Movies With Michael : Michael's Christmas Movie Guide: Remember the Night (1940)

Sunday, December 10, 2023

Michael's Christmas Movie Guide: Remember the Night (1940)

A simply wonderful Christmas time romantic comedy.

In this film, a young woman (Barbara Stanwyck) steals an expensive bracelet around Christmas time. She is caught and sent to court. The D.A. (Fred MacMurray) who is prosecuting her is an expert on getting women sent to prison. Since he knows that the jury is likely to let her go around this time of the year, he pulls a trick to get the trial postponed until after the holidays. Feeling guilty about ruining her Christmas, he bails her out. When he learns that she grew up in Indiana, he offers to take her to her family for Christmas on his way to spend Christmas with his family in Indiana. However when they arrive at her mother's house, he finds that her mother (Georgia Caine) is very cold and unloving towards her. Because of this the D.A. invites the shoplifter to join his family for Christmas. Over this time, the two fall deeply in love.

This movie is a pure delight. With a script by Preston Sturges (who would become a director later this same year), naturally this is a laugh out loud funny film. There are scenes here that are truly just as funny as anything in the wonderful screwball comedies he would go on to direct. The court scenes are some of the funniest moments in any Christmas movies and if you see this film with a large audience, the scenes still make an audience roar with laughter throughout. Just as laugh out loud funny is a scene involving some cows, which is simply wonderful. Many wonderful laughs also come from Sterling Holloway (a wonderful character actor who would go on to voice many characters for Disney including Winnie the Pooh), who is truly wonderful in a supporting role. Yet this film also mixes this zany comedy with a real sense of sentimentality and some scenes that really pull on your heartstrings. The romance is very well done and believable here. You truly care about whether these two will be able to live happily ever after. Yet the most emotional scene in the film is the one involving our heroine's mother. This scene is heartbreaking and if you didn't care about her beforehand, you will deeply care about her after this scene. Not only this but the scene sets up every emotional moment that will come after. The Christmas setting is also perfect for this movie. Even the scenes that don't revolve around the holiday are very much in the spirit of what Christmas is about. Forgiveness, redemption, love, family and caring for those less fortunate are what this film is all about. These truths also perfectly embody the spirit and meaning of Christmas. The film also has a scene that perfectly gives one the warm feeling of Christmas, when Barbara Stanwyck's character is at the piano.

What really makes this movie so great though is Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. This was the first of four movies that these two made together. It would be followed by Double Indemnity (1944), The Moonlighter (1953) and There's Always Tomorrow (1956). It is easy to see why they would be teamed again as they are simply wonderful together here. Both of them bring out the best in the other. In their romantic scenes, you can feel the chemistry between the two, making these scenes much more touching and heartfelt than they would have been otherwise. Both also deliver the comedic moments absolute perfectly. The looks on Barbara Stanwyck's face during the first trial scene make it even funnier.

This was the second film that writer Preston Sturges and director Mitchell Leisen collaborated on. It was proceeded by Easy Living (1937). Though these two films are both delightful, Preston Sturges was unhappy with what Leisen did with this movie. Leisen trimmed many and cut out many scenes in Sturges' screenplay, which upset Sturges. David Chierichetti, who wrote the Mitchell Leisen biography Hollywood Director, would write about these cuts stating, "Tailoring the script to fit the personalities of MacMurray and Stanwyck drastically changed Sturges' original concept of the characters. Reading the script, one gets the impression that it is the attorney who dominated the story. Sturges gave him many lengthy and clever speeches which made him assume almost heroic stature. Leisen felt that this was a bit theatrical, and the wordiness of the dialogue demanded a certain articulate quality on the part of the actor that MacMurray simply didn't have. Cutting MacMurray's lines down to the minimum, Leisen played up the feeling of gentle strength MacMurray could project so well. It was a far cry from Sturges' dashing hero." Wanting to have control over his stories is what led Sturges to become a director soon afterwards.

One thing both Leisen and Sturges agreed on though was that they both had great respect for Barbara Stanwyck. When the film was completed 8 days before schedule and $50,000, Mitchell Leisen credited this to Stanwyck. He would state, "She never blew one line through the whole picture. She set that kind of pace and everybody worked harder, trying to outdo her. Barbara had a bad back, and when we were shooting the barn dance sequence, the corset she had to wear under the old-fashioned dress was very painful for her. I'd say, 'Look, you've got two hours until your next scene, why don't you just take it off and relax?' and she'd say, 'Oh, no, you might need me,' and she sat on the set the whole time. She was always right at my elbow when I needed her. We never once had to wait for her to finish with the hairdresser or the make-up man." Preston Sturges was equally impressed. Stanwyck would later remember, "One day he said to me, 'Someday I'm going to write a real screwball comedy for you.' Remember the Night was a delightful comedy, swell for me and Fred MacMurray, but hardly a screwball, and I replied that nobody would ever think of writing anything like that for me - a murderess, sure. But he said, 'You just wait.'" She wouldn't have to wait long. The very next year, Sturges directed Stanwyck in The Lady Eve (1941), which is still one of the most popular screwball comedies of all time.

Despite its Christmas setting this movie was released in January of 1940. It received good reviews from critics, and it was a hit with audiences as well. Unfortunately, though it is still not as well-known as it should be. However, for many film buffs, it has become a Christmas tradition.