Remember the Night (1940)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Remember the Night (1940) – M. Leisen

The last of Preston Sturges’ scripts that he didn’t direct himself -- Mitchell Leisen took the reins, as he did for the funnier Easy Living (1937).  Here, Fred MacMurray works as a prosecutor for the district attorney in New York and Barbara Stanwyck, charged with shoplifting, is his last trial before Christmas.  When he asks the judge for a continuance until after the holidays, he realises that this will leave Stanwyck in prison until the new year and arranges with the bailsbondman to have her released.  Little does he know that she would end up with him as he travels back to Indiana to see his mother (Beulah Bondi).  Of course, they fall in love. But what can be done? She is destined to go to jail and he has his reputation to think of.  Surprisingly, Sturges’ script keeps things relatively calm, peppered with only a few zany character actors; things would get much more screwball during his heyday in the forties (including starring Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, 1941).  Remember the Night also includes some poignant sentimental moments in keeping with the Christmas season (Sturges often managed to stir the emotions even as he split one’s sides).  MacMurray seems impossibly young and Stanwyck remains perpetually cynical/tender – the next time he would star with her, they would kill her husband (Double Indemnity, 1944).  Above average (but surpassed by their later masterpieces).