The Birth of Formulaic Bliss
This was one of the papers I wrote in college for a film class. It's stiff, it's a little wordy, and it's full of the hallmarks of overloving and under analytical writing I have been trying to shake myself from. So I learned to write from gushing Rolling Stone articles and Roger Ebert, and while I don't begrudge either, it's hard to mimic the style and not come off as a ponce if you didn't earn the slurp for ones self.
Much like the word genius, when using the term watershed or landmark when referring to a film is overused, and with this bastardization, the significance of the expression is lost. Films like Potemkin and Birth of a Nation are usually safe inclusions of this phrasing, as are Citizen Kane, Godfather, and Star Wars: A New Hope. These are films that changed both the formal and commercial aspects of film history and culture. To dub such a term as watershed or landmark on Frank Capra’s 1934 classic It Happened One Night, would likely be a misappropriation. Other than being the first film to sweep the Big Five Oscars, (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay) the film did little to set the world on fire, like Birth of a Nation or Star Wars did in 1915 and 1977, respectively. However, when referring to the film’s impact on the genre of romantic comedy, and its close cousin the screwball film, the terminology would be duly and deservedly appropriate.
Since its release in the infancy of the sound era, a mere seven years after The Jazz Singer was released, the film was the one of the first to use major stars and play their dialogue against them. This is a film where the romance is thrown out the window to make way for the characters tossing razor sharp jabs and glib remarks usually reserved for same sex conversations. There were numerous films that would follow the film in the short period after the films release like 1937’s Nothing Sacred and The Awful Truth were patterned after Capra’s film. However still today, half a century later, films like Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally would follow use an almost exact plot of Capra’s film, a couple who are obviously perfect for each other but spend the whole movie doing everything to not date and connect. The cultural impact of the film likely died out with the end of the depression and the entrance of the USA into WWII. However, the formal aspects are a near Rosetta Stone for the genre; nearly every romantic comedy, and in some cases the dramatic romances, owe one aspect or more, from character, plot or direction, to It Happened One Night.
Like many of the films of the studio machines of the 1930’s and 40’s, It Happened One Night was not meant to be anything more than typical entertainment. The film was adapted from a Cosmopolitan short story by the name “Night Bus,” and Capra himself was wary saying that “Forget bus pictures. People don’t want ‘em.” (Capra 161) When finished, Capra was not impressed with his work, nor was he ready to champion the film himself, but instead just “wanted to get the bloody film over with.” (Capra 167)
The film, however, did have a little star power going for it. Its male lead, Clark Gable, was coming off his massive success from Red Dust two years earlier. His costar, Claudette Colbert, was coming off the Cecil B. DeMille hit Cleopatra, and was one of the top starlets of her day. The film also got a significant contribution from Robert Riskin, a skilled dramatist, in the films terrifically witty script, with such standout moments as the “Walls of Jericho.”(Recently referenced in the Barry Levinson film Bandits.) However, it was Riskin’s longtime contributor and unlisted co-writer for this film who would elevate the picture beyond mere entertainment, giving it not only his famed “Capra Touch” but also a pacing, atmosphere and humanness that seems to render the film ageless.
The fabled “Capra Touch” or Capracorn quality of Frank Capra’s career have been defined as a “warm treatment of nearly all characters, his ability to for humorous description of the milieu, and the conflict-free quality of the film. ” (Garbicz and Klinowski 225) Other than that, the Capracorn films have a tendency for the little guy to beat the system which holds him, and most of his audience down, perhaps an echo of the man himself, who was a mere 5’5 ½.’’ (IMDB) Though less than a third of his films actually deserve to fall into this categorization, the term is given because it is a running thematic in his best known of films, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, You Can’t Take It With You, and It’s a Wonderful Life. It Happened One Night, with the lower-middle class Peter Warren winning the heart of the upper class heiress Ellie Andrews and defeating King Westley for her heart certainly would put it into the classification of a film with a hint of the “Capra Touch.”
