It Happened One Night (1934)

Frank Capra’s “It Happened One Night”

Thematic Elements: 

Frank Capra’s ‘It Happened One Night’ is a film that takes place in 1934, at a time of great economic turmoil in America. Many people during this time felt trapped and restless about their circumstances. Capra presents us with two protagonists who are also feel trapped and restless about their circumstances – albeit for incredibly different and perhaps opposite reasons. Ellie is stuck in a wealthy lifestyle – unable to make her own independence choices – a slave to her affluent father’s wishes. Peter is stuck at a job that doesn’t appreciate him and one that he is tired of – however because times are so tight, he desperately requires a job to keep himself afloat. Being stuck makes them feel restless. Ellie wants freedom and separation from her economic dependencies. Peter wants the opposite – he wants the freedom that economic security provides to him as he has difficulty getting along without it. Once Ellie travels outside of her comfort zone, she encounters elements of her declass surroundings that are unfamiliar to her. This is made apparent when she isn’t being careful enough to notice someone stealing her suitcase – to which Peter reprimands her for not paying attention. Peter continuously throughout the film tells her that she doesn’t know how to behave in a society outside of her higher economic class. The car that Ellie stops by lifting her hem to reveal her leg was just a man who ends up stealing their remaining suitcases. The protagonists are in a society of people out of gain any means necessary to survive. Ellie is unaware of the dangers of life and the things that could fall to her in the outside world, this makes her characters incredibly spoiled and very unaware. Peter is very aware of the dangers of the outside world, which allows him to be more versatile in his ability to manipulate people and maneuver through the world around them. However, as the characters brave and maneuver the outside world, they find something incredibly valuable – human connection. This human connection can be found by the protagonists when they come across the hardships of self-dependency and the realities that the economic depression presented. The realities of the economic depression are prevalent when the protagonists come across a woman who has fainted on the bus due to malnutrition. Peter speaks with her crying son and gives him money to get him and his mother food. The realities of the economic troubles of the everyday person presents the characters a mode for stepping off their high horses and reuniting with a true element of life – compassion and understanding. This compassion and understanding not only makes the characters realize the value of their circumstances, but also makes them more amenable to the people around them and each other. The harsh realities of the outside world give the characters a newfound element of human connection that they lacked in the beginning. This human connection comes to the characters in a variety of ways throughout the film. At first, they come across people who either annoy them or who are trying to take advantage of them. As time moves on, they come across scenes of togetherness and unity that helps them feel a part of the human spirit. This is especially noticeable during the scene in which the entire bus breaks out into songs as all the passengers (even the bus driver) sing together in joyous unity. The feelings of being stuck by their circumstances at the beginning of the film is due to a lack the characters feel in themselves – a loneliness and isolation that makes them feel trapped. The thing that sets them free is not removing themselves from their original place but finding in each other someone who can really know and understand them, someone to take them as they are – which is aided by both the dangers and joys the ‘outside’ world provides to them. What was once the blanket called Jericho that literally separated them in their rooms and quite literally on screen, came tumbling down at the end of the film to visually a sense of unity they have found with the other. 

Camerawork: 

The characters first appear in very tight spaces. This goes directly with the notion that the protagonists are trapped by their circumstances in the beginning of the film – this is shown literally as Capra keeps the characters in very tight and close spaces to emphasize this feeling of being trapped and restless. Ellie is shown in the beginning to be in a cramped room on a boat, until the moment she jumps off the boat. Peter is first shown inside a tight phone booth surrounded by people listening to his conversation with his newspaper publisher as they discuss him being fired from the paper. The two characters eventually end up on the bus together, where there are no places to sit and they must sit together on the very tiny back seat – another place for them to be cramped in one place. They also feel this when they share the same motel room together – separated by a blanket at the center of the room. This makes them feel trapped and crapped – this time by the other person. It isn’t until they begin to really know each other that this visual sensation of being cramped begins to loosen up – as they move further down the road to their destination. This begins to take shape as the characters move further and further away from the metropolitan society as they begin to enter the vastness of natural locations. These natural locations, on empty highways and walking through fields presents to the characters the freedom they were looking for – which Capra uses those vast space to visually emphasize this freedom. Capra presents this visual freedom to the characters for an opportunity to let themselves go and be truly free to live outside of society – which gives the characters a newfound sense of understanding in themselves (and they have the freedom to do so).

Best Shot:

The best shot in the film is the scene in which the camera tracks Ellie as she passes through the poverty-stricken autocamp as she is looking for the shower rooms. A wealthy upper-class girl is shown moving through broken down cars, delipidated buildings, and visually dirty small towers who are laboring & talking. However, Ellie appears not to notice any of this as she doesn’t appear affected by it at all. This can be attributed to her lack of awareness with the world around her that attributes to her spoiled, rich lifestyle in the beginning of the film. But the visually disparity made in the mind of the audience places her in a world opposite of the one she began the film with, trying to ignore the realities of life and the human connection that can be made if you open yourself up to the world, rather than to close yourself off in the trapped environments you find yourself in.