It Happened One Night cleaned up at the Oscars in 1934, but is it too dated to enjoy today? It is dated, but not in the bad sense that we cannot relate to the people, but in the sense that people in 1934 were somewhat different than we are today. We can, I hope, appreciate that. This is a romantic comedy about a spoiled rich girl (Claudette Colbert) and a wise-cracking unemployed reporter (Cary Grant) who slowly fall in love. Today we might think of a Paris Hilton making porno tapes, but in the 1930s, a spoiled rich girl was somewhat helpless because she had led a sheltered and pampered life under her father’s protection. The father’s (Walter Connolly) dominance, which a knee jerk from us declares evil and patriarchal, was much more of a social reality than it is today. But that doesn’t mean we cannot appreciate it in its historical context. And, if we relax our political correctness for a minute, we notice that at the end of the movie the father is sensitive enough to notice that his daughter is unhappy, insightful enough to find out why, and audacious enough to supply her with a get-away car so she can flee from her unwanted marriage to the wrong man.
Similarly with the daughter: She may be so incompetent that she has her handbag stolen on the bus, but she is also feisty. In fact the entire movie is her defying her father and running away to New York to be with the (unloved) guy she married on the spur of the moment. Along the way, when the reporter treats her coldly or cavalierly, she usually responds with spirit even though she is out of her element. After the reporter is unsuccessful hitching a ride, she steps forward, slides up her skirt, and proves, she says, that “the limb is mightier than the thumb.” Such a sense of humour in the battle of the sexes has long disappeared.
There aren’t many guys like the reporter around today. He lives in a man’s world and has a confidence born of that advantage. Early in the movie, he and his buddies are drinking from mickeys when he phones his editor to give him an ear full, he gets fired over the phone, he pretends he quits, and he dances off joking about being a king and catching his royal ride when he has less than $20 to his name and is catching the over-crowed bus. He firmly believes that if he writes a superb story, he will get his job back. He is not consulting his lawyer about a wrongful dismissal suit; he is not learning a lesson about being more politically correct; he is not worried about a racial and/or gender hiring quota. So he seems quaint to moderns. Even more so because he has a dislike of the rich. While we worship the super-rich, he has a Depression era distrust of the wealthy elite, and this, more than any archaic sexism, accounts for his sometimes disdainful treatment of his little rich girl. Given the way the free market banks have almost destroyed the country this month much as they did in 1929, we might have some empathy for the reporter’s antipathy.
The good acting—so rare in 30s films—helps us make the trip back three-quarters of a century. Claudette Colbert sometimes looks like a frail damsel in distress, but she has a wonderfully rich voice which carries some authority. Clark Gable does not play the stereotypical handsome ladies man but rather an abrasive career reporter out to make a buck in hard times. And the light-hearted tone—so rare in current films—helps make the visit to the 1930 thoroughly enjoyable.