AESTHINT 57 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: It Happened One Night, Screwball Comedy Film
26 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
A&I 57: Lecture #3 Show Business and National Renewal (9/16/15)
● New Deal Fantasies
○ Great Depression catalyzed doubts of American Capitalism
○ American Dream suddenly in question
○ Gangster films and musicals
■ both concerned with people “trying to make it”
■ gangster is self serving
■ people in musicals are members of a team with values of social cohesion
and harmony
■ Hollywood released 60 musicals during Great Depression (1 in 4
productions during this time)
● It Happened One Night
(Frank Capra)
○ 1934
■ beginning of screwball comedies
■ studios enforce production code
● “cleaner” films -- less raunchy
○ won 5 Oscars
○ Prototype of screwball comedy
■ craziness, nuttiness, slangy, skeptical, powerfully glamorous
○Remake: You Can’t Run Away from It (1956)
○ Peter offers Ellen lessons on how to be a correct American
■ how the other side or social class lives
○ Ellen learns of middle class life and social reality
■ saving money/living on a budget
