"Romance triumphant?" Well, it gets a decent ride in this amiable, low- octane comedy, which wiser people than I regard as a classic.
Wealthy heiress Ellen Andrews (Claudette Colbert) is tired of her gilded cage. After literally jumping ship from her controlling tycoon father (Walter Connelly), she winds up in the lap of recently-fired reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable), who decides to aid her escape in hopes of reviving his career. Trekking across country without a dime, they find their unlikely union triggering feelings neither is prepared to handle.
I've read that "It Happened One Night" is the mother of screwball comedies, which is absolutely the wrong way to approach this film. Sure, there's banter, and a "dizzy" lady at the center, but what you don't get here is the spinning-plate subplots or the zany secondary characters of true screwball. This is a two-handed rom-com that plays its story straight down the middle.
If you love Colbert and Gable, you may well enjoy this film more than I did. Despite the clever set-up, I found the story and the main characters hard to take after the first 20 minutes.
Director Frank Capra gets more out of ambiance here, and some fantastic visual language, like the way the rain falls outside the windows of a cabin where Ellie and Peter are holed up. There are some delightful moments, such as when the pair hoodwink a couple of nosy detectives, or sing along with a bus full of passengers to "The Man In The Flying Trapeze."
Warne's main comic trait is his cantankerousness. "Listen, partner, you may not like my nose, but I do," Peter tells an ornery bus driver (Ward Bond). "I always wear it out in the open where if anyone wants to take a sock at it, they can do it." It sets Peter up well, anyway.
Yet the overall experience of their company never feels natural. Peter lectures Ellie about everything from hitchhiking to dunking donuts, and emerges a bit of a bore. Ellie's more interesting, but that's more because of Colbert's beauty than anything her character says. Having him tell her off ("Ever hear of the word 'humility'") suggests more of the director's take on class differences than anything disagreeable in her behavior, which is surprisingly docile in the main.
Neither lead makes you think anything other than Depression dollars is driving their union. They may play well off each other, but only for laughs. When things get "mushy" (something Ellie likes and Peter doesn't), the story falters. The worst part comes near the end, when he abruptly leaves her alone for a night and gets mad when she reacts naturally enough by returning to Pa.
There are iconic moments in the film, like when she shows him up as the better hitchhiker, and when she is clearly affected by the sight of Peter without a shirt on, but what "It Happened" lacks are the smaller moments that pull you in without feeling manipulated. I counted one, when a close-up of Ellie in the darkness shows only the tiniest pinpricks of light of her eyes as she takes in her situation with Peter. Otherwise, Capra is too obviously pushing me how to feel.
I didn't feel much of anything when I was done watching this, just a mixture of appreciation for the cleverness of the story and relief it was over. However well it did at the Oscars in 1935, "It Happened" lacks the timelessness of Golden Age Hollywood. Yes, it plays with the conventions, and delivers some laughs, but left me cold all the same.
Wealthy heiress Ellen Andrews (Claudette Colbert) is tired of her gilded cage. After literally jumping ship from her controlling tycoon father (Walter Connelly), she winds up in the lap of recently-fired reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable), who decides to aid her escape in hopes of reviving his career. Trekking across country without a dime, they find their unlikely union triggering feelings neither is prepared to handle.
I've read that "It Happened One Night" is the mother of screwball comedies, which is absolutely the wrong way to approach this film. Sure, there's banter, and a "dizzy" lady at the center, but what you don't get here is the spinning-plate subplots or the zany secondary characters of true screwball. This is a two-handed rom-com that plays its story straight down the middle.
If you love Colbert and Gable, you may well enjoy this film more than I did. Despite the clever set-up, I found the story and the main characters hard to take after the first 20 minutes.
Director Frank Capra gets more out of ambiance here, and some fantastic visual language, like the way the rain falls outside the windows of a cabin where Ellie and Peter are holed up. There are some delightful moments, such as when the pair hoodwink a couple of nosy detectives, or sing along with a bus full of passengers to "The Man In The Flying Trapeze."
Warne's main comic trait is his cantankerousness. "Listen, partner, you may not like my nose, but I do," Peter tells an ornery bus driver (Ward Bond). "I always wear it out in the open where if anyone wants to take a sock at it, they can do it." It sets Peter up well, anyway.
Yet the overall experience of their company never feels natural. Peter lectures Ellie about everything from hitchhiking to dunking donuts, and emerges a bit of a bore. Ellie's more interesting, but that's more because of Colbert's beauty than anything her character says. Having him tell her off ("Ever hear of the word 'humility'") suggests more of the director's take on class differences than anything disagreeable in her behavior, which is surprisingly docile in the main.
Neither lead makes you think anything other than Depression dollars is driving their union. They may play well off each other, but only for laughs. When things get "mushy" (something Ellie likes and Peter doesn't), the story falters. The worst part comes near the end, when he abruptly leaves her alone for a night and gets mad when she reacts naturally enough by returning to Pa.
There are iconic moments in the film, like when she shows him up as the better hitchhiker, and when she is clearly affected by the sight of Peter without a shirt on, but what "It Happened" lacks are the smaller moments that pull you in without feeling manipulated. I counted one, when a close-up of Ellie in the darkness shows only the tiniest pinpricks of light of her eyes as she takes in her situation with Peter. Otherwise, Capra is too obviously pushing me how to feel.
I didn't feel much of anything when I was done watching this, just a mixture of appreciation for the cleverness of the story and relief it was over. However well it did at the Oscars in 1935, "It Happened" lacks the timelessness of Golden Age Hollywood. Yes, it plays with the conventions, and delivers some laughs, but left me cold all the same.