It Happened One Night, and My Man Godfrey
I went back to work yesterday; Matt wanted to go do some stuff I wasn't too interested in, as well as meet with his mother for dinner, as she's visiting a friend of hers out here this week.
It was kind of nice to get back to work. Having a house-guest can be a lot of work, especially when we're driving and walking around as much as we have! So I saw Matt when he finally got home in the evening, and then this morning he packed up his stuff and left to catch his plane tonight in Los Angeles. We had a good time this week; a very full week. I think he's had a good vacation.
It Happened One Night (1934) stars Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. I've wanted to see it for a while since my friend Pat back in Madison said it's one of her favorite films.
It is quite good, among the best of the 1930s films I've seen. Colbert is Ellen Andrews, daughter of a wealthy banker who eloped with King Westley, a wealthy socialite, to rebel against him. Her father holds her captive on his yacht in Florida, but she escapes and takes a bus to New York to return to Westley. On the way she meets Gable, playing Peter Warne, a temperamental reporter who helps her in order to get her story. The two don't get along, but, of course, this being a romance, they eventually fall for each other anyway.
The movie is to some extent a diatribe about 'real' people vs. 'phony' people. Westley isn't much more than a puffed-up socialite, while Warne is a 'real' person who isn't concerned with appearances, just with principles. And so it's also a coming-of-age story for Ellen, as she realizes the difference between the two.
Of course, the film also has many great lines, especially when Warne is ranting about how Ellen is a spoiled brat. Gable, I think, pretty much built his reputation on playing good-looking and slightly disreputable characters (see Gone with the Wind, for instance!), so he delivers many of these lines perfectly.
By the way, the IMDb says that Gable's munching on a carrot in this film was the inspiration for Bugs Bunny's mannerisms when doing the same!
The second film of the evening was My Man Godfrey (1936), starring William Powell as Godfrey, a 'forgotten man' from a dump who is recruited - through slightly bizarre circumstances - to become the new butler for an extremely eccentric rich family. The younger daughter, Irene (Carole Lombard) falls in love with him, but he retains his dignity throughout the family's array of shenanigans.
The plot is pretty thin - other than some questions about Godfrey's background, that's about it - so it's basically a straight-ahead comedy. There are plenty of hilarious lines, but the whole thing never quite clicks to become a great film. It's just a screwy comedy.
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