It Happened One Night – Wellington Film Society

Frank Capra, USA 1934, 105 mins, HD, PG.

As buoyant and elegant as bubbles in a glass of champagne, Frank Capra's sublime 1934 comedy, written by long-time collaborator Robert Riskin, survives triumphantly because of its wit, charm, romantic idealism and its shrewd sketch of married life. Clark Gable plays roguish newspaperman Peter Warne; he encounters Ellie Andrews, played by Claudette Colbert, on a night bus to New York.

She's a haughty, gamine socialite on the run from her domineering millionaire father and, recognising her from a press photo, Warne offers a deal: he won't turn her in, if she will give him the exclusive story. So they travel together, sharing motel rooms by impersonating a quarrelling married couple – and both are secretly awed by how easily this imposture comes to them, and how miraculous is their feisty chemistry.

Warne decorously hangs a blanket between their twin beds: a “Wall Of Jericho” which no trumpet-blast will ever bring down – and that wall symbolises the erotic tension. Gable was 33, not yet the alpha-male of Gone With the Wind, thinner, younger, spindlier; Claudette Colbert's doe-eyed heiress has something of a wary, yet skittish woodland creature, as she disapprovingly peeps round the blanket. A great pleasure. - Peter Bradshaw, Guardian, 28 October 2010