In the eleventh year of handing out Academy Awards, Frank Capra became the second director to helm two winners of the award for Outstanding Production (Best Picture). He followed up his 1934 win for It Happened One Night with a win in 1938 for You Can’t Take It With You. This is a film that has it all, and Capra showed that he is capable of seamlessly weaving genres to create a deep story that feels like real life while expertly crafting a prototypical Hollywood fantasy. Indeed, if you look up You Can’t Take It With You on IMDB it will list the genres as Comedy and Romance. In truth, this is a very dramatic picture as well, and while it isn’t a Fantasy in the traditional sense, Capra has created a film that certainly has elements of fantasy while taking place in the real world.

The real world in this film is New York City. This film came out as the Great Depression was reaching its 10th birthday and the drums of war were beating in Europe. However upheaval was happening here at home as well, and You Can’t Take It With You did an interesting job of straddling the line between conservative and liberal. Martin Vanderhoff, played with mischievous flare by Lionel Barrymore spends time alternately criticizing excessive capitalism and over-taxation. During one scene he tells Anthony Kirby (played by Edward Arnold) that he can’t take his wealth with him when he dies. Why does he need to make more money than he could ever spend, especially when his success comes from causing others to fail? However, a few scenes earlier when Kirby’s lackey has sent a tax collector in an attempt to shake down Vanderhoff and get him to sell his house to Kirby, Vanderhoff demands to know what his tax money will be spent on. It’s that type of balance that Capra demonstrated throughout his career that helped make his films so successful.

The premise of the film starts with Kirby in his uptown office. He’s a wildly successful venture capitalist and he has a plan now to take advantage of the coming war by building a factory in New York that will produce every bullet that the United States Army uses. He’s already bought up all of the land that he needs except for one parcel that the owner refuses to sell. No matter how much money his people offer, Vanderhoff shows no interest in selling. That’s when Kirby tells his men to figure out a way to get him to sell because he can’t build his factory and the deal will fall through unless he owns the entire block.

Meanwhile Kirby’s son Tony (James Stewart) shows up. He’s recently been promoted to Vice President of the company, but he clearly is uncomfortable in the roll and has no stomach for his father’s type of business. But lacking any real ambition, he goes along with the wishes of his father and over bearing mother. Things take an interesting turn when we discover that Tony is dating the company stenographer, Alice Sycamore (Jean Arthur), who also happens to be Vanderhoff’s granddaughter. Tony’s mother wants him to have nothing to do with such a common person and that he needs to court someone with more similar breeding, however Tony is in love with her and he makes several clumsy attempts to get her to fit into his world without losing her own sense of values.

That plan blows up in Tony’s face when he talks Alice into inviting him and his parents over for dinner. Alice lives with her grandfather and an eclectic cast of character lives in the house as well. Her mother, a part time painter and part time writer lives there along with her father, who is obsessed with building better fireworks. Her sister, an aspiring, yet awful ballet dancer lives there with her husband, and several other people, seemingly taken off of the street for their oddball sensibilities. Indeed, Vanderhoff’s house is one where everyone is welcome and everything is welcome, except normalcy. Tony gets introduced to this one night when he comes to pick up Alice to take her to dinner. This house is exactly the opposite of the stuffy and pretentious home that he grew up in and he loves it. However, Alice convinces everyone to act normally for Tony’s parents when they come to dinner. She has a fine dinner planned and wants nothing more than to show Tony’s parents that even though she’s not of their class, she can still pass the test of proper behavior. Tony, however, tells his parents that dinner is a night earlierh than he planned, and they show up unannounced. Tony explains to Alice that he wanted his parents to see her family in their natural state, rather than have them have to pretend to be something there not. His plan goes awry with hillarious consequences.

