It Happened One Night
In the Postal Service’s song “Clark Gable” singer Ben Gibbard sings “And I kissed you in a style Clark Gable would have admired (I thought it classic)”.
After seeing Frank Capra’s 1934 romantic comedy It Happened One Night I suddenly understood Gibbard’s words, and seeing Gable’s onscreen chemistry with Claudette Colbert, I felt a lot more could have went on between the two then the movie allowed.
To modern moviegoers, this classic may be too sachrine and frustrating in nature. A tried and true plot reveals a reporter Peter (Gable) searching for a spoiled heriess Ellie (Colbert) who jumped ship after her controlling father has her recent marriage annuled. Naivee and sheltered Ellie meets Peter on a bus and the two stick together as he plans his big newspaper story.(IMDB)
I loved this movie the first time I saw it because it’s a brand of film making that is non-existent today. Capra is famous for his “comedies of manners” and this film debuted in the year that the Production Code was instated, censoring violence, sexual innuendo, drug use, or dirty language. (SparkNotes)
The steamiest the film gets is during a scene in which the two stay at a cabin and Peter reveals his plot to Ellie. Peter constructs a barrier between the two beds, (he calls them the “walls of Jericho”) but he proceeds to get undressed in front of her. His shirt comes off, but as soon as his hand goes to unzip his pants she flees to the other side of the wall.
Its refreshing to see two people fall in love before they wind up in bed together, but there is no way an audience would tolerate such modesty today.
Sources:
It Happened One Night (1934).(2009). Retrieved March 15, 2009, from Amazon.com IMDB Web site: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025316/plotsummary
SparkNotes.(2009). Retrieved March 15, 2009, from SparkNotes Web site: http://sparkcharts.sparknotes.com/film/film/section5.php
