IMDb #152 Review: It Happened One Night (1934)

Source: Wikipedia

Yet another spoiled heiress flees from yet another wedding. Yet another Joe Schmoe reporter unknowingly cozies up to her and wheedles his way into getting the biggest scoop of his hack career.

If it sounds cliche, it's because this exquisitely preserved cinematic mummy established the cliches.

Some parts are different. The girl jumps off her dad's Navy boat and swims to shore, so she's kind of a badass. She meets her smartly-dressed smartass by falling asleep on his shoulder on the overnight bus, so she's kind of clueless.

The guy, however. He skips an hour of pointless misunderstandings and tells her outright: he's a journalist, he knows who she is, and he's here to help her out. Which frees up more time for G-rated sexual tension when they have to share a room (rope + blanket = Wall of Jericho, apparently). Fortunately, they're frighteningly natural at marriage roleplay -- they have the bickering down pat.

While the unhappy couple crosses the Eastern Seaboard on $4, the rich father sics detectives on her. And gets the newspapers involved.

This girl's abrupt disappearance makes front-page news. Never mind the Depression, or rampant unemployment, or Chancellor Hitler's rise to power -- the general public is more interested in the boringly plush lives of the rich and famous. (Who can blame them.)

The guy teaches the girl the joys of ordinary life. Budgeting, waiting in lines, not missing buses, telling off creepers, and being told no. Meanwhile, she teaches him patience and complex journalistic ethics and effective hitchhiking technique (hike up the skirt -- the limb is mightier than the thumb, indeed).

Since this groundbreaking talkie practically rooted itself in the cement foundation of romantic comedy, you can probably guess how it ends. Innocuously. When the odd couple reunites with her father and the groom-to-be, and they have to part at last, and then--

A car chase. You got me, movie.

The title still makes no sense. What happened? And they were gone more than one day, so which night? Unless they refer to sexytimes. (This was pre-Hays code.) Which only makes things more complicated, because how are we supposed to know what night things happened or didn't. Thanks for taxing our brains with a romantic comedy, Frank Capra.

105 minutes.