Then the irony sets in. Police show up under the direction of Kirby’s lackey, and all of them, including the Kirby’s are arrested. While in the drunk tank awaiting their hearing, Kirby lambastes Vanderhoff over his lifestyle and the life choices that he has made. Vanderhoff, to his credit, tells Kirby that his priorities are all askew and that even with all of his money, he lacks the true friends and deep relationships that Vanderhoff has, and Vanderhoff intimates that he is really the rich one. (Ironically, Barrymore’s character would be on the receiving end of a famous speech with a similar subject given by Jimmy Stewart some years later in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.) They go in to the court room and each man shows his true colors. Vanderhoff offers to fall on his sword to spare Kirby the public embarassement and Tony misses the chance to stand up to his father when Alice does it for him, and in turn foresakes him for not being his own man. Depressed and despondant, Alice leaves the city. Not wanting the family to be apart, Vanderhoff finally agrees to sell to Kirby so that the whole family can move up to Connecticut to be with Alice. Then Kirby has his epiphany and realizes that he doesn’t need to do this deal. That the men he’s surrounded himself with may respect him. They may admire him. But they don’t know him. The last straw is when Tony comes into his office and quits. Tony tells him that he’s not cut out for the business world and that he’s going to spend the next few years trying to discover what he is cut out for. Tony then goes to Vanderhoff to find Alice, who has shown up to get her things. He goes upstairs, and then Kirby arrives. He and Vanderhoff start playing harmonicas (it had been planted earlier in the film that Kirby played harminica in his younger days), and a bridge is built. Alice fogives Tony. Kirby lets Vanderhoff keep his house. The Hollywood ending is complete.

As Capra would demonstrate throughout his career, he created a film here that is loaded with thematic elements that give the film depth. This film is about money vs. friendship. It’s about freeing yourself from convention and living life to the fullest. But what does that mean? This film seems to say that rather than loading up with monetary and career success, one should strive to do what really makes one happy. In many ways, You Can’t Take It With You is a preview to It’s a Wonderful Life. Many of the players are the same, they all would have been under contract with Columbia anyway. Many of the thematic elements are similar and much of the character growth is similar as well. I think that It’s a Wonderful Life is actually a more sophisticated story, but that’s only because it’s standing on the shoulders of You Can’t Take It With You.

One interesting thing about his script is that it’s not entirely clear whose story it is. It starts off as Kirby’s story, as he is driving the action. Then we go a long time without even seeing him and Vanderhoff drives the action. The story pivots again as we watch Tony courting Alice. In the end, all three of them, Kirby, Vanderhoff and Tony, go through real transformations. Kirby realizes that all the money in the world can’t buy him happiness. Tony learns that he can’t follow in his father’s footsteps and that he needs to live his own life. Vnaderhoff discovers that life can’t be all jovial and fun. It’s serious business sometimes and you have to have a thick skin, and sometimes even be willing to fight, to preserve what you love. They all have equal screen time and they all have equal growth. You Can’t Take It With You might be one of the most successful films ever that doesn’t focus on a single hero to drive the plot. That said, it could be possible to say that this is ultimately Vanderhoff’s story and that Kirby is the antogonist. I would have a hard time disagreeing with you if you wanted to argue that point, especially when you put the film in the context of the Hero’s Journey.

Aspiring screenwriters and directors could find the storytelling in this film very instructive. Even though it lacks a clear main character, it has a very well-defined stucture and it actually has a well-constructed Hero’s Journey. There is a clear Ordinary World that they all live in. The Call to Adventure is the offer from Kirby to buy Vanderhoff’s house. Vanderhoff Refuses that Call, and the Crossing of the First Threshold happens when Vanderhoff convinces an accountant to leave his job behind and come live in his house with all of the other misfits. Tests, Allies and Enemies focusses on Tony and his budding relationship with Alice. The Approach is Alice trying to get everyone at her house ready for Tony and his parents to come over the following night for dinner, meanwhile Tony and his parents are at that moment on their way over. The Supreme Ordeal is the arrival of the Kirby’s at Vanderhoff’s house and the dramatic, awkward and funny dinner scene that follows. Ironically the Reward is the time in jail and in the courtroom where Vanderhoff and Kirby have their confrontation over which lifestyle is superior. The Road Back has Vanderhoff agree to sell the house so that the family can get back together, although in a different setting. The Resurrection focusses on Kirby and his resurrection from dead capitalist to live human being; someone who has learned to live again. It also shows Tony tyring to resurrect his relationship with Alice. The Return With The Elixir is the Hollywood ending where pretty much everyone gets either what they want or what they need.

Did the Academy get it right?

