It Happened One Night (1934)
Ninety years ago, director Frank Capra put Columbia Pictures on the map when this delightful screwball comedy became the first picture to claim Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay. Nobody believed in it. The stars thought they had been assigned the film as punishment. Columbia didn’t do much to promote it, and it only did middling business at first-run theaters. But it took off at the box office when it hit neighborhood theaters after its then-unprecedented Oscar sweep. Since then, this tale of a madcap heiress (Claudette Colbert) who runs off to marry the man she thinks she loves and the reporter (Clark Gable) who follows her in search of a scoop has become an enduring audience favorite.
d. Frank Capra, 105m, DCP