It Happened One Night [Blu-ray]

Frank Capra’s 1934 film, “It Happened One Night,” adapts Robert Riskin’s screenplay based on Samuel Hopkins Adams’ story, “Night Bus.” The story focuses on heiress Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) who eloped with pilot King Westley (Jameson Thomas). Her father, Alexander (Walter Connolly), wants to annul the marriage. Ellie manages to escape her father in order to make her way back to King, but along the way she meets reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable), who agrees to help her reunite with King in exchange for an exclusive about her story. If she doesn’t agree, he will tell her father where she is. Ellie agrees and the two find themselves as traveling companions. They have several misadventures along the way and eventually develop a mutual attraction. Andrews initially offers a reward to Peter, but he turns it down, revealing his love for Ellie. Andrews then helps the two to reunite, leading to a fantastic film climax befitting the screwball comedy tone of the story.The story is a great example of the screwball comedy, particularly in the pre-Code era with scenes that would be considered racy within a decade but are tamer than basic TV nowadays. What really sets this apart is the writing and characters. Colbert and Gable make a fantastic duo with the dialogue and antics coming fast and quick. If you’re not paying attention, you might have to rewind to catch everything. Additionally, the film is the first of only three ever to win all five major Academy Awards (including “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” [1975] and “The Silence of the Lambs” [1991]). This Blu-Ray set from the Criterion Collection includes a conversation between film critics on the subject of screwball comedy; a 1999 interview with Frank Capra, Jr.; a 1997 feature-length documentary about Frank Capra’s life and career; a newly digitized transfer of Capra’s first film, the silent short “Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House,” with a new score; the American Film Institute’s 1982 tribute to Capra; the film trailer; and an essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme. The booklet including the essay also includes a description of the digital transfer process and production credits. Criterion’s release of this classic is a great way for film fans and scholars to add it to their collections.

I love, love, love this movie! I mean, Clark Gable is an amazing, and very handsome, actor who always adds a lot of swag to his roles... and this was no different!! A very basic summary is this: A wealthy woman is traveling by bus to get away from her life. She meets the handsome Clark Gable who helps her get where she needs to go. As you might guess, there is some romance between the two main actors! This is a classic movie that you have to see at least once in your life! It will show you what life was like in the late 20s/early 30s the fashions of the day, the social mores of the time, etc. It's awesome!

Great movie with a moral outcome. Very clear picture on a full screen on an old set but no subtitles or scene selections just fast forward.

This is such a cute movie.College class purchase.Loved by all!

The end is the beginning

Frankly, I thought it was a waste of money a movie like this should be for free, but we got through it. I cannot recommend it boring boring

Probably one of the best movies ever made. Look up the history of this film, its a fascinating read and a fantastic film.Gives a great snapshot into some common aspects of the depression and the era.

This is one of my favorite movies. Claudette Colbert is a spoiled heiress trying to get from Florida to New York without being stopped by her father, and Clark Gable is the wise-cracking newspaper man who decides to help her get to New York so he can sell her story. This is one of the first romantic comedies, and is arguably the first time the leading man also provided the comic relief. It's very watchable, very funny, and its influence can be seen in nearly every romantic comedy made since 1935.Having recently watched the Criterion Collection DVD of Gold Rush (1925) (which looks amazing), I had high hopes for It Happened One Night's transfer to blu ray. The first several minutes are a vast improvement to the DVD. The water looked amazing, for example. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of sound issues and fuzzy images. For example when Clark Gable yells, "Quit bawling!" the audio has the same feedback as my DVD copy. And there are several scenes that seem out of focus/fuzzy, or the picture gets a bit washed out or a little too dark, and I swear I could still hear a hiss in a couple of the late night scenes. I know there's only so much they can do to restore these old negatives, but it seemed like they only attempted to restore the first fifteen minutes or so and gave up.The blu ray is also missing a handful of special features that are on my DVD (the vintage ads, the live radio re-broadcast, talent files, and Frank Capra, Jr's commentary track). There are new special features on the blu ray, but I'll be keeping my old DVD copy in order to retain the old special features.All in all, I'm happy that I bought the Criterion Collection blu ray, but only because I adore this movie so much. I would recommend people with a casual interest in this film to simply get the DVD since the picture and sound are nearly identical (to me).

Quite a fun and well made film but I don’t quite understand the rave reviews either. The cinematography is nice, the performances are good and well captured, it has a natural style to it, taking place over just a few days things feel very well edited and there’s a nice sense of intrigue to it and a feisty clash of personalities. You see the ending coming from about a mile away but overall not a bad film, a fairly good rom com, one thing I sort of admired about it was not making the two lead characters too likeable and sweet, one is a brash reporter and the other a the spoilt daughter of a rich banker.

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this.There was really good chemistry between the two leads, which is vital in a rom-com type movie.I was surprised at how risqué a few of the scenes were given when it was made, but by that I mean good, clean fun with just the tiniest hint of impropriety.You know the story...boy and girl from opposite backgrounds thrown together, take an instant dislike to each other, and then....Well we all have a good idea how it's going to end, right?But the fun part is the journey that takes us there.We've all seen this scenario a thousand times in films, and yet this movie which was made 85 years ago still to my eyes appears fresh, most likely because of the snappy dialogue and the chemistry of the leads.There are a few plot holes, most notably at the start of the film where she jumps overboard in her dressing gown and appears in the next scene in a train station fully clothed...carrying a suitcase??But really that's just being pedantic because it's a fairy tale rom-com and so long as it's romantic and funny all the rest is irrelevant anyway.So is this my favourite black and white film?Alas no....but as I'm writing this review and thinking back to the film, I have to admit that it has a fair shot at sneaking into the top ten....and that's no bad thing.