I don’t necessarily think that they got it wrong, however I could make a strong argument that both The Adventures of Robin Hood and Boys Town were more deserving films for this particular year. The former was quite possiby one of the most entertaining films of all time, and the latter was a dramatic coming of age film that was dramatic and poignant. Plus, if we’re talking about Outstanding Production, The Adventures of Robin Hood had far better production value than You Can’t Take It With You. It had well-choreographed and entertaining action sequences, well designed period costumes and set pieces, and a compelling story that at that point had yet to be told and retold (at least in cinema). Like many ideas at that point in time, it was still fresh. Both films were dealing in themes that were pertinant to the day, i.e. class structure and the rich having everything, but the poor having the real wealth. Probably what ultimately won the award for You Can’t Take It With You was that it took place in a real world of the United States during the Great Depression. People of the late thirties could relate to Alice and Tony and Vanderhoff better than they could with Robin Hood or Maid Marion or Little John. They had seen what people like Kirby and his lackeys were doing and how it was affecting their real world in a much more tangible way than the actions of Prince John or the Sherriff were affecting the fantasy world of Nottingham. In that sense, You Can’t Take It With You probably had a much deeper emotional impact on people, and you can’t blame anyone for voting with their heart. So even though in a vacuum I’d cast my vote for The Adventures of Robin Hood, I can’t be critical of the fact that You Can’t Take It With You took home the statue.

I have to be honest with you. This film frustrated me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an excellent film in many ways. However, I feel that it could have been a great film and an important film and a classic film, and it just missed the opportunity to be all of those things. Perhaps if it had been The Trial of Emile Zola rather than  The Life of Emile Zola it might have achieves that greatness.

Emile Zola was a real-life person who was a writer and did most of his work during the second half of the 19th Century. The film portrays his early life as a rebellious idealistic young man who craved justice for ordinary people who were not likely to receive it in the Paris of the 1860’s. Much of what he wrote was censored by the government, as his work is largely critical of government and military policies, and he spent much of his early life without two pennies to rub together.

The film depicts this very effectively. Zola, played with irascible pluck by Paul Muni, shares an apartment in Paris with his friend, the painter Paul Cezanne. As they discuss the politics of the day, they have to burn the pages of a frivolous book in order to keep their fire going. However, they’re happy even in their poverty because they believe that they’re doing important work. They’re doing work for the masses that are being kept silent by a corrupt ruling class. Their dignity is intact and they’re confident in their convictions.

During one scene, they’re sitting in a cafe as a woman rushes in. She’s just come from a suffrage demonstration and most of the other women have been rounded up and arrested. Zola and Cezanne invite her to join them and they tell the police when they arrive that the woman has been with them the entire night. The woman’s plight inspires Zola to write is first best-seller, Nana.

Nana becomes an instant best-seller and Zola is revealed to have a hand on the pulse of the people. In a touching character moment, Zola walks through the rain with his umbrella falling apart and sees the copies of his book being sold in a store. He then goes to his publisher to ask for a small advance so that he can buy a new umbrella, saying that he’s sure that his book will sell enough to cover the advance. Incredulous, the publisher tells him that it’s already outsold his previous advance, and he presents Zola with a check for 10,000 francs, more money than Zola has seen in his life.

He then writes a scathing critique of the government and military for getting France into a needless war with Prussia. It’s a stunning rebuke that turns Zola into the voice of the people. He spends the next three decades pumping out book after book, and becomes a revered member of society, even gaining admittance into the Academy. He’s rich beyond his wildest dreams and he feels that he’s accomplished everything he set out to do. However, his old friend Cezanne calls him to task. He tells Zola that he’s forgotten the spirit that got him to these lofty heights. Cezanne is afraid that he too will forget it someday, so he’s leaving Paris to go to the sea where he will hopefully never lose his rebelliousness.

Meanwhile, the top brass of the French military discovers that a secret communique  has been sent to the Germans by one of their officers. Their rush to find a scapegoat lands them on Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a man with an otherwise spotless record, who also happens to be Jewish. Dreyfus is convicted, stripped of his rank and sent to life imprisonment on Devils Island, a desolate place 5,500 miles away off the coast of South America.In fact, their rush to judgment is so complete, that when another officer discovers evidence that would exonerate Dreyfus and put the real culprit in prison, the military decides that the scandal that the truth would be worse because they believe that French citizens would lose faith in the army. Another sham trial is perpotrated, only this time, the defendant is wrongly cleared and it appears that Dreyfus will spend the rest of his days living in a hell on earth for a crime that he did not commit.

