It Happened One Night

the Great Depression. The Production Code idealized American for the sake of the upkeep of morality according to those in favor of censorship. In Capra’s film ideal America cracks with screwball humor, pointing out the absurdity of grown adults behaving in such a restrained manner. It Happened One Night is a classic screwball comedy; however, Capra goes one step further with a film that acknowledges the ongoing state of the nation with the presence of the Great Depression in the film. The two main characters behave differently, usually based on their different social classes. This main characters resolve this class conflict by bickering leading to a mutual attraction. The film’s focus on class, and especially the depiction of different classes coming together depicts an ideal world. This world is one that exists in the eyes…

One of the significant values of genre in film is that genre, as Dr. Casper has noted, is used to “sugarcoat the pill” of challenges in human life, and the romantic comedy genre follows this value (Casper, 260). Comedy, as a whole, reveals the “fragmentation of man” in a digestible, enjoyable manner for audiences. Romantic comedies, specifically, reveal the fragmentation of each partner in a relationship and the fragmentation of the relationship. Throughout the history of film, romantic comedies…

The Road Leading to Romance The pleasure of escapism is an ageless one. For an eighty-two-year-old picture whose main storyline and pun centers on the sexual innocence of its key female character, It Happened One Night is nonetheless astonishingly innovative. Theoretically, it happens upon the course of 4 nights. The film which is equally escapist and classless performs fine in a country which is struggling with The Great Depression. It Happened One Night is nevertheless deemed to be one of…

Where do cows go for entertainment? To the moo-vies! Just like this joke, romantic comedies can be a bit cheesy, but still entertaining to the audience. However, not all romantic comedies are just a simple “chick flick” or “date movie,” there are some that portray significant conflicts that relates to the real world. It Happened One Night is a romantic comedy, with components of screwball comedy, directed by Frank Capra in 1934 and starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert (“It Happened One…

through quite the evolution from its beginnings in the 1930s to the present day shaping our culture, I would argue, more than any other genre. While these two films, It Happened One Night and Harold and Maude, are staggeringly different in their formulas, one being classical and one being of the modernist period, they are thematically linked, encompassed by the romantic comedy genre showing how the genre and society's view of romance had evolved in just the thirty-seven years between their…

Throughout It Happened One Night , there was quite a few obstacles and barriers that prevented Peter and Ellie to get together until the end of the film. The number one barrier between them was that Ellie was married to King Westley. An obstacle that they had to overcome was the muscommmunion that they had. Another obstacle was that they had to evade the police and people that wanted to turn in Ellie. Peter and Ellie where both so oblivious that they did not notice one was falling for the other,…

As a new form of comedy this offered a source of relief in the Depression-era to the audiences throughout the 1930s and 40s; especially relieved them after the Hays Code was put into effect. The screwball comedy was a mixture of sarcasm, comedic relief, and a social satire all in one, making it wacky but highly sophisticated. Rather than focusing on the romantic relations of people, screwball comedies focused on the upper-class. The focus was a hero’s life being somehow disrupted by a heroine.…

biological differences of a male and female. However, gender can certainly be interpreted through the nature of human beings and the roles in which men and women partake in society. The movie It Happened One Night illustrates a distinction of gender in American society by characterizing the lead woman, Ellie Andrews, as a helpless and vulnerable individual, while the lead male, Peter Warne, is depicted as the exact opposite: firm and persistent. This juxtaposition also coincides with general…

As one of the eight companies that constituted the so-called major studios that created the Hollywood studio system during the golden age, Harry Cohn has led Columbia Pictures gained the greatest creative turnover of any major studio, yet, Columbia Pictures nearly bankrupt after Harry Cohn’s death and was eventually sold to Coca-Cola. On the contrary, Disney did not focus on the revenue and Walt Disney did not became the first person in Hollywood to assume the title of president and producer,…

Over the past century, the rate of modernization has exponentially increased. From technological innovation to cultural shifts, the collective human experience has rapidly transformed. As a medium of expression, cinema has responded effectively to these changes by documenting the impacts of the evolving modern world. Film scholar Miriam Hansen’s modernity theory is manifested in creative innovations that visually showcase new technologies and respond to societal attitudes of the times. While…