The fact that Capra was able to direct not one, but both, of his stars to Oscars was not just an impressive act (one repeated by only four other films in history with the most recent being As Good As It Gets), but more impressive since neither of his leads truly desired to star in the picture.
A recalcitrant Clark Gable was cast against his will in It Happened One Night by angry MGM boss Louis Mayer as punishment for the actor’s rebelliousness. Claudette Colbert was also reluctant to appear in Frank Capra’s comedy about a headstrong heiress and a worldly newspaperman whose lives are changed on a bus ride from Florida to New York.
Bernheimer 65
Colbert herself was just as difficult. She was under contract to Paramount and was only available to shoot for a mere four weeks, and shooting had to be scheduled around her. In order to get her to come aboard, Capra and company had to double her salary to a then-whopping $50,000. It is also likely that she did the film because Capra had also directed her in her first film, For the Love of Mike. When she finished, she was less than enthusiastic about her role in the film, she reportedly met her friends after shooting had finished and remarked: “Am I glad to get here. I’ve just finished the worst picture in the world.” (Capra 170) Gable, angry at first for being punished quickly “…got over his “burn,” …when he did he had the time of his life. I believe it was the only picture in which Gable was ever allowed to play himself: the fun loving, boyish attractive, he-man rouge that was the real Gable.” (Capra 170)
The true essence of the characters comes out not only in the performances, but also with Capra’s presentation and eye for detail. For Gable’s brash and arrogant Peter Warren, the hitchhiking scene not only lets Gable shine, but Capra’s cutting to and framing of a waiting and triumphant Ellie sums up their relationship as wryly and loving as the dialogue and plot. As for Colbert, the use of soft-focus close-ups transcends the traditional usage of it during the films day. To shoot Ellie in another way would be to take away from the innocence and sweetness of her character.
The script itself is remarkable as well, with throwaway lines such as the playful banter between Ellie and Peter that propel their relationship:
Ellie: A headline? You're not a newspaperman are you?
Peter: Chalk up one for your side.
The fact that the two of each other have share a rapport in their exchanges is nothing new, but what was crucial to the film then, and what makes it a delight to watch today, is that the rapport is one of rising insults and arguments. The “chalk up for one side” quip not only is a jab at Ellie’s intelligence, but a reminder to the film audience of how separate, in both class and worlds, these two characters are when the first meet. In the end of the film, where both Peter and Ellie have discovered their emotions for each other, this banter, the unwillingness to let the other win, continues.
Alexander: Oh, er, do you mind if I ask you a question, frankly? Do you love my daughter?
Peter: Any guy that'd fall in love with your daughter ought to have his head examined.
Alexander: Now that's an evasion!
Peter: She picked herself a perfect running mate -- King Westley -- the pill of the century! 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.
Alexander: Do you love her?
Peter: A normal human being couldn't live under the same roof with her without going nutty! She's my idea of nothing!
Alexander: I asked you a simple question! Do you love her?
Peter: YES!! But don't hold that against me, I'm a little screwy myself!
Even to the end, it’s not the typical “I love your daughter” conversation that a son and soon to be father-in-law have. Instead it’s a “don’t hold that against me” that is professed, and true to the character; it’s full of spite for Ellie.
This is not a romantic comedy, or love story for that matter, where the male spends the film pursuing the other or vice-versa, such as Pretty Woman. There is a fundamental difference that sets the film apart from most films of the genre, His Girl Friday being the most notable exception, in that:
Although the bickering and bantering of their courtship is typical…Ellen and Peter are unlike later couples in that they fall in love without deception or manipulations. Unlike Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby or Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, Ellen is not out to win her man. The humor in It Happened One Night does not rest on one party pursuing the other. Rather it hinges on both parties’ complete resistance to the idea of romance even as they are obviously falling in love. Although opposites in many regards, Ellen are Peter are matched in stubbornness.
Bernhiemer 67
Ultimately it is not the travel to get Ellie back home that propels the movie; it is this “stubbornness” and “resistance” of Ellie and Peter that becomes the engine of the film. As soon as Peter uses blankets to construct his “Wall of Jericho” the audience spends the rest of the movie hoping for them to come down, and when the trumpet blast of the film’s final act comes, it’s a payoff worth waiting for.