Convinced of her husband’s innocence, but with nowhere else to turn, Dreyfus’ wife Lucie goes to Zola and asks him to help her fight for justice for her husband. But Zola refuses. Something in him has changed. He’s no longer the young, idealistic social warrior searching for lost causes. He’s comfortable. He’s rich. He sees no need to fight for Dreyfus when, for all appearances, Dreyfus was rightly convicted in a court of law. Despondent, Lucie leaves his house, but she leaves the evidence that she collected behind. Zola sees this and tries to run after her, but she is already gone. After admiring his letter of admittance into the Academy, Zola starts to thumb through the evidence that Lucie Dreyfus presented to him. The more he reads, the angrier he becomes. his thirst for justice has returned and it will not be satiated until Dreyfus is cleared.

Zola writes his now famous letter, J’Accuse (I Accuse), to the President of the French Republic, accusing members of the military of a terrible miscarriage of justice in the name of protecting its tattered image. There were a couple of reasons Zola did this. The first reason was to denounce the deplorable actions of the military. However,  the second reason was the most clever. Zola knew that writing such a document would force the military’s hand into charging Zola with libel. This would offer Zola an opportunity in his libel case to reintroduce the facts of the Dreyfus Affair. Unfortunately Zola didn’t really get that opportunity. The judge in the case was not impartial, and the military had its propaganda machine working overtime to villainize and de-legitimize Zola in the eyes of the public. Despite an eloquent closing argument made by Zola himself, he’s found guilty of slander and reluctantly leaves Paris for London so that he can continue to fight the good fight in exile rather than go to jail.

Eventually new leadership takes over in France and both Dreyfus and Zola are cleared and allowed to return to France. Reinvigorated, Zola is ready to start writing again. The idealist has returned. Unfortunately a leaky stove pipe releases enough carbon monoxide into his apartment that he passes away before he can witness the ceremony in which Dreyfus’ is reinstated to the army.

What I find most frustrating about this film is its lack of noting the anti-semitism that was the real reason for Dreyfus’ lengthy encarceration. Word has it that studio head Jack Warner, himself a Jew, wouldn’t allow the words Jew of Jewish to be in the dialogue. The only mention to Dreyfus heratige is on his ID card that notes that he’s a Jew. One of Hollywoods’ darkest periods was the mid and late 30’s where many studios refused to take on Nazi Germany head on. Like China today, Germany was the largest movie market outside of the United States, and losing that market, like losing the Chinese market today, radically affects the bottom line. So just as the remake of Red Dawn had to change the premise of China attacking the United States to North Korea attacking the United States, films critiquing that anti-semetic attitudes that dominated Nazi Germany of the time would not have been shown there. Thus, The Life of Emile Zola needed to airbrush over the main reason for the Dreyfus Affair. It’s frustrating because the military lacks real motivation in keeping him locked up. They say that it’s to protect the image of the army, and that’s somewhat reasonable, but it loses its effectiveness at a certain point. Anti-Semitism is a much more treachorous reason for taking away a person’s liberty, and at its core, a much more plausible reason as well. Whatever the reasons for glossing over this thematic element, the film suffers for it.

Did the Academy get it right?

Personally, I would have voted for Captains Courageous or Lost Horizon over The Life of Emile Zola, but that is mainly with the benefit of hindsight. It’s easy to look at a film like The Life of Emile Zola and judge Warner Bros, and in fact all of Hollywood, for cowtowing to Nazi Germany rather than taking them to task. The 1930’s were a very complicated time for a number of reasons and The Life of Emile Zola encapsulates many of those complexities. On the one hand, it uses the French military of the previous century as a parable and critique for what was happening in Germany. Yet, at the same time, it refused to go all the way and call Germany out for its blatant Anti-Semitism. It was a complex film for a complext tiem. I’m generally not a fan of remakes, but I would love for someone to take another stab at this one and modernize it in a way that focusses more on the real issues of the time without the self-imposed censorship of the original.

