Tools of Characterization

Characterization in It Happened One Night

Speech and Dialogue: Fast Talk

True to screwball form, It Happened One Night relies chiefly on dialogue to drive home points about its characters. Peter calls Ellie spoiled, and she is; Ellie calls Peter difficult, and he is. But the film's means of characterization through dialogue are often less direct: King Westley, for instance, only ever talks about himself, even when he's being asked about Ellie. And Shapeley is defined from the first by his tendency to talk at strangers on the bus.

Ellie says early on that she comes from "a long line of stubborn idiots," but later Peter will ask: "Got a brain, haven't you?" And she will say of him, unforgettably: "There's a brain behind that face of yours." In this way, the screenplay communicates the importance of wit in the world of the film's characters. To Peter and Ellie especially, brains count as well as faces, and words are the way you communicate that you've got brains. It's the endless the back-and-forth that brings these two quick-witted and sharp-tongued characters together—with often hilarious results.

Food

We noted in our "Symbols and Tropes" section that the carrot Ellie eats is more than just a carrot, and in our "Trivia" section, you'll see that Peter's carrot-eating technique was, believe it or not, the inspiration for Bugs Bunny's.

But the carrot's just one of several foods featured in the film, which includes several eating scenes and begins, importantly, with a hunger strike. That strike's already a clue to food's importance in the film and its status as a tool to be used for characterizing Ellie in particular.