Class distinction, infidelity, false identity... these were daring ingredients for a 1939 comedy, and Midnight (a casebook display of Paramount's shimmering studio style of the '30s) is as fresh today as it was when first released. The silky perfection of the Wilder-Brackett screenplay is expertly served by Leisen (a director who deserves ranking with Ernst Lubitsch and Preston Sturges), and Colbert is merely the brightest star in a flawless cast of screwball veterans. Poking fun at the elite was a Wilder-Brackett specialty, and Barrymore is particularly savvy to the material, giving a performance that's simultaneously sly, desperate, and hilariously inspired. The plot is so elegantly executed that Midnight makes most comedies of later decades look pale in comparison. Gone are the days, it seems, when sophistication, wit, and good taste were an integral part of Hollywood comedy. Midnight offers all of those qualities in abundance, making it a perfect antidote to the crudeness that dominates mainstream comedy at the turn of the millennium. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description
Academy Award winners* Claudette Colbert Don Ameche and John Barrymore light up the screen in Midnight - one of the best romantic comedies from the Golden Age of Hollywood. The fun begins when a penniless showgirl (Colbert) impersonates a Hungarian countess and with the help of an aristocrat (Barrymore) quickly adapts to her new lifestyle. But can she stop herself from falling in love with yet another poor man (Ameche)? Written by Academy Award winners** Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett Midnight has been hailed as "just about the best light comedy ever caught by the camera!" (Motion Picture Daily)System Requirements:Running Time: 95 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/SCREWBALL COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 025193312921 Manufacturer No: 61033129

There, she meets a wealthy couple, deliciously played by John Barrymore and Mary Astor. Ms. Astor has been smitten by a French playboy, played by the very handsome Francis Lederer, who appears to be smitten by the baroness. Barrymore knows that she is not a baroness, but keeps quiet. He treats her to a taste of luxury and then hires her to play the role she adopted, so as to make sure his wife's budding romance is nipped in the bud. As the baroness, she is to lure Lederer away from Astor, saving their marriage in the process.

In the interim, our smitten cabbie has enlisted all the cabbies in Paris to help find Ms. Peabody. He manages to track her down at yet another society fete, where he arrives dressed in a tux and is announced as her husband, the baron. Meanwhile, the wealthy and handsome playboy has declared his intentions towards the baroness. Let the games begin! What will the baroness do? Will she remain with the "baron"? Will she marry the wealthy French playboy? Watch the film and find out.

Look for lots of lively, fast paced dialogue. The performances are wonderful, and the dialogue is often witty. This is a reminder of the golden era of hollywood films. It is an absolutely delightful and zany romantic comedy.


An unjustly neglected comic masterpiece   March 16, 2003
 20 out of 20 found this review helpful

MIDNIGHT is the greatest classic Hollywood comedy that almost no one has seen. Why this isn't better known is a bit of a mystery. The film is well directed, well scripted, well acted, and well produced. The film is directed by Mitchell Leisen, who has been unjustly forgotten for the misfortune of having directed a series of extremely fine films based on screenplays by two writers who would later become famous directors in their own right: Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges. But Leisen put his own distinctive touch on the films he directed, and that is nowhere truer than this superb film. Nonetheless, the screenplay is superb, by one of the greatest writers of comedies in the history of cinema, Billy Wilder. Although he had been in Hollywood for a while, this was the first screenplay in which he truly hit his stride, the first in a series of stellar scripts (including NINOTCHKA for Lubitsch, ARISE MY LOVE and HOLD BACK THE DAWN for Leisen, and BALL OF FIRE for Howard Hawks) that led to his own shot at directing. Charles Brackett worked with Wilder as usual, Wilder functioning as the story originator and gagman, and Brackett cleaning up the Germanicisms cluttering Wilder's sentences. The cast is superb, with Claudette Colbert turning in one of her greatest performances as a young woman determined to capture a rich husband, but who instead inconveniently gets involved with a Parisian cab driver. Don Ameche was never better than in this film playing that Parisian cab driver. Mary Astor, who was extremely pregnant during filming, is her usual superb self, while the rest of the cast is littered with talented veteran character actors. The most bittersweet performance is the simultaneous hysterical and tragic performance by John Barrymore as a drunken dissipated nobleman. No question, the man turns in a funny, funny performance, but it is tragic because the appearance of drunkenness and dissipation was not the result of acting. Barrymore was suffering from advanced alcoholism during the filming, and was only a couple of years away from his premature death brought on by cirrhosis of the liver. The man once known as "The Great Profile" no longer was the extraordinarily handsome man he had been only five years earlier. He is funny, but it somehow seems unfitting that one of the great stage and screen actors of the 20th century should have ended his career as a bit of a buffoon.

