More Top Films: "It Happened One Night"

It is somewhat amazing how many times Hollywood can tell the same story and people will pay increasing amounts of money to go see it. Many genres (by definition) do this but one of the worst is the by-the-numbers, predictable-to-the-minute romantic comedy. Instead of investing hundreds of dollars seeing this formula play itself out with interchangeable players on the big screen or collecting the similarly packaged disks that come out several times a year, consider getting one well made one and return to it again and again for your fix of fictional, never-really-difficult true love between the sexes.


A perfect candidate for this would have to be Frank Capra’s 1934 classic “It Happened One Night.” Never mind the fact that it did not, in fact, happen in one night. Nearly eighty years old, this film still holds up wonderfully well today. The formula was created here. It was done so perfectly well that it became a huge hit merely on word of mouth advertising. It won all five major categories at the Oscars that year, a feat that has only been duplicated two more times in all the decades that have passed. Frankly, there is nothing being made these days that can hold a candle to it.