1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die Wiki
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It Happened One Night

#89. It Happened One Night

  • Year: 1934
  • Country: USA
  • Production: Columbia, 105m B&W
  • Director: Frank Capra
  • Producer: Frank Capra, Harry Cohn
  • Screenplay: Samuel Hopkins Adams, Robert Riskin
  • Photography: Joseph Walker
  • Music: Howard Jackson, Louis Silvers
  • Cast: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns, Jameson Thomas, Alan Hale
  • Oscar Wins: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay

Abridged Book Description[]

Make no mistake, It Happened One Night - the first of only three films to win all five major Academy Awards - is movie magic... Capra was expert at cleverly weaving a story from altogether familiar and ordinary motifs: eating, verbal slang ("ah, nuts"), snoring, washing, dressing and undressing. True to the romantic comedy formula, identities are momentarily dissolved whenever a masquerade is necessary or able to be exploited for secret entertainment... Critics can't rhapsodize over Capra's power of montage or mise en scène; style was a functional, conventional matter for him. But he did have a perfect sense of script (in both overall structure and small details), and a brilliant rapport with his charismatic actors. Gable and Colbert help to truly equalize this one-upmanship battle of the sexes, diluting that ideological thrust of the script which suggests that proletarian guys should teach spoiled gals a thing or two about real life.

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