The screenplay is if a kind that we no longer see, and was the result of a huge influx of European talent in the 1930s escaping the political situation in Europe. So many great films directed by Lubitsch and Wilder and others put an enormously European twist to love and romance, and in no film is this more true than this one: an adventurous woman trying to scale the social ladder by snaring a man, a gigolo seducing another man's wife, the husband scheming to reclaim his wife with the help of the would-be adventurous, and meanwhile a poor cabbie trying to find the woman he loves. Delicious stuff, and it is a credit to Leisen and the largely non-European cast that they pull the whole thing off so believably. In this film, at least, he manages a European elegance and sophistication that would have done Lubitsch proud.


Excellent Prime Vintage Comedy   January 20, 2003
 8 out of 8 found this review helpful

This is one of the most sophisticated and funny comedies I've seen in my whole life, thanks to one of the wittiest screenplays ever (by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, et al), deft direction by Mitchell Leisen, expertly paced, with a top cast, the best costumes, very elegant sets, etc.

Claudette Colbert is wisecracking chorus girl Eve Peabody (later Baroness Czerny), stranded in Paris, who is befriended by taxi driver Tibor Czerny (played by Don Ameche, in one of his best roles) and ends rubbing elbows with the "smart-set", with unexpected results. For those who have watched Anatole Litvak's "Tovarich" (1937) on TCM, starring Colbert and Charles Boyer, it has a similar premise, but the other way round, because in the latter Colbert, a Russian Grand Duchess who belongs to that country's Royal Family, pretends to be a maid.

The cast is full of excellent players: John Barrymore who impersonates with great skill, Monsieur Flammarion, a role somehow reminiscent of the one he played in "Twentieth Century" opposite Carole Lombard, but in a much "understated" manner. Mary Astor, as his unfaithful wife is rightly "stiff-upper-lip", high class and disdainful. Francis Lederer is very good as her lover, Jacques Picot, who falls under the spell of Colbert's charms. Rex O'Malley is Astor's wisecracking friend, Marcel Renard.

This movie has definitely the trademark "Paramount Look" and the great settings recreate Paris very well. There are many very funny scenes, especially those at the soiree offered by pretentious socialite Hedda Hopper and the party that takes place at the Flammarion Residence in Versailles, where all the guests dance "La Conga". Unforgettable.


What Happens To Cinderella After Midnight   January 20, 2002
 7 out of 7 found this review helpful

Claudette Colbert is essentially Cinderella in this clever twist on the Cinderella storyline. She's a penniless, but resourceful American in Paris, who through a few twists of fate, ends up impersonating a Hungarian Baroness, joining the upper echelons of society in the process. Her fairy godmother is John Barrymore, who assists her in her charade to entice Francis Lederer, a playboy flirting with Mary Astor, Barrymore's wife. Don Ameche is the cab driver who has fallen in love with the real Claudette, and he wants her back. If it sounds complicated, it is, but in the hands of screenwriters Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, it makes perfect sense. The script is tightly and smoothly written, with terrific dialogue and screwball comedy mixed together. Wilder and Brackett take the Cinderella idea and make it something entirely different for adults. Colbert proves again in this film what a wonderful comedienne she was, giving a shrewd performance as the girl who charms everyone. She's given hilarious support by Barrymore, who enlivens every scene he's in, especially his phone conversation with Colbert and Ameche. The rest of the cast are terrific as well. Director Mitchell Leisen does his usual classy job in a film that reminds you just how smart and fun classic Hollywood comedies could be in the hands of people like Wilder, Colbert, Barrymore, and Leisen.