Simply put, The Great Ziegfeld is a spectacle. It is everything that The Broadway Melody tried to be but couldn’t. It is ostentatious and over the top. As I was watching it, I couldn’t help but be reminded of The Wolf of Wall Street. On the surface, neither film has anything to do with the other, however thematically and stylistically, they’re the same film. Both films are about men who lived life to the fullest and beyond. Both men were ultimately brought down and ruined by their inability to apply the brakes even a little bit. Neither man was afraid to manipulate others in order to get what he wanted.

The Great Ziegfeld is about Florenz Ziegfeld, the creator of the Ziegfeld Follies. The film follows him from his start as a struggling vaudeville producer all the way through the heights of his successes and lows of his failures with the Follies. He was a complex man with many flaws, and the film makers made it a point to show that. William Powell did an outstanding job of portraying Ziegfeld and making him a likable character, despite those many flaws. It was a performance not unlike Leonardo DiCaprio’s in The Wolf of Wall Street where he too had to take an unsympathetic character and somehow make the audience relate to him.

I think the way that Powell and director Robert Z. Leonard were able to accomplish that was by making Ziegfeld the underdog. Right from the beginning we see that Ziegfeld is struggling and his chief rival Jack Billings, played with the usual flamboyance of Frank Morgan, who you might remember was Professor Marvel and the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz. Billings has standing room only crowds and Ziegfeld is having such a hard time drawing customers that he’s scheduled to get kicked out of the fair. That is, until he has an idea of how to change his act in a way that will appeal to the sexual desires of potential  female customers. Suddenly he’s the one with standing room only crowds and he takes his act on tour.

Unfortunately as we see  throughout the film, Ziegfeld never made a fortune that he wasn’t somehow able to lose. We see him some time later on an ocean liner to Europe where he again bumps in to Billings, who tells him that he’s on way to Europe to scout a new talent. Broke and unable to get back to America, Ziegfeld has the audacity to borrow $500 from Billings and then use it to steal away the act, a French singer named Anna Held. He brings her act to America, where it is panned initially, but Ziegfeld shows his guile again, and turns it into a sensation. He builds on that success by creating the Follies. Always one step ahead of the competition and the bill collectors, Ziegfeld built an entertainment empire on Broadway that only his own arrogance and financial ineptitude could bring down.

That is where the brilliance lies in this film. Not only is Ziegfeld the hero of the film, but he is also his own worst enemy. He can never enjoy his success because he’s always putting himself in positions to lose it. Whether it’s having an affair with a new dancer after he’s married Anna, or investing in stock right before the crash of 1929, he never was able to get out of his own way. That was another way that the film makers made Ziegfeld sympathetic.

If you are a screenwriter trying to create a character that is greatly flawed but needs to be likable, this is a film you should study. Yes, it is dated and there is nothing modern about it, but the character development is timeless and very instructive. As mentioned above, the film makers took a manipulative, incompetent failure and made him likable by constantly putting him in the underdog role. Even when his show is a smashing success, it’s so expensive to produce that he still has to be crafty about how the bills get paid, or don’t get paid. He wants to be the greatest showman on Broadway and the way to do that is to create spectacles that are ostentatious and over the top. He creates eye candy and opportunities for women to become famous dancers. He gets the best out of his performers on stage, but can’t bring out the best in himself back stage. He is a walking conflict, and that’s what makes him successful as a character because the audience is always hoping that he’ll go the right way and afraid that he’ll go the wrong way. That’s how drama is created and that’s what makes The Great Ziegfeld a great film.

There’s something else that needs to be mentioned about this film and how it was made. First of all, this is one of the early MGM musicals and it would help to define the style of film that MGM would make over the next two decades. Big, grand musicals with flawed characters who want nothing more than to be great. The dance numbers in this film were particularly grand and unique. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert of the Musical as a genre. I’ve seen my share of Musicals, but it isn’t my favorite genre by any stretch. I can say, however, that the musical numbers in this picture were entertaining and fascinating to watch. There was one number towards the end that involved very well trained dogs in a number that has to be seen to be believed. There are other numbers with huge set pieces and one number that was shot in one take. The talent and scope and planning that went in to these dances is nothing short of remarkable and need to be appreciated whether your a fan of the genre or not.

