It Happened One Night
Sep. 10th, 2011 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marinessMy brother and I just finished watching It Happened One Night, for two reasons: one, he was convinced that no Academy Award Best Picture winner has ever had a happy ending (I guess Return of the King is mildly arguable here) or been a comedy (Return of the King is not arguable here) and that all Oscar winning films are inevitably depressing (I think we're back to the arguing), and two, this was my maternal grandmother's hands-down favorite film despite her equally hands down disapproval of Clark Gable's private life, in particular hanging out with that awful Joan Crawford person. (My paternal grandmother was slightly less disapproving but could and did gleefully recount each and every woman that Clark Gable slept with and the marriages, in order.)
This is the sort of film that doesn't need a review, exactly, but some things I noted while watching:
1. Good bizarre aliens do people smoke a lot in 1930s films. Like, all the time. Like, every single character. Pause two seconds and someone's lighting up. What makes this even more striking, in this film, is that Peter and Ellie can't afford food and are skimping on meals and stealing raw carrots and yet somehow or other are still managing to smoke. Peter trades his suitcase, nearly all of his clothing, and his hat for some gas – and yet hangs on to the pipe. How cheap were cigarettes back then?
2. There's a marvelous bit where a band just happens to be in the back of a Greyhound bus, and they just happen to start playing, and everyone is singing along, not a single MP3 player or iPod in sight. I had to wonder if anyone would even notice these days….although I also remembered, not too long ago, being with my singing group in a Disney busy and breaking into "Rose, Rose," (a round) and following that up with an English madrigal and getting rather stunned applause, so it can happen.
3. I'd heard that portions of this film inspired the creator of Bugs Bunny and Pepe LePew, but this was the first time I saw it. On a related note, wow, is the guy who inspired Pepe LePew uninspiring and ugly in the film -- I mean, definitely gets us on the side of hoping Clark Gable wins the girl, and definitely gives us an idea of how desperate Ellie is before her escape and how right her father is to want the marriage annulled (if actually forbidding the marriage, in the 20th century, seems a bit much). Just -- ugly and blah and uncharming with no redeeming values except the ability to fly a plane.
4. I should be upset by the fact that early in the film, Ellie's father slaps her in the face, and later, Peter spanks her while carrying her across a river. I should be, but I'm not, for three reasons: one, both are very light strikes that do not and are not meant to cause pain or injury; two, in the first case, Ellie's father is responding to the fact that the adult Ellie has just overthrown a tray of food that he's been eating; three, Ellie doesn't just take the slap from her father, or agree she deserves it; she gets furious and takes off – starting the film; and four, let's face it, the gender relations in this film are not exactly contemporary.
5. Particularly the bits where they show up at a small roadside camp place/hotel – with twin beds in each cabin – and have to pretend that they are married in order to share a cabin.
6. But for all that, kudos to a film that presents Ellie as, yes, highly sheltered and naïve and more than occasionally unthinking, but also smart, determined and not afraid to use her sexuality when necessary. And for creating a relationship that ends up being between two equals, based on respect.
7. No, I do not believe that Peter and Ellie waited until her annulment was official before sleeping together. Sorry. I'm astounded enough they made it through the entire film without a single kiss.
8. If you see it, the first twenty minutes of the film are, I admit, slow – I was wondering, on this rewatch, just why I liked the film so much – until Ellie and Peter end up in a cabin together. And then it sucks you in. By the time Peter was begging his editor for money I was yelling at the film "JUST GIVE HIM THE CASH ALREADY HE'S GOT TO GET BACK IN TIME!" (I've seen this film about, um six times.) And all tense until the scene of Ellie's wedding.
9…although, that wedding. Ok, well, since Ellie and King were already legally married and only lacked the church service part, I guess it's not a big deal that King saw the bride in her wedding dress before the wedding (although the amount that she's drinking ought to be raising some eyebrows) but what I don't exactly get is the timing: Ellie and her father talk, while she's all dressed up and ready for the wedding, she cries a bit, King shows up, they chat, Ellie's father calls Peter, who somehow has time to get out to Westchester or Long Island (whichever) and chat with her father; Ellie drinks more….