The film was slow to make money; most theater chains expected results like those of other “bus films.” Even critics were slow to warm up to it, calling it “diverting” and “entertaining” but nothing more. (Capra 159) But as the film’s box office receipts grew, so did its cultural impact. Aside from being the first film to sweep the Oscars, the film inspired the birth of both a major fashion trend and a signature trait of one of the most beloved characters of the Twentieth Century. In the beginning of the famous hitchhiking scene, Peter is eating a carrot, and declares “the best thing in the world for you - carrots.” Later, Gable’s mannerisms would be the inspiration for the most famous of carrot enthusiasts, Bugs Bunny. During the “Walls of Jericho” scene, when Peter/ Gable takes off his clothes, he is not wearing an undershirt. “When spectators saw…that the hero bares his splendid when he takes his shirt off, the [undershirt] stopped finding customers.” (Garbicz and Klinowski 226) After the release of the film, the sales of undershirts plummeted, and one could hypothesize that this, for better or worse, was the birth of product placement in cinema.
Some of the images, lines and moments have been stolen, remade, and parodied since the film was released. From romantic comedies to fare much further away like Mel Brook’s Spaceballs, where the plot of the central couple, the escape at the beginning, the couples worldly differences, and nearly everything from the climatic wedding is in one way another a reference to It Happened One Night. Spaceballs is just one of many to homage, steal, or nod an influence to Capra’s movie. The length of the list of movie connections on the Internet movie database is rather impressive, with films spanning from 1935 to 2001.
In the section for movie connections for Star Wars, the list is more than quadruple the length of that of It Happened One Night. Like mentioned before, the film is not one of those films that changed the world or changed the way movies were made. That, however, is not meant to diminish the quality of the film in any way. It Happened One Night is a Hollywood studio film to the core, however what sets it apart from so many of the other lost films of the 1930’s and 40’s is the fact that every major person related to the making of the film had a vital contribution. From Riskin’s crackling dialogue and cast of characters, to the presence and performances of both Gable and Colbert, and Capra, a director who took a great script and added to it a timeless grace, humor, and humanity.
Much like the word genius, when using the term watershed or landmark when referring to a film is overused, and with this bastardization, the significance of the expression is lost. Films like Potemkin and Birth of a Nation are usually safe inclusions of this phrasing, as are Citizen Kane, Godfather, and Star Wars: A New Hope. These are films that changed both the formal and commercial aspects of film history and culture. To dub such a term as watershed or landmark on Frank Capra’s 1934 classic It Happened One Night, would likely be a misappropriation. Other than being the first film to sweep the Big Five Oscars, (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay) the film did little to set the world on fire, like Birth of a Nation or Star Wars did in 1915 and 1977, respectively. However, when referring to the film’s impact on the genre of romantic comedy, and its close cousin the screwball film, the terminology would be duly and deservedly appropriate.
Since its release in the infancy of the sound era, a mere seven years after The Jazz Singer was released, the film was the one of the first to use major stars and play their dialogue against them. This is a film where the romance is thrown out the window to make way for the characters tossing razor sharp jabs and glib remarks usually reserved for same sex conversations. There were numerous films that would follow the film in the short period after the films release like 1937’s Nothing Sacred and The Awful Truth were patterned after Capra’s film. However still today, half a century later, films like Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally would follow use an almost exact plot of Capra’s film, a couple who are obviously perfect for each other but spend the whole movie doing everything to not date and connect. The cultural impact of the film likely died out with the end of the depression and the entrance of the USA into WWII. However, the formal aspects are a near Rosetta Stone for the genre; nearly every romantic comedy, and in some cases the dramatic romances, owe one aspect or more, from character, plot or direction, to It Happened One Night.
