Film Review
It began as the film no one wanted to make and ended as one of
Hollywood's biggest success stories.
It Happened One Night is one of the
greatest romantic comedies of all time, as enjoyable today as it was
when it was first released in 1934. The first of the great
screwball comedies, this was the film that firmly established the
reputations of director Frank Capra and actors Clark Gable and
Claudette Colbert. And yet it came so close to never seeing the
light of day.
MGM had already turned down the idea of adapting Samuel Hopkins Adams's
short story “Night Bus” (first published in Cosmopolitan magazine in
1933) when rival company Colombia committed itself to making the
film. At the time, Colombia was the poor relation of Hollywood,
with little clout and even less money. Without Frank Capra's
enthusiasm, the film would never have got off the ground.
Unfortunately, no one seemed interested in playing the lead
roles. Robert Montgomery and Myrna Loy were Capra's preferred
choice, but they declined the offer. In the end, MGM boss Louis
B. Mayer agreed to lend his counterpart at Colombia, Arthur Cohn, an
up-and-coming star for the male lead - Clark Gable. It wasn't so
much an act of kindness on the part of Mayer as an attempt to punish an
actor who was making a nuisance of himself by asking for exorbitant pay
rises and turning down films on a whim. Finding a female lead was
equally problematic, and the part went to the relatively unknown
Claudette Colbert. Both Gable and Colbert felt
short-changed and loathed the screenplay. Before her Oscar
nomination, Colbert was describing the film as the worst that had ever
been made.
Colombia's anxieties over the film seemed to be borne out when its
first few weeks at the box office showed only modest sales. Then,
out of the blue, the film became a runaway success, ending as one of
the most popular films of the year. On top of that, it was
nominated for and won an unprecedented tally of five Academy Awards, a
feat that wasn't matched until 1975 with
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
The film took awards in all of the main categories - Best Picture, Best
Director, Best Actor (Gable), Best Actress (Colbert) and Best
Adaptation. Not bad going for a film that no one
wanted to make. This success transformed the fortunes of
Colombia overnight. The film inspired two musical remakes:
Eve Knew Her Apples (1945) and
You Can't Run Away From It (1956).
It Happened One Night is a
low-key work in comparison with Capra's subsequent films, but what it
lacks in Hollywood glitz it more than makes up for in style and
fun. It is certainly one of Capra's lighter films, having
something of the character of a Lubitsch comedy with its scintillating
dialogue and effortless humour. The modest production values are
effectively masked by some atmospheric and beautiful chiaroscuro
cinematography, which makes this one of Capra's most alluring and
romantic films.
The film was made during the Great Depression and this clearly
influences the tone of the piece, which has some surprisingly bleak
moments. How to exist on virtually no money is one of the
film's main themes, as is solidarity in the face of adversity.
The anti-capitalist messages that lie at the heart of this film are
subtle but inescapable - the moral being that money can buy comfort but
it can never buy real happiness.
One of the film's strengths is the edgy rapport between its two stars -
Colbert's unflappable smoothness and dignified air of superiority plays
well against Gable's mercurial swings between grouchiness and
insouciance. It's a shame the two actors appeared together in
only one other film, the disappointing
Boom Town (1940), directed by Jack
Conway, because they make a very effective comedy double act.
It Happened One Night has many
famous scenes, but perhaps the most memorable is the hilarious
hitchhiking scene, which has been emulated many times since but never
bettered. "The limb is mightier than the thumb", Colbert quips
after landing a lift by flaunting a nice bit of leg. Another
well-remembered scene is the one where Clark Gable takes off his shirt
to reveal a well-proportioned bare chest - it is reported that sales of vests in
the United States took a sharp decline afterwards.
© James Travers 2008
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Next Frank Capra film:
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)