It Happened One Night set the place for the “screwball” comedy, the witty and romantic clash of temperaments between a man and a woman mismatched in both personality and social position. Through one of the greatest romantic comedies in film history, Frank Copra shows the outlandish nature of the rich and the nature of man being the controller in relationships as well as in society. It is the reversal of the Cinderella story, a modern tale with light hearted sex appeal in which courtship and love triumph over class conflicts, socio-economic differences, and verbal battles of wit.
The fighting and struggles between the two main characters showed the man taking care of the woman, the social norms of how men and …show more content…
After discovering Ellie’s true identity, Peter decides to help her so that he can get an exclusive story about her life, her marriage, and her escape. As they travel northward and engage in a series of misadventures, the gruff newspaperman and the spoiled rich girl, thrown together by circumstances, who loses her initial disdain for him, begins to fall in love. The movie is considered a “screwball” comedy because the dynamic between Ellie and Peter, because it is not all one-sided. Although Peter is quite bossy, Ellie sometimes gets the better of him. In the hitchhiking scene, for instance, it is Ellie, not Peter, who succeeds in getting the car to stop to pick them up. She remains herself, a bright, intelligent, strong-minded …show more content…
From the very beginning of the story, these two characters have been down each other’s throats because their personalities are so different from the other one. Some of the most classic scenes were made: the “Wall of Jericho” scene in an auto-camp bungalow so that they can sleep in the same room, the doughnuts-dunking lesson, the hitchhiking scene, the night-time scene on a haystack in a deserted barn, and the dramatic wedding scene. Ellie and Peter argued over everything from getting the seat on the bus in the beginning to the time when they were trying to find a place to sleep in the middle of the night when the bus broke down. Despite the witty remarks towards one another, they find themselves through all the fighting along with each other as a romantic relationship starts to