• Midnight

2/2/25 (Sun)

Mitchell Leisen’s underrated 1939 film is one of the best screwball comedies ever, distinguished by a sparkling script by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett in their sophomore effort as a team. All character traits and plot developments are logical, if nutty, and the pieces fit together beautifully. It boasts the funniest repartee since Trouble in Paradise, and its tone is dry but not as cynical as their later works. Leisen’s direction is flawless, moving with buoyant pace throughout in complete service to the story.

A beautiful but penniless woman (Claudette Colbert), a confessed gold-digger, arrives in rainy Paris with nothing but her gold lamé dress and a handbag with a pawn ticket for her luggage back in Monaco. A cab driver (Don Ameche) spies her and takes her around to look for a job, during which they develop an unmistakable rapport. But she eventually flees when he also offers his room for the night, fearing either men in general or life with a cabbie.

She happens upon a formal party and manages to slip in by passing her pawn ticket to the busy doorman as her calling card. She ends up in a bridge game, where she attracts the eye of a rich gentleman (Francis Lederer) – much to the irritation of his not-so-secret lover (Mary Astor) but to the delight of the woman’s husband (John Barrymore). She invents an identity for herself as a baroness, taking on the cabbie’s exotic last name as her own.  Barrymore, catching on quickly to Colbert’s game, arranges to supply Colbert with plentiful money and clothing in order to continue to lure Lederer away and thus win back his wife.

The peeved Astor and her fey friend (Rex O’Malley) find evidence that the woman is a fraud, but just as they are about to expose her in public, Ameche bursts in claiming to be the baron. Colbert, her eyes on Lederer’s riches, is aghast at the intrusion of her “husband” but must keep up her front. Several uproarious twists and turns later, Colbert effectively is forced to choose between wealth and love. No guesses as to how she chooses, but it involves getting a divorce from a man she’s not married to and a marriage with her supposed husband.

Terrific performances all around, though an irrepressible Claudette Colbert pretty much dominates every scene she’s in. Her line deliveries are priceless. Asked if she threw out a person offering her a bribe: “How could I with my hands full of money?” Questioning herself to check her sanity: “What’s your name? Eve Peabody. Where do you live? Nowhere in particular. How old are you? None of your business.” She speaks in an utterly natural fashion as if she is coming up with the lines at the moment. A great turn.

Her main competition was Barrymore, fabulous as the scheming husband in what was reportedly his last great role. He looked like he was having a ball, not least in the phone scene where he is pretending to be a three-year-old girl. He was supposedly ailing during filming, but that’s not evident in the least in his buoyant performance. Astor is also hilarious as the wife who’s jealous of her lover’s straying. Ameche breezily makes love-at-first-sight look entirely possible, while Francis Lederer was fine if less distinctive. O’Malley did good work as the obviously gay companion, and Hedda Hopper and Monty Woolley offered solid support with their limited roles.

The title refers to the story’s Cinderella romance (Colbert tells herself: “Don’t forget, every Cinderella has her midnight”). Colbert also tells the cabbie offering her a ride, “Oh, I know. This is the pumpkin coach, and you’re the fairy godmother.” Here, of course, Cinderella turns down the rich prince and ends up with the fairy godmother in the guise of the poor cabbie.

There are some great behind-the-scene stories: Barrymore had deteriorated badly from years of alcoholism and needed strategically placed cue cards to follow his lines (his wife Ellen Barrie was also cast, supposedly to keep an eye on him), Astor was pregnant and needed special positioning to hide her growing tummy, Wilder’s dislike of script changes by the gay director (Wilder: “I don’t knock fairies. Let him be a fairy. Leisen’s problem was that he was a stupid fairy”) led him to become a director himself (though he worked with Leisen on two more films), Colbert only permitted her profile to be filmed from the left side, Leisen was apparently having an affair with some guy on the staff, and so forth. But none of that adds, subtracts or distracts from the strength of the movie itself.

So-called screwball comedies tend to rely on dumb coincidences or strained plot twists to make the story work as needed rather than let events flow as they will. Unlike Leisen’s frantic Easy Living, this piece is intricately constructed but never shows its working parts. It’s one of those films where everything works. A big thumbs up.