One other thing that I noticed is that there were a lot of low camera angles during the musical numbers. Most of time musical numbers are shot straight on or from above so that you can see the intricacies of the movement. In this film the low angle made you feel like you were watching from the orchestra section of the theater, as though you were sitting in the audience. I thought that was a nice touch and a subtle way to make you feel like you were actually at the Ziegfeld Follies.

There is one other point that I need to make that people have commented on, and is not unique to The Great Ziegfeld, but was a common tool in early sound cinema. That was using newspaper headlines for exposition. It Happened One Night used that motif quite a bit, and it is spread throughout The Great Ziegfeld. In fact, if you look at films throughout  the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, you will see this motif in many, many films. In many ways, the newspaper headline revealing information replaced the title cards of the silent film era. Yes, it is a cheat. Yes, it seems like a cop out today. I must say, however, that it doesn’t bother me at all. I find that it was a clever way to get information to the audience that was technically still showing and not telling. Cinema today still uses similar motifs. Perhaps they’re used in cleverer ways, but I feel the newspaper headline was an effective way to reveal exposition because it was quick, clean, and rarely took the audience out of the story.

Did the Academy get it right?

It’s hard to disagree with the Academy on this one. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and A Tale of Two Cities are remembered as classics, and honestly The Great Ziegfeld is probably one of the least memorable Best Picture winners. However it is a fine film, and it set the stage (no pun intended) for the great MGM Musicals that would follow in the decades to come and turn MGM into the greatest dream factory of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The Great Ziegfeld really does have it all. The dance and musical numbers are well stages and highly entertaining. The storyline is compelling and dramatic. The characters are deep, conflicted and experience real growth throughout the film. Indeed, this film was crafted and crafted well. On that basis, it was worthy of winning Outstanding Production in 1936.

Frank Lloyd became the first director to helm two Best Picture winners, with Cavalcade having taken home the statue just two years earlier. You won’t find two more different films than Cavalcade and Mutiny on the Bounty, and the latter is a much stronger film. Likewise, Clark Gable was the leading man in back to back winners, having just played the lead role in Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night the year before. Gable continued his rise to super-stardom in Mutiny, playing the virtuous mutineer Fletcher Christian opposite the equally brilliant Charles Laughton, who played the maniacally menacing Captain Bligh. Francot Tone played the young idealistic Midshipman Roger Byam,and all three men were nominated for Best Actor.

I’m going to say that again.

Clark Gable, Charles Laughton and Francot Tone were all three nominated for Best Actor for the roles that they played in Mutiny on the Bounty.

As for the film itself, it is terrific and deserves to be called a classic. The storyline is very well paced and the tension in the story grows as the relationship between Christian and Bligh deteriorates. Ever the disciplinarian, Bligh seems to take a type of carnal pleasure in seeing men whipped and beaten. His discipline is beyond sadistic and more than cruel. Christian is a good sailor and an obedient officer, but he can’t abide Bligh’s cruelty. He takes the young and impressionable Byam under his wing and tries to teach him the right way to be an officer, and in an ironic way, that turns Byam against Christian during the mutiny even though the two of them have become good friends.

The premise of the film has the H.M.S. Bounty sailing from Portsmouth, England to Tahiti in order to transport breadfruit plants to the West Indies. Christian recruits the sailors to join the crew, although the word “recruit” is probably the wrong way to say it. They’re more like indentured servants, as many of them are drunkards and former criminals who are pressed into service. Bligh commands his officers to be quick with the lash from the beginning despite Christian’s pleas that they’re going to be on this small ship for the next two years and perhaps mercy might be the better rout. Despite being a religious man, Bligh thinks exactly the opposite and demands strict discipline. Men are flogged. Men are keel-hauled. Men die. As soon as Christian starts to question Bligh’s tactics more seriously, as well as telling him that he’s going to demand a court of inquiry upon their return to England, Bligh turns on Christian as well. He never has him flogged, but he does accuse him of stealing bananas and cheese, even though it was Bligh himself who pilfered them. This doesn’t sit well with Christian and the seeds of discontent firmly take root.

They arrive in Tahiti and are there for several weeks. Byam has been charged with the task of creating a dictionary for translating the Tahitian language into English. Although Christian has been kept aboard the ship by Bligh, the Tahitian king insists that he come ashore, where he soon falls in love with one of  the native girls.