….and then, the same day, King apparently has time to head out, get into a little plane, and fly it over to her house for a dramatic wedding landing, which, ok, yes, but then why did he come by earlier? Just to annoy me and provide further inspiration for the character of Pepe LePew? We'll never know.
Anyway, despite the sound problems, the gender stuff, and my conviction that It Happened One Night would have been a very, very different movie with cell phones, good flick.
This is the sort of film that doesn't need a review, exactly, but some things I noted while watching:
1. Good bizarre aliens do people smoke a lot in 1930s films. Like, all the time. Like, every single character. Pause two seconds and someone's lighting up. What makes this even more striking, in this film, is that Peter and Ellie can't afford food and are skimping on meals and stealing raw carrots and yet somehow or other are still managing to smoke. Peter trades his suitcase, nearly all of his clothing, and his hat for some gas – and yet hangs on to the pipe. How cheap were cigarettes back then?
2. There's a marvelous bit where a band just happens to be in the back of a Greyhound bus, and they just happen to start playing, and everyone is singing along, not a single MP3 player or iPod in sight. I had to wonder if anyone would even notice these days….although I also remembered, not too long ago, being with my singing group in a Disney busy and breaking into "Rose, Rose," (a round) and following that up with an English madrigal and getting rather stunned applause, so it can happen.
3. I'd heard that portions of this film inspired the creator of Bugs Bunny and Pepe LePew, but this was the first time I saw it. On a related note, wow, is the guy who inspired Pepe LePew uninspiring and ugly in the film -- I mean, definitely gets us on the side of hoping Clark Gable wins the girl, and definitely gives us an idea of how desperate Ellie is before her escape and how right her father is to want the marriage annulled (if actually forbidding the marriage, in the 20th century, seems a bit much). Just -- ugly and blah and uncharming with no redeeming values except the ability to fly a plane.
4. I should be upset by the fact that early in the film, Ellie's father slaps her in the face, and later, Peter spanks her while carrying her across a river. I should be, but I'm not, for three reasons: one, both are very light strikes that do not and are not meant to cause pain or injury; two, in the first case, Ellie's father is responding to the fact that the adult Ellie has just overthrown a tray of food that he's been eating; three, Ellie doesn't just take the slap from her father, or agree she deserves it; she gets furious and takes off – starting the film; and four, let's face it, the gender relations in this film are not exactly contemporary.
5. Particularly the bits where they show up at a small roadside camp place/hotel – with twin beds in each cabin – and have to pretend that they are married in order to share a cabin.
6. But for all that, kudos to a film that presents Ellie as, yes, highly sheltered and naïve and more than occasionally unthinking, but also smart, determined and not afraid to use her sexuality when necessary. And for creating a relationship that ends up being between two equals, based on respect.
7. No, I do not believe that Peter and Ellie waited until her annulment was official before sleeping together. Sorry. I'm astounded enough they made it through the entire film without a single kiss.
8. If you see it, the first twenty minutes of the film are, I admit, slow – I was wondering, on this rewatch, just why I liked the film so much – until Ellie and Peter end up in a cabin together. And then it sucks you in. By the time Peter was begging his editor for money I was yelling at the film "JUST GIVE HIM THE CASH ALREADY HE'S GOT TO GET BACK IN TIME!" (I've seen this film about, um six times.) And all tense until the scene of Ellie's wedding.
9…although, that wedding. Ok, well, since Ellie and King were already legally married and only lacked the church service part, I guess it's not a big deal that King saw the bride in her wedding dress before the wedding (although the amount that she's drinking ought to be raising some eyebrows) but what I don't exactly get is the timing: Ellie and her father talk, while she's all dressed up and ready for the wedding, she cries a bit, King shows up, they chat, Ellie's father calls Peter, who somehow has time to get out to Westchester or Long Island (whichever) and chat with her father; Ellie drinks more….
….and then, the same day, King apparently has time to head out, get into a little plane, and fly it over to her house for a dramatic wedding landing, which, ok, yes, but then why did he come by earlier? Just to annoy me and provide further inspiration for the character of Pepe LePew? We'll never know.
Anyway, despite the sound problems, the gender stuff, and my conviction that It Happened One Night would have been a very, very different movie with cell phones, good flick.