Like many of the films of the studio machines of the 1930’s and 40’s, It Happened One Night was not meant to be anything more than typical entertainment. The film was adapted from a Cosmopolitan short story by the name “Night Bus,” and Capra himself was wary saying that “Forget bus pictures. People don’t want ‘em.” (Capra 161) When finished, Capra was not impressed with his work, nor was he ready to champion the film himself, but instead just “wanted to get the bloody film over with.” (Capra 167)
The film, however, did have a little star power going for it. Its male lead, Clark Gable, was coming off his massive success from Red Dust two years earlier. His costar, Claudette Colbert, was coming off the Cecil B. DeMille hit Cleopatra, and was one of the top starlets of her day. The film also got a significant contribution from Robert Riskin, a skilled dramatist, in the films terrifically witty script, with such standout moments as the “Walls of Jericho.”(Recently referenced in the Barry Levinson film Bandits.) However, it was Riskin’s longtime contributor and unlisted co-writer for this film who would elevate the picture beyond mere entertainment, giving it not only his famed “Capra Touch” but also a pacing, atmosphere and humanness that seems to render the film ageless.
The fabled “Capra Touch” or Capracorn quality of Frank Capra’s career have been defined as a “warm treatment of nearly all characters, his ability to for humorous description of the milieu, and the conflict-free quality of the film. ” (Garbicz and Klinowski 225) Other than that, the Capracorn films have a tendency for the little guy to beat the system which holds him, and most of his audience down, perhaps an echo of the man himself, who was a mere 5’5 ½.’’ (IMDB) Though less than a third of his films actually deserve to fall into this categorization, the term is given because it is a running thematic in his best known of films, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, You Can’t Take It With You, and It’s a Wonderful Life. It Happened One Night, with the lower-middle class Peter Warren winning the heart of the upper class heiress Ellie Andrews and defeating King Westley for her heart certainly would put it into the classification of a film with a hint of the “Capra Touch.”
The fact that Capra was able to direct not one, but both, of his stars to Oscars was not just an impressive act (one repeated by only four other films in history with the most recent being As Good As It Gets), but more impressive since neither of his leads truly desired to star in the picture.
A recalcitrant Clark Gable was cast against his will in It Happened One Night by angry MGM boss Louis Mayer as punishment for the actor’s rebelliousness. Claudette Colbert was also reluctant to appear in Frank Capra’s comedy about a headstrong heiress and a worldly newspaperman whose lives are changed on a bus ride from Florida to New York.
Bernheimer 65
Colbert herself was just as difficult. She was under contract to Paramount and was only available to shoot for a mere four weeks, and shooting had to be scheduled around her. In order to get her to come aboard, Capra and company had to double her salary to a then-whopping $50,000. It is also likely that she did the film because Capra had also directed her in her first film, For the Love of Mike. When she finished, she was less than enthusiastic about her role in the film, she reportedly met her friends after shooting had finished and remarked: “Am I glad to get here. I’ve just finished the worst picture in the world.” (Capra 170) Gable, angry at first for being punished quickly “…got over his “burn,” …when he did he had the time of his life. I believe it was the only picture in which Gable was ever allowed to play himself: the fun loving, boyish attractive, he-man rouge that was the real Gable.” (Capra 170)
The true essence of the characters comes out not only in the performances, but also with Capra’s presentation and eye for detail. For Gable’s brash and arrogant Peter Warren, the hitchhiking scene not only lets Gable shine, but Capra’s cutting to and framing of a waiting and triumphant Ellie sums up their relationship as wryly and loving as the dialogue and plot. As for Colbert, the use of soft-focus close-ups transcends the traditional usage of it during the films day. To shoot Ellie in another way would be to take away from the innocence and sweetness of her character.
The script itself is remarkable as well, with throwaway lines such as the playful banter between Ellie and Peter that propel their relationship:
Ellie: A headline? You're not a newspaperman are you?
Peter: Chalk up one for your side.
The fact that the two of each other have share a rapport in their exchanges is nothing new, but what was crucial to the film then, and what makes it a delight to watch today, is that the rapport is one of rising insults and arguments. The “chalk up for one side” quip not only is a jab at Ellie’s intelligence, but a reminder to the film audience of how separate, in both class and worlds, these two characters are when the first meet. In the end of the film, where both Peter and Ellie have discovered their emotions for each other, this banter, the unwillingness to let the other win, continues.