They return to sea having tasted the paradise that was Tahiti and now are in for another year of the Bounty as a floating Hell. Barely at sea for a few weeks, Christian reaches his breaking point and starts the mutiny. He puts Bligh and the other officers in a longboat 500 miles from any port of call and sets them adrift. Byam, having not taken part in the mutiny demands to be put in the boat with Bligh, but they’ve already been set adrift. Christian tells Byam that if he doesn’t try to stall the mutiny, he’ll be safe and will be sent to England as soon as possible.

Incredibly, ironically, and against all odds, Bligh heroically leads the officers for weeks of desperate time on the unrelenting sea to a safe harbor. Even the sea cannot beat him.

Christian, meanwhile, has taken the Bounty back to Tahiti where he has married the native girl and had a child. By Christmas time he and Byam have reconciled, but Byam still remains loyal to the navy. Christian understands and asks Byam to see his father if he ever makes it back to England and tell him what really happened. That he didn’t dishonor his uniform, and that men sometimes have to go down the wrong path in order to do what’s right.

Having been brought to England, Bligh returns to Tahiti for Christian and the other mutineers. They all get on the Bounty and escape. Thinking they’re rescued, Byam and the other officers who didn’t mutiny go aboard Bligh’s ship and are promptly clapped in irons. Bligh demands to know where Christian went, but the men honestly don’t know. Not believing them, Bligh resumes his obsessive hunt of Christian, but is unable to find him, eventually wrecking their ship on a reef.

Upon their return to England, Byam and the others are put on trial. Resentful of Byam’s friendship with Christian, and furious that they were never able to find Christian, Bligh sets his wrath upon Byam, making sure that he is convicted and condemned. After receiving the news that he will hang, Byam passionately tells the court and Bligh that he flogged and mistreated men not to punish, but to break their spirit. He was a tyrant as a captain and one man wouldn’t stand for his tyranny, and the reason Bligh hates him so is that Christian has won. He is still free and beyond the reach of Bligh’s menace.

The court adjourns and one of the Admiralty tells Bligh that while he admires his seamanship, his tactics as captain are deplorable.

Byam’s case is taken to the king who offers him clemency and his commission is returned. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world Christian finds an island where he and his family and friends can live freely and without fear.

There is a lot going on in this film thematically that should be instructive to any screenwriter. There are internal conflicts in the characters that create terrific drama. This is a story about loyalty to friends vs. loyalty to duty. It’s about the fact that sometimes the difference between right and wrong isn’t so black and white. The wrong thing on the surface, the thing that will get you in trouble and put your very life in danger, is the thing that you must do because deep down it’s what’s right. Ultimately this is a film about right and wrong and how the lines between those seemingly simple concepts can be blurred in ways that are very complicated.

From a storytelling and thematic perspective, this is a very strong film that any aspiring screenwriter should see and study.

The one thing that bothered me, ironically enough, was Clark Gable. He gives a fine performance in this film, and his character is deep and rich with both grace and flaws. But every other character in the film spoke with an English accent except for Gable. He was as American as he was in It Happened One Night and as he would be a few years later in Gone With the Wind. You can live with it for most of the film until he starts telling Byam about where he grew up and all of the very English-sounding places he’s been. Hearing this story told by a man with an accent that’s as American as apple pie is a bit distracting. Otherwise, I have very few complaints about this film.

Did the Academy get it right?

The answer is yes. Certainly Les Miserables is a classic, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, David Copperfield and The Broadway Melody of 1936 are all memorable films. However Mutiny on the Bounty is a special film that is on another level from those other films. It had marvelous direction, star power in the cast, and an engaging and compelling script. It’s also a grand exposition of film making for its time, and it deserved to be named Outstanding Production of 1935.

There are a couple of notable changes for the 1934 Academy Awards. Most notably, the Academy changed the award year to contain a single calendar year, rather than taking pictures from August first of one year through July 31st of the following year. That was the big change as far as the Academy was concerned. Another change was upon us as far as the films were concerned.

It Happened One Night in many ways is the most sophisticated and the most structured story of any of the Academy Award winners to date. Certainly Wings was more compelling from a visual effects standpoint. Cimarron was a greater spectacle. Grand Hotel was more sophisticatedly shot. However none of those films can match the shear storytelling prowess of It Happened One Night.

