by Laura Lai/Review
Ellen Andrews – Claudette Colbert (Best Actress Academy Award, 1935)
Peter Warne – Clark Gable (Best Actor Oscar)
Director
– Frank Capra (Best Director Oscar)
and
the Academy Award for the Best Picture
On Saturday evening I watched
again – on TV this time – one of my favorite movies inspired by a true story: ‘The
Queen’. Last time, I watched it in cinema, in 2006, when I was in Switzerland
researching for my doctoral thesis. Lately, I have been busy improving
different aspects of my writing process. For example, I learned how to write
children’s books in PowerPoint and I have just finished a mini-series of three
volumes. For the last one, I enjoyed learning to edit pictures and paint.net
was just enough as a tool for what I needed for this series.
I love embracing different writing experiences – despite authors saying that each writer needs to find its niche – because I think that different ideas need a different writing form to be best expressed. As long as international borders remain close and my process of relocation abroad stagnates, I want to use this precious given time to write and to learn to master new techniques that will always stay useful regardless of how busy my life may turn later. Therefore, I continue practicing on this Writing Blog comments, essays and reviews.
Today, I continue the series of reviewing the old movies of the 1930s. Here is the queen of the 1935 AcademyAwards:‘It Happened One Night’ (1934), directed by Frank Capra. This movie can be characterized in two words: ‘decency’ and ‘surprise’.
Ellen
Andrews (Claudette Colbert) is the daughter of a Wall Street banker, Alexander
Andrews (Walter Connolly). She is engaged to a man from her high-society, but
she elopes and she travels to New York with different transport means. On this
trip, she meets Peter Warne (Clark Gable) – a journalist. In the meantime, the
father publishes her daughter’s picture in all newspapers and offers $10,000
for relevant information.
This
story, directed by Frank Capra, puts in contrast the American county life and
the city of New York, mainly the Wall Street, as well as the difference of
mentalities between these two worlds. There is a scene showing Ellen travelling
by bus and telling an agent: ‘I’ll be ten minutes late. Please tell the driver
to wait for me.’ The humor of this movie relies precisely on this difference of
code of conduct between society’s layers. Another element of humor – that may
not have been envisaged as such in 1934, but that is so perceived in 2020 – is the
decent use of sexuality: in several scenes, the two protagonists need to share
a two-bed room, and they also use a blanket as a curtain between the two beds.
It
is said that even the funds Columbia Pictures had at disposal to produce this
movie were also … decent, which not a surprise is given the Great Depression
circumstances of the 1930s. Despite the limited funds, the actors were
professional. And what happened next, was the box office surprisingly great
success! What surprised me at this movie was Frank Capra’s decision to
represent in this movie (in 1934 when the society was more patriarchic than
nowadays) the man cooking breakfast for his ‘alleged’ wife. In the 21st
century, some young women complain that even after the first night together,
the man asks: ‘What do we have for breakfast?’
The
question that remained unanswered to me relates to the title. Why ‘It Happened
One Night’ since the elopement lasted more than one night? In one scene, Ellen
says that it is the first time she is alone with a man in a room. But this can
only be half of the answer. It can’t be that simple! Frank Capra is one of the
greatest directors of the 1930s. There must be something Peter does, too, that
suggests the title. My opinion is that in which concerns him, the answer is
more subtle: when he hitch hikes, he uses his thumb – one thumb. You are very
welcome to watch the movie and to have your opinion on this matter that may be
very different than mine!
On the occasion of this movie, I liked to have a review of the 1934 American newspapers. And I learned a new word: ‘autogyro’. Ellen’s high-society groom announced in a national newspaper (!) that he would come to his wedding by ‘autogyro’. I waited (impatiently, I would say) to see what that was. It is the predecessor of the ‘private jet’ or the ‘helicopter’. It is interesting to notice that the suggested cooking breakfast concept did not fully make it to the 21st century, but the habit to come to your wedding with the helicopter (even if it is not organized on the top of the mountain) successfully got to the 21st century! I have imagination, but I have never ever had fantasies parachuting myself at my own wedding! J
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