Alexander: Oh, er, do you mind if I ask you a question, frankly? Do you love my daughter?
Peter: Any guy that'd fall in love with your daughter ought to have his head examined.
Alexander: Now that's an evasion!
Peter: She picked herself a perfect running mate -- King Westley -- the pill of the century! 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.
Alexander: Do you love her?
Peter: A normal human being couldn't live under the same roof with her without going nutty! She's my idea of nothing!
Alexander: I asked you a simple question! Do you love her?
Peter: YES!! But don't hold that against me, I'm a little screwy myself!
Even to the end, it’s not the typical “I love your daughter” conversation that a son and soon to be father-in-law have. Instead it’s a “don’t hold that against me” that is professed, and true to the character; it’s full of spite for Ellie.
This is not a romantic comedy, or love story for that matter, where the male spends the film pursuing the other or vice-versa, such as Pretty Woman. There is a fundamental difference that sets the film apart from most films of the genre, His Girl Friday being the most notable exception, in that:
Although the bickering and bantering of their courtship is typical…Ellen and Peter are unlike later couples in that they fall in love without deception or manipulations. Unlike Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby or Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, Ellen is not out to win her man. The humor in It Happened One Night does not rest on one party pursuing the other. Rather it hinges on both parties’ complete resistance to the idea of romance even as they are obviously falling in love. Although opposites in many regards, Ellen are Peter are matched in stubbornness.
Bernhiemer 67
Ultimately it is not the travel to get Ellie back home that propels the movie; it is this “stubbornness” and “resistance” of Ellie and Peter that becomes the engine of the film. As soon as Peter uses blankets to construct his “Wall of Jericho” the audience spends the rest of the movie hoping for them to come down, and when the trumpet blast of the film’s final act comes, it’s a payoff worth waiting for.
The film was slow to make money; most theater chains expected results like those of other “bus films.” Even critics were slow to warm up to it, calling it “diverting” and “entertaining” but nothing more. (Capra 159) But as the film’s box office receipts grew, so did its cultural impact. Aside from being the first film to sweep the Oscars, the film inspired the birth of both a major fashion trend and a signature trait of one of the most beloved characters of the Twentieth Century. In the beginning of the famous hitchhiking scene, Peter is eating a carrot, and declares “the best thing in the world for you - carrots.” Later, Gable’s mannerisms would be the inspiration for the most famous of carrot enthusiasts, Bugs Bunny. During the “Walls of Jericho” scene, when Peter/ Gable takes off his clothes, he is not wearing an undershirt. “When spectators saw…that the hero bares his splendid when he takes his shirt off, the [undershirt] stopped finding customers.” (Garbicz and Klinowski 226) After the release of the film, the sales of undershirts plummeted, and one could hypothesize that this, for better or worse, was the birth of product placement in cinema.
Some of the images, lines and moments have been stolen, remade, and parodied since the film was released. From romantic comedies to fare much further away like Mel Brook’s Spaceballs, where the plot of the central couple, the escape at the beginning, the couples worldly differences, and nearly everything from the climatic wedding is in one way another a reference to It Happened One Night. Spaceballs is just one of many to homage, steal, or nod an influence to Capra’s movie. The length of the list of movie connections on the Internet movie database is rather impressive, with films spanning from 1935 to 2001.
In the section for movie connections for Star Wars, the list is more than quadruple the length of that of It Happened One Night. Like mentioned before, the film is not one of those films that changed the world or changed the way movies were made. That, however, is not meant to diminish the quality of the film in any way. It Happened One Night is a Hollywood studio film to the core, however what sets it apart from so many of the other lost films of the 1930’s and 40’s is the fact that every major person related to the making of the film had a vital contribution. From Riskin’s crackling dialogue and cast of characters, to the presence and performances of both Gable and Colbert, and Capra, a director who took a great script and added to it a timeless grace, humor, and humanity.
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