from Miami to New York City, and at first they don't get along, but eventually... like I said, not inventing the wheel. Yet, when it's so gosh darn entertaining...

It's a fun story where-among other things-you get to see what it was like to ride on the bus & stay in random hotels in the middle of nowhere in the 1930's. Yet it is the endless charm of both Gable and Colbert that go a long way to making this so memorable. It's standard stuff where he teacher her not to be such a spoiled brat and she teaches him not to be such a sardonic wiseass; like I said, it's their charm that helps. Besides the main characters being so memorable and amusing, there's also various supporting characters; my favorite was the incredibly annoying Shapeley; the way that he was dealt with: incredibly uproarious. As this was right before the Hays Code took place, we got some moments that would soon go away for many years... the most memorable being the likely still effective way that Colbert gets a male driver to stop while hitchhiking.

One of the rare movies to win The Big Five Oscars, I will likely always be captivated by this; that is even with the basic plot and an odd coda where we don't actually see the two leads. For my tastes it will always be effective as a humorous picture with a heart of gold.