It's been over eighty years since It Happened One Night debuted on screens and still, it remains the quintessential romantic comedy to watch. While being the influence of countless films since, It Happened One Night is triumphant and timeless because of its great cast, director, and script. At the start of the film, we see the beautiful Ellen Andrews (Claudette Colbert) in Florida aboard her wealthy father's luxury boat. Ellen is planning to marry King Westley, but her father disapproves of him and forces her to stay on the boat until he can find someone more suitable to his liking. This leads her to run away and seek out Westly herself while her father puts out a highly publicized bounty for her return. She boards a bus to New York and crosses paths with the charismatic Peter Warne (Clark Gable). He's a gifted newspaper reporter who also has a drinking problem that constantly gets him in trouble. Once Warne figures out who Ellen really is, he proposes a plan to her. He will escort her to New York for the rights to her story, which has become a national headline. While the seemingly mismatched pair goes on an adventure they eventually warm up and become close. The plot flies at a free-flowing pace that allows for wickedly good one-liners. The script is fantastic and allows for great comedic timing and also a sense of drama. There is a bit of suspense as the will-they won't-they couple explore their feelings for each other. While watching the film you get the sense that they will end up together, but it's never fully guaranteed and leaves room for you to doubt. We meet several supporting characters that mostly never overstay their welcomes, such as the bumbling Shapeley and boisterous Zeke. They are great in the small amount of time they get and don't distract from the main narrative. One minor problem with the story is that the geography is very confusing. The audience is left out of the loop when it comes to knowing where exactly the leads are. This makes it hard to track the importance of each setting.This is the prime example and maybe founding of the screwball comedy. Screwball comedies tell the story of two leads (often an unmarried man and woman) that come from different social classes and how they interact with each other based on their previous lifestyles. If you like films such as Heaven Can Wait and Raising Arizona, you should thank this film for popularizing the genre. Frank Capra won the academy award for Best Director for this film and he totally deserved it. He balances his cast well and allows them to have total freedom within the cramped space of the frame. He pushes the camera for claustrophobic scenes that force the actors to work together to make the physical comedy work. The acting is the definite draw and best part of the film. Both Gable and Colbert took home academy awards for their performances. Gable will go down as one of the best romantic leads ever. He's handsome, quick on his feet, and witty. He also delivers the perfect one-liners with confidence and swagger to make women want him and men to want to be him. Colbert does an excellent job as the uptight and bratty female that so many leading ladies are still trying to replicate almost eighty years later. She perfectly embodies a rich girl that is out of her element while in the real world. She bounces off Gable's laid back working man character with ease and her one-liners are just as good or even better than his. Walter Connolly also does a good job as Ellie's wealthy father, Alexander Andrews. He plays the overprotective but also understanding father. At first, he wants Ellen to marry someone rich and famous in order to boost his social status, but after seeing her unhappiness he changes and sees the errors of his ways. He's one of those fathers that every girl wants and every man should strive to be. It Happened One Night is the biggest influence on the romantic comedy genre. Having the great pair of Gable and Colbert, and Capra as the director lifts this film to the heavens of classic cinema. Even in 2017 the film is still fun and can be used to teach writers how to create good comedy.

The dialog is witty, the characters are delightful, and the story is timeless. The way it managed to weave together a story of conflicing interests and miscommunicated interests was so good, it became a cliché in romantic comedies, even to this day. However, unlike some other formulaic cash grabs you might see today, nothing about the misunderstanding felt forced or overly coincidental. The acting was great, and Clark Gabels performance was charming, smooth, and reluctant, akin to Bogart in Casablanca.

This may be but a wish-fulfillment farce, but well-crafted all the same. It is never dull, and the story keeps you off-balance so the viewer never can really be sure how things will turn out.A spoiled daughter of a very rich father, tiring of his gilded cage, finally runs off to elope with a daredevil aviator, who is in New York. The father hires a slew of detectives to locate her, but she manages to get on a bus with a reporter who has heard about her situation and wants a big story to boost his career. With that purpose, he helps the daughter on her way to New York, but plenty of things go wrong along the way. And to make matters worse, the father decides to allow the marriage to take place-but complications ensue from that.Great character interaction and acting not only between the two leads, but between each of them as well as side characters make the story exciting, and the atmosphere of a dull, irritating bus ride and later running through the countryside is perfectly conveyed. Arguably one of the greatest of Frank Capra's movies.

This is a great early road film. It is one of Gable's best after "Gone with the wind". Claudette Colbert, who is really beautiful, plays a controlled rich man's daughter who, after a bitter dispute, dives (very smooth and skillfully) off their rich yatcht, hops on a bus, and goes from Miami to New York to be with her fiancé that her super controlling dad is trying to stop her from marrying. Claudette is a grown woman, her fiancé is not a criminal or anything, he's just someone her dad just personally dislikes. So I am on Claudette's side and I feel that her dad was controlling to an unecceptable level, he was sending out detectives after her, that's just not OK considering the circumstances. Getting away from her dad's home was not illegal since she was a grown woman.Claudette meets Clark on the bus through interesting and humorous circumstances. I loved all the wit and repitour between the two. Clark's hilarious responses to the uptight bus driver saying "oh yeah?". Clark finding out the truth about Claudette and him blackmailing her to both help get her to her fiancé and to get his newspaper editor job back, cause he'll have a good story on her, and many other great and funny situations and dialogue between the two of them. The moment in the cabin when Claudette's dad's detectives were looking for her, and she and Clark put on a last minute act to fool them,them yelling at each other and then Clark telling the detectives "too bad you're not looking for a plumber's daughter!"(Claudette earlier said " I'd trade places with a plumber's daughter any day"). The character of Shipley, I completely understood Claudette's reaction, Shipley was annoying. And then Clark lying to Shiply about being a gangster to scare him away, since he threatened to butt in front of Clark to grab half the $10,000 reward of returning her to her dad. The way Shiply ran off was the first funny thing he did. Then Clark and Claudette ditch the bus while saying "when Shiply stops running, he will start thinking". I liked the night time scene next where they set up camp outside, and Claudette lying back in the hay with the moonlight shining on her face, a nice old fashioned feel it gave. I also enjoyed the hitch hiking talk between them. Clark showing her all the different thumb signals, then him not being able to get any stoppers. Then Claudette pulling her dress to her knee and the first car seeing her stops. Claudette then tells Clark "goes to show, the leg's mightier than the thumb. Clark: " why didn't you take off all your clothes? We coulda stopped 40 cars". Claudette: "I'll remember that the next time we need 40 cars". Hilarious. I'm not sure if this film was pre or post code but there were a couple sort of pre code references. Clark, while pretending to sleep, laying his hand facing up on the seat next to him when he sees Claudette coming back to sit there, Clark demonstrating to Claudette in what order he undresses as he's doing so in front of her, and his talk about "the walls of Jerihco". None of those things were anything as risky as what you have today, but there are a lot of pre code films that were considered risky by 1930s standards and not so risky today. Anyway, except for Claudette's dad's actions being too far, this film was great. And I loved the bus scene where everybody is singing to " Man on flying trapeze", that scene really reminded me of this film being an older, more simple time.