Class In Frank Capra's Film It Happened One Night

Capra and Class
In Frank Capra’s 1934 film It Happened One Night, Capra uses the shower scene (29:04-29:51) to exemplify the breakdown of class barriers and humbling of the upper class during the Depression era. He sets up the scene first by introducing our heroine to the realities of working class life in earlier scenes. She appears to have a power advantage over her fellow bus riders, but is quickly leveled with them through a series of blunders including losing her suitcase, missing her bus, and mismanaging her money. Capra offsets Ellie’s social power by showing her ineptitude for taking care of herself and reliance on Peter Warne to do so. These previous scenes allow the audience to see the out-of-touch heiress become humanized. Although in the shower scene, Capra shows her transformation is not yet complete.

Capra sets Ellie on a path through a Hooverville-esque backdrop. She skirts by ragged looking people and keeps her head down. The people are either working, or making their way through, but she walks right in the middle of them. As if they are in her way. She barely registers it as she almost barrels over a little girl. Capra strikes a heavy contrast between the working class and the upper class. Ellie, the glamourous and pampered heiress, walks through others without a single acknowledgement. The people in the scene with her are tattered and worn, working while she walks by. All of them turn their heads and watch her walk through them. They notice her, she does not notice them. While Ellie (the rich) breezes by, ragtag people (the poor) are struggling to survive and she does not seem to notice or care. Capra utilizes a scene without a single word to comment on the upper class’ ignorance of the struggling working class. As Ellie moves along in the scene, she continues her ignorance of the rest of the world and Capra cuts her down for