Valentine's Day Film Friday: Frank Capra’s ‘It Happened One Night’

So much text has been devoted to It Happened One Night, the first great film to win the Best Picture Oscar and the first film to win the “big five” Oscars, but it is always a worthy journey to revisit. It is the film that established the format of every romantic comedy to follow--yes, even today’s romantic comedies owe something to that little movie made by Frank Capra 81 years ago.

The story of It Happened One Night is deceptively simple. Ellen Andrews (Claudette Colbert) is a spoiled heiress who doesn’t want to follow the rules set by her father (Walter Connolly). Her first idea is to marry pilot Westley (Jameson Thomas), but soon her father tries to get the marriage annulled. So, she runs away to Florida. She gets on a bus, only to be recognized by newspaperman Peter Warne (Clark Gable).

Peter convinces Ellen that he will help her reunite with Westley once they arrive back in New York. In exchange, Ellen will let Peter write an exclusive story or he will tell her father where she is. Ellen agrees, setting the couple on a journey back up the East Coast filled with adventures.

The journey is surprisingly hilarious and filled with Capra’s trademark use of character actors. Although we know Gable and Colbert are our main characters, it is fascinating to feel like this movie is fully inhabited by great characters. There’s Roscoe Karns as the annoying bus passenger who gives Peter a chance to be chivalrous. Alan Hale gets a scene as the driver who picks them up. And Walter Connolly plays the sympathetic father.

But the film’s most famous piece is that leg. The hitchhiking scene is the one moment that is imprinted on film history, and even people who haven’t seen the movie know it. But it works so much better in the context of the film. It gives Ellen the chance to prove that she’s not just a spoiled heiress. She can think on her feet, too. This is another one of the many angles that romantic comedies have been stealing from It Happened One Night for decades. How many movies have you seen where the know-it-all man gets upstaged by the woman? That scene cemented itself in the DNA of all romantic comedies when It Happened One Night became a success.

The movie is also often cited as the beginning of screwball comedies, but this one has a much leisurely pace, compared to The Awful Truth or His Girl Friday. Screwballs are often defined by the breakneck pacing and snappy dialogue, but Robert Riskin’s screenplay is more sarcastic and well-paced. Gable and Colbert don’t talk over each other; instead, they trade remarks back and forth. The film is also missing a present third wheel (like a Ralph Bellamy) for our leading man to annoy.

While Colbert is great in the film, it is Gable who gives the career-defining performance. It’s amazing how many stars in the studio era got their big breaks in movies that weren’t made at their studio. Gable had been frustrated with the one-note roles he got at MGM by 1934 and was loaned out to Columbia for It Happened One Night as punishment. Even though he didn’t really want to do it, you can tell as the film goes on that a light bulb goes off in his head. This is why you got in the movies, Mr. Gable: to make an entertaining movie that gives you the chance to have fun. You finally get to show your comedic talent.

For Capra, It Happened One Night comes at an interesting juncture in his career. Although it is not a member of his Americana cycle, like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington or You Can’t Take It With You, It Happened One Night still has the director’s trademark optimism. It also highlights his understanding of comedy and pacing. You wouldn’t even think the movie was made during the early sound era if you weren’t told so. Capra’s perfect handling of the romance even predicts the romance in It’s A Wonderful Life.

It’s hard to see how the romantic comedy genre could exist without It Happened One Night at its foundation. The story of two unlikely souls falling in love and only realizing it the second before the screen says “The End” is in the very bedrock of American cinema. Casablanca might be the ultimate romantic drama of old Hollywood, but It Happened One Night is the best answer when in need of a comedy.

It Happened One Night won all five Oscars it was nominated for--Best Picture, Director (Capra), Actor (Gable), Actress (Colbert) and Adapted Screenplay (Riskin). The only other movies to sweep the “big five” are One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs. The film is available on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection.

For more Film Friday columns, click here.