Plot Intro
Spoilt heiress and socialite, Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) is about to marry equally spoilt heir. Her overbearing father disapproves and, furious, Ellie flees his yacht in Miami to head to her fiance in New York. As she struggles to sustain herself independently on her cross-country trip, she encounters Peter Warne (Clark Gable), a savvy but unemployed journalist who realises that finding Ellie could reinstate his career. But as they travel and bicker, love starts to filter in…
Doug says...
This is a cracking film. In fact it’s probably the only older film I’ve seen from the whole ‘Best Picture’ project that feels like it could have been made yesterday. While the references to the Depression, motels and more are very rooted in their time, the dialogue and events are somehow utterly timeless. It rattles along, wasting no time, and it’s not until the final two scenes that it even begins to take a breath. I love it.
A lot of the success is down to Clark Gable (why don’t any stars these day look like him? He is so utterly swoon-some) and Claudette Colbert. Their chemistry is palpable and they seem to be having the best time. It makes it even more surprising when you find out neither of them enjoyed making it and Colbert had to be fetched off a train to attend the Oscars ceremony as she was sloping off on holiday, certain she wouldn’t win. Their utter professionalism means you’d bet money on them having a ball. Impressive.
Colbert is fabulous. Her line delivery is so on-beat, sarcastic and hilarious that it could be delivered in an episode of Schitt’s Creek or Gavin and Stacey. It’s a performance that continues to feel ridiculously fresh, despite being over 85 years old. One moment when she sprawls on a fence watching Gable haplessly try to flag down a car, is brilliant - loaded with an amused wit, we side with her and like her instantly. And while the Rich Heiress Fleeing Family Duties isn’t something that we will all resonate with, there are undertones of it in modern cinema still - just think of Henry Golding trying to avoid his familial duty in Crazy Rich Asians for a start. Colbert, for all her scorn of the script, brings a ready wit and joie de vivre to the role, and inserts notes of vulnerability at points while never making her a Pathetic Heroine. She’s gutsy, sharp and ready to jump off a ship to escape her overbearing father.
Colbert also manages the transition from Spoiled Heiress to Lovable Heroine In Love With Rough & Ready Guy very well. It’s not easy - Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story doesn’t quite manage it and countless others fall foul at some point, but at every point of Colbert’s performance she is believable and you can’t help but cheer for her.
A cracking film that stands up to the test of time perhaps better than any other I know - and two timelessly fresh and invigorating performances at the helm of it. Oscars all round!
Highlight
It’s a tie between Colbert’s ridiculously high eyebrows - or the scene when Ellie and Peter play-act a marital row to get out of suspicion from detectives. Colbert and Gable launch into it with such verve that it’s an utter delight to watch.
Lowlight
The penultimate scene does drag a bit, but it ties up a lot of key threads to allow the joyous (and at the time risque) ending to happen.
Mark
10/10
Paul says...
This is our first of eleven instances where the Best Picture and Best Actress awards tally up. Interestingly, four of these eleven instances happen before 1943, while the rest are more spaced out over the decades. In fact, It Happened One Night was a monster-hit, and an unexpected one at that- even the two main stars thought it would be a failure. It nabbed Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay, a feat only equalised by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs. And it is, indeed, a film that has stood the test of time. Even on my fourth viewing, I found moments that made me laugh and moments that made me think, and that dual achievement is what makes it one of the best romantic-comedies ever made.
In our previous project, I wrote a lot about the screwball comedy genre, which was pretty much originated with this movie. It was particularly popular in the late-Depression era due to its frequent tackling of rich and poor mixed together with funny and romantic results.
Watching this film again but with a stronger focus on the acting of Colbert, you can see how these themes feed into the characters in nuanced ways. Ellie may be wealthy, but she isn’t cruel or heartless, she’s simply incapable as a result of her sheltered upbringing. Peter has to prevent her from buying a box of chocolates when she’s down to her last dollar, showing how she has never had to budget anything in her life. She expects the bus to just wait for her at its stop and is flabbergasted when it leaves at its appointed time. But what Colbert does so well is display Ellie’s resilience (she cracks a joke when the bus crashes), her resourcefulness (the famous scene in which she hitch hikes by exposing her thigh) and her natural empathy in an oft-forgotten scene in which she comforts a boy whose mother is sick and penniless, a powerful reminder of a society in the throes of a devastating economic downturn.
In other words, this is a strong precursor to Schitt’s Creek, which also tackles the consequences of the wealthy and spoilt suddenly having to rub shoulders with the inexplicable idiosyncrasies and tastes of the working class. It is not just a movie made and released in the '30s, it’s a movie that epitomises the '30s in that it shows both a wealthy and poor character working together to try and survive even when they have no money, no roof over their heads and the police on their tail. And Colbert earned her Oscar. Her comic timing is flawless, she’s endlessly likeable in her naivety and strong-will, and the final scenes in which she convinces herself that Peter hates her inspire a lot of sympathy from the audience. She absolutely ticks every box.
Born in France and emigrating to the US with her family at the age of 3, Colbert may be a name that has perhaps been overshadowed by other contemporaries of hers, but she was a hugely successful star. She earned two subsequent nominations for Best Actress and reached a point where she didn’t need to renew her studio contract because she was able to make even more money as an independent actress, such was her demand. She very nearly got the role of Margot in All About Eve until a back injury caused her to hand the role over to Bette Davis who made it her signature performance. Colbert acknowledged her own bad luck in this.
Colbert was known for being headstrong, hard-working and a bit of a perfectionist by colleagues. She apparently was reluctant to be shot from her right side, and was anxious about performing in colour movies due to worries about how she’d be lit. Her career remained constant although she transferred to theatre and TV from the 1950s onwards. She married twice, becoming a widow when her second husband died, but never had children. After a series of strokes, she died at the ripe old age of 92 in 1996. The American Film Institute places her at number 12 in their top 25 list of female stars.
Highlight
Oddly enough, I’ve found the last 10 minutes to be a bit of a slog on past viewings. But after watching Colbert’s acting more carefully, her indecision over her marriage to Westley at the end is all the more tense, and all the more thrilling when she finally realises that Peter is best for her.
Lowlight
Some of Peter’s treatment of Ellie feels a bit “dark age”. He insists that she should be slapped and put in her place, which has perhaps lost its amusement in 2020.
Mark
9/10
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