I can’t be all doom and gloom, all the time. In fact, sometimes I like to slow down and take a different perspective. The other night my wife and I enjoyed (thanks to the technological wonder that is NetFlix) “It Happened One Night” a 1934 classic starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. I have a soft spot in my heart for classics, nothing at all against new movies, because I enjoy all the latest digital surround sound, high definition techno-wizardry I can get my hands on. But a good story can overcome almost anything while even the greatest special effects and CGI guarantee nothing more than brief eye candy and lets face it good movies (no matter how old) are hard to come by.
The synopsis is a spoiled rich girl, Ellie Andrews (Colbert), hell-bent on exuding her independence from daddy gets paired with a down and out newspaper reporter, Peter Warne (Gable), as they travel from Miami to New York in a reluctant partnership of necessity. Ellie needs Peter’s street smarts to help her evade her overbearing father so that she can get to the man she eloped with (though doesn’t love), meanwhile daddy will go to any means necessary to stop her and annul the marriage. Peter needs Ellie’s celebrity story to get his job back and turn his life around. They wind up in all kinds of compromising and humorous situations as they make their way north with daddy’s henchmen on their tail. The one-liners and the mystique of a time before cell phones or even interstate highways make this movie all the better.
So if after you see all of the latest summer blockbusters and still find yourself wanting to sit down and enjoy a good movie or your NetFlix cue is getting sparse and you’ve run out of options, this is a great movie to get your feet wet in the classic genre… which will more than likely open your horizons to even more classic films of the past.
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