May 10, 2006
It Happened One Night
A Very Cloying Engagement
Apparently It Happened One Night. I must have missed it. Given that after seventy-years, the 1934 film could still land at number 9 on Edward Copeland's Best of the Best Picture List, I figured I'd see it for a heartwarming history lesson in American cinema. Film history tells us this is the classic screwball comedy, in which Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert under the capable direction of a young Frank Capra, make us laugh about love, again, and again, and again. But I wasn't beguiled by its charms; mostly bored. Like a famous scene where Gable unsuccessfully hitches for a ride — what scene in this film isn't famous? — I feel as if history has passed me by.
The film opens with a hunger strike by its female protagonist, Elly Andrews (Claudette Colbert). The daughter of a multimillionaire, she's not exactly Bobby Sands. She refuses to eat because her father refuses to recognize her marriage to equally rich NYC playboy King Westley. After an escape of sorts from the posh confinement of her father's million dollar yacht — this isn't exactly Escape from Alcatraz — Elly splashes headfirst into the real world, striking off to New York to meet her husband. Meanwhile, newly unemployed reporter and apparent lush Peter Warne (Clark Gable) gets told off by his boss, climbs onto a bus, and falls into the lap of the biggest news story of the century — the missing Andrews daughter. Before you know it, Clark and Claudette are on the road … to romance!
This is the battle of the sexes where everyone wins, and as such, it's never really any battle at all. Elly's independent spirit is quickly explained away as rich girl naivety — her one love, King Wesley, happens to be the only man she's ever been alone with, and all that was due to happenstance. There's no reason why her growing love for Peter couldn't be a result of the same thing, other than he disciplines her, in Clark Gable's trademark gruff-but-jocular fashion, in the art of gender roles (Lesson 1: men control the purse strings, as Peter puts the kibosh on Elly's thrifty spending). A large portion of the picture depicts Elly's integration into the hoi polloi interstate bus-rider population, who sing dandy ditties until interrupted by a mother fainting from Depression-era hunger. But even Capra's elusions to economic class are cute, as the mother's pouty little son is paid off by an empathetic Elly.
It is said that the film's undershirt-less striptease by Clark Gable sent undershirt sales plummeting. It seems like a silly trend; perhaps Gable was just wearing the emperor's clothes. For me, It Happened One Night may very well be a case of the emperor's old clothes. Professional postmodernist Jean Baurillard writes that our age is dominated by "simulacrum." The word spills out of my mouth in such a pretentious fumble it seems impossible to use in everyday conversation with any amount of honesty (maybe it sounds better when the French say it). But while it's an esoteric term, it seems like a good diagnosis of my hapless stance toward It Happened One Night. "Simulacrum" describes how so much of popular culture is simply a copy of a copy. The original sources for things get lost, because pop culture is constantly refrencing itself. In this instance, It Happened One Night is the original source; endlessly referenced, it has probably shaped my life in ways I could never fully appreciate.
Apparently this is the film that launched a thousand romantic comedies. Now, I don't know if that's a good thing. Good or bad, I was less than inspired. I blame my 21st Century sense of humor. When Gable mugs for the camera and throws back a fist to hitch a car ride, it's cute, but hardly LOL, or even ROTFL, hardly ROTFLcopter. Indeed, when Claudette throws out a long stockinged leg to fetch the attention of a passing vehicle, I half expect ZZ Topp's "Legs" would have to roar over the soundtrack before the film could eke even a spare chuckle out of me.
Don't get me wrong, It Happened One Night has its moments. But that's about all it has. Moments. Whether away in a roadhouse, or away in a manger, the Warne/Andrews adventures are all glib and no depth. The film's central — and highly vetted — metaphor is a bed sheet separating Elly from Peter, ostensibly protecting the modesty of both, that Peter boastfully christens "The Walls of Jericho." Screwball comedy has been summarized as "sex comedy without the sex," and this is certainly a fun way to play around with the era's Hollywood censors.
Yet the whole bit is exceptional in the film, sticking out like Colbert's leg to a passing vehicle. By the time I got to the Walls of Jericho, I was thirsting for some irony; when I got their, my cup hardly ranneth over. Maybe a knowledge of the Bible would carry this metaphor farther, but to me it mostly compartmentalizes sex and marriage in an altogether conventional, if cloying, way. I'm probably wrong, but I would hope that gender roles have changed enough since 1934 that the battle of the sexes is more like guerilla warfare these days, and not the cute conventional plodding on display in Capra's film.
