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How others will see it. It is well known that It Happened One Night was the first film to win all five major Academy Awards: Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and screenplay. No other film would duplicate this achievement until One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).
The triumph of It Happened One Night was all the more impressive since it was a comedy, not a drama, unlike most Oscar-winning films. In addition, it did not come from a major studio, like MGM or Warner Bros. Instead, it was made by Columbia, which at the time had a reputation for cheap productions.
The story of the little studio that made good gives this film an appeal beyond that of the movie itself. Although made three-quarters of a century ago, it remains popular today. At the time of writing, it is ranked #139 on the imdb.com Top 250, which is heavily weighted toward trendy films made over the past ten years.
How I felt about it. The appeal of It Happened One Night, then and now, is based on the chemistry between its two leads, Cable and Colbert. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the two will fall in love before the film is over. And it makes sense. Colbert is hot, rich, and famous: quite a prize. Gable is the first real man Colbert has run into, aside from the McGuffin aviator.
She is ripe to be plucked, and Gable is the man to do it because he has no intention of being nice to her. Oh, he will do heroic and even chivalric things on her behalf, but he will do so grudgingly. And he will rail her with insulting little comments, e.g. "What's the matter? Wouldn't the old meanies wait for you?" This behavior separates him from the obliging male servants or teachers she has encountered over the years. But it does make Gable cut from similar cloth as dear old dad, an eternally impatient and irate man determined to subjugate his own daughter.
Those who admire this film must willfully overlook its flaws. These include Clark Gable tying up Alan Hale and stealing his car, a series of newspaper issues with huge front page headlines involving an heiress (must be a slow news month), a newspaper editor willing to forgive a drunken and unreliable reporter, a pig-headed father who becomes miraculously insightful during the final reel, and an entire bus full of people eager to sing about the man on the flying trapeze. They even know the complex verses. The thing is, every bus I have been on, most of the passengers are quiet, and they prefer it that way.