my favorite movies of 1934:

(1) It’s a Gift

(2) It Happened One Night

favorite of 1934:

It’s a Gift

(W.C. Fields, Kathleen Howard, Charles Sellon. Directed by Norman McLeod.)

This is my favorite W.C. Fields movie; I prefer it to his later, bigger-budget movies. In this one, he’s not a slimy con artist but a lovable “old idiot” (as his wife calls him) — a shopkeeper who’s thwarted from doing the most basic everyday tasks like shaving or getting a good night’s sleep, while he dreams of moving away with his family to start a more prosperous business. The movie may feel slight: it’s barely over an hour long, and Fields tends to underact and mumble his lines. But in its own quiet way, It’s a Gift emerges as one of the great classic comedies.

Well, the doctors say he’s at death’s door. …

You think they’ll be able to pull him through? 

I don’t know anywhere to stream It’s a Gift, but Kino Lorber recently released it on blu-ray (with new features including commentary).

 

2nd favorite of 1934:

It Happened One Night

(Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns, Alan Hale. Directed by Frank Capra.)

This was the first of only 3 movies ever to win all 5 top Oscars: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay.

From Criterion’s essay on this movie:

It’s often said that social progress has weakened love stories by removing all the important obstacles—the most obvious being the bygone taboo of sex before marriage, but another being the class system that’s woven throughout It Happened One Night. Yet, viewed today, the movie’s predicaments aren’t tintype relics of the fussy old days. A modern woman forced to spend the night with a hard-charging reporter she has just met is still likely to want reassurance that the room is all she’ll be sharing. …

In what must be the movie’s most famous scene (although it has a lot of competition), Pete [Clark Gable] demonstrates, at length and with a fantastic amount of condescension, the proper way to hitchhike: “It’s all in the thumb.” Ellie [Claudette Colbert], splendidly deadpan, watches an entire traffic jam’s worth of cars zip by Pete and his magic thumb, then slinks over and lifts her hem to reveal one of the loveliest legs in movie history. Cut to slamming brakes, then the couple in the rumble seat of a car. But here’s the thing: The man who has stopped (played by Alan Hale) turns out to be a road thief, bent on stealing their remaining suitcase. For all Ellie’s triumph, the creep was looking for a mark, and probably would have stopped in any event.

That’s the rhythm of It Happened One Night, a dance of syncopated folly and banter. Banter is distinct from mockery — it’s a seesaw, not a slingshot. … “Your ego is absolutely colossal,” and a cheerful reply, “Yeah, yeah, not bad, how’s yours?”

Stream It Happened One Night on Tubi (free with ads) or these sites.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.