It Happened One Night

Actually, it happened over a series of nights. But that's not important right now.

IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (Capra, 1934), is a romantic comedy / road movie starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Gable's the hard-drinking reporter whose dissolution hasn't yet caught up to his body and mind. Colbert's the spoiled society girl out to spite her father by running off to be with some pansy gyrocopter pilot. Circumstance throws them together in the back of a bus, with Gable telling Colbert, " Excuse me lady, but that upon which you sit is mine." "I beg your pardon?" Well, it will be soon enough.

The two most interesting things about IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT are the dialogue (Colbert to Pansy: "Promise me I'll never get off." Bet on it, sister!) and the power dynamics. Released just months before rules requiring new releases to have the Hayes Code seal of approval came into force, this film seems innocuous, but has some real adult humor going on just beneath the surface. The power dynamics are an interesting combination of gender and class conflicts, with one message sent to women (Submit!) and another to proletarians (Revolt!). Just get a load of this line, spoken by Gable's "man of the people" to the Colbert's millionaire father: "What she needs is a guy that'd take a sock at her once a day, whether it's coming to her or not. If you had half the brains you're supposed to have, you'd done it yourself, long ago." Dominance and insouciance, apparently, made for successful mainstream entertainment back when the Greatest Generation was in junior high.

But hey, don't watch this picture for material to gripe about at your next meeting of the Working Woman's Collective. Watch this picture to see Gable and Colbert, performers at the top of their respective games, bang out dialogue with near-scientific precision. Watch it for Joseph Walker's cinematography and marvel at the way light plays off a white silk dress in glorious black and white. Watch it for Capra, who knows how to get the most out of even his bit players. Most of all, watch it because it's funny. Watch it with a loved on and bring down the walls of Jericho.