The film itself is not the subject of my rating. It's the presentation of the content of this particular issue.With overall packaging in very acceptable style and in English, the actual disc originates from Spain andhas the Spanish title for this famous film. On the plus side of its content, there is a good range oflanguages and much better range of subtitles - and, thank goodness for the latter because - and this isthe major reason for my personal rating for this issue - the audio level is very low from the outset, evenat maximum volume on my player. I have experienced this fault in various other DVDs and find it veryirritating. The reason is hard to understand, not least with the modern technology that exists toimprove/update materials of this type. So, the film is worth 5 stars. Its presentation here gets fewerfor the reasons given.

This is a romantic comedy that still can serve as a blueprint of one, dwarfing countless of the genre's younger movies by a big margin. One of the first movies to successfully tackle a cross-class romance (which was quite daring in the Big Crisis America), it featured one of the biggest celebrities of the decade, Clark Gable (who wore no undershirt in a crucial scene, after which their sales reportedly plummeted) and the French-born, big-eyed Claudette Colbert. As a common journalist and a rich heiress, under the sure hand of director Frank Capra, their chemistry is surprisingly palpable. Partly a road movie, it starts on a yacht, continues on a bus, in a car and climaxes in a beautiful New York garden, when a wedding (with not Gable as a groom) is to be held. One of the first large hits of Columbia studio, the movie is still inspiring after more than eight decades, yet it remains curiously innocent, as the complete fulfillment of the relationship indeed happened IN, not before marriage.

Frank Capra’s Academy Award for Best Picture-winning It Happened One Night is a romantic comedy that can also be (and has been) fairly accurately described as a screwball comedy. Many decades after it was made, it remains frequently very funny, but as one of the last pre-Code movies it is also worth watching for its risqué aspects, which the following year it might not have gotten away with.It happened One Night has a fairly predictable story that sees heiress Ellie Andrews running away from her father after he tries to have her marriage annulled and setting off on a cross country road trip for which she is spectacularly ill-equipped in order to reach her husband. She soon falls in with drunken newspaper reporter Peter Warne, and they take an instant dislike to one another: it doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to work out how their relationship will unfold. And indeed Capra doesn’t even bother trying to keep the audience guessing about where the film is heading, but provides a slightly mad-cap romp – written at the last minute on the insistence of his stars – in order to make the journey more interesting.What is striking about the film is that it thus revolves around a love affair between a single man and a married woman, something that the Code would almost certainly have not allowed. Or at least not in a screwball comedy in which Peter flippantly strips to his trousers in front of Ellie and later slaps her on the backside as he carries her across a river. By modern standards, the film is positively tame, but at the time it must have raised a few eyebrows. Especially as it concludes with Ellie abandoning her husband at the altar (their first wedding having been annulled) whilst her father looks on gleefully.Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean that It Happened One Night should be watched merely as a historical cinematic curiosity: it remains hugely entertaining. The on-screen chemistry between its two stars is palpable and Claudette Colbert is perfectly cast as the petulant Ellie, capable of being alternately irritating and endearing, whilst Clark Gable demonstrates great comic timing as Peter. The film is often very funny, from Claudette diving into the sea from her father’s boat, through such scenes as Peter and her posing as an arguing couple to hide her real identity from a pair of detectives, to Peter’s hilarious moment when Roscoe Karns’ Oscar Shapeley tries to blackmail him into turning Ellie in for the reward her father has posted and Peter terrifies him by pretending that he’s kidnapped her and wants his help in a possible shoot out with the cops.The film is full of amusing moments. There’s the hitch-hiking scene, the scene when Peter fails to thumb a lift after several attempts an Ellie succeeds by flashing her leg at a passing car, and Peter’s brilliantly grumpy conversation with Ellie’s father when he demands reimbursement for all of the belongings that he had to sacrifice whilst escorting her across country. In addition to the two stars, the story is filled with vaguely outlandish characters, resulting in great comedic performances from all concerned, including Karns but also Alan Hale as Danker, the singing car driver, Charles C. Wilson as Joe Gordon, Warne’s newspaper editor boss, and Walter Connolly as Alexander Andrews, Ellie’s possessive father (brilliantly, when he orders a telegram sent to the detectives he wants to track Ellie down, it begins with the line “daughter escaped again”).In amongst all of the jokes and comic set-pieces, the film is often quite touching too, such as when Ellie realises that she loves Peter and when – having returned home – her supposedly controlling father is sensitive enough to realise that she has found somebody other than her husband and promises to move heaven and earth to make her happy. It is often the little things that make the film great – the sing-along scene for example, which shows Ellie slowly shaking off her spoilt outlook on life. Much of this is down to Capra. A director who eschewed flashy techniques, he brings a perfect lightness of touch to the film and Joseph Walker’s cinematography suits his style, with shots that allow the cast room to move. Despite its age, the film still looks pretty good, although some of the exteriors are obviously filmed on studio sets rather than locations. That said, the sets are impressively detailed and convincing enough.The only way in which It Happened One Night hasn’t aged well is in Alexander slapping his daughter’s face and Peter suggesting that she needs a husband who will occasionally “sock” her to keep her in line: it’s an alarmingly casual attitude to violence towards women that isn’t comfortable. But when watching old films, it is inevitable that disturbing anachronisms will occasionally be found: they are the only sour note in a film that otherwise remains both funny and charming.