This is a film that had it all. It had two major stars in Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert at the top of their respective games. It had a director in Frank Capra who would go on to be one of the great directors in the history of American Cinema. It had a well written script by Robert Riskin that was well-structured and dramatic, even as it made the audience laugh. This was the first comedy to win Best Picture, and one of only a handful of comedies to come away with the statue all time.

The story follows Ellie Andrews (Colbert), who has married a playboy pilot against the wishes of her wealthy industrialist father. As their yacht lay moored in Miami, Ellie jumps off of it and swims to shore where she makes her way to a bus station and gets an elderly woman to buy her ticket in order to avoid being spotted by the detectives her father has sent to find her. On the bus, Ellie meets Peter Warne (Gable), a down on his luck newspaper writer. The two of them are like oil and water at first, but when Peter finds out who she is after her suitcase and money are stolen, he offers to get her to New York where she can meet up with her husband in exchange to an exclusive on her story.

What follows is a deliberate, yet charming and funny story of two people changing and falling in love. The spoiled heiress becomes humble as she has to accept help from people in ways that are more complex than simply paying them off. The grizzled and cynical newspaper reporter softens and sweetens as he learns to accept and appreciate all of the heiress’s complexities. More than anything, this is a film about growing and changing, for there is no way that either character would end up with the other without significant internal change.

That is one thing that Frank Capra would prove to be a master of over the course of his magnificent career. He took imperfect characters and over the course of the narrative, made them perfect for their circumstances. He made his characters evolve in a way that felt realistic and engaging and never forced. It Happened One Night is a great example of how he did that. It’s also a great example of how story and character arcs can fit seamlessly into a 3-Act structure. Just when it looks like Ellie and Peter are destined to be together, something happens that drives them apart. A misunderstanding seems to end what was a beautiful burgeoning relationship. The story totally changes direction at that point ushering us into the third act where Peter needs to convince not only Ellie, but himself as well that he’s the right man for her.

Looking at it another way, this film follows the Hero’s Journey very closely as well. All of the stages of the journey are represented and there are archetypal characters that help to make this film a classic. The Ordinary World shows Ellie living in her life of luxury. But she’s a bird in a gilded cage. She literally flies off the boat, thus giving herself her own Call to Adventure by fleeing from her father and trying to get to her husband in New York. The Meeting of the Mentor is when she meets Peter. Ellie doesn’t know how to navigate in the real world, having been spoiled her whole life, and never having to do anything for herself. Peter shows her the ropes and then ultimately gives her her second Call to Adventure by offering her the deal of getting her to New York in exchange for an exclusive on her story. At first she Refuses that call, but ultimately has not choice but to accept. The Tests, Allies and Enemies portion of the journey shows Ellie and Peter having to overcome thieves blackmailers and detectives to keep on their journey. The Approach shows Peter and Ellie starting to fall for each other, but still fighting that urge. The Supreme Ordeal has them spending the night in a cabin, attracted to each other, but not able to consummate their feelings. They then have to put on archetypal mask, pretending to be a couple traveling together to avoid being caught by still more detectives. The Reward has them starting to fall in love and learning new tricks from each other that make them more whole as human beings. The Road Back has them in another cabin, but completely broke. They’re only a couple hours from New York, but Ellie no longer wants to be with her husband. She wants to be with Peter. Peter sneaks off to New York to get an advance on the story, but Ellie is awakened by the owners of the cabin who think that they don’t have any money. Succumbing to despair, Ellie calls her father to come and pick her up. The Resurrection shows Peter demonstrate his true virtue to Ellie’s father and thus to Ellie. The Return with the Elixir shows Ellie running out on her wedding and running back to Peter.

Again, this is a structurally sound story that that is woven particularly well with strong character development. Clearly, this is a film that is instructive for any aspiring screenwriter.

Did the Academy get it right?

I believe they did, and time has borne that out. There are two other films that were nominated against it that are also considered classics in The Thin Man, as well as Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra. That said, It Happened One Night is really at a different level, and in a lot of ways was a game changer for the Academy. It took storytelling and character development to a new level of sophistication and it’s rightly on AFI’s list of the 100 greatest films of all time, coming in at number 46. It’s also number 8 on AFI’s list of top 100 comedies. Based on that historical evidence alone, I believe the Academy got it right this year.