Very well executed

Expected more

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This movie was released in 1940. Therefore, within the first quarter hour, we all know how it will progress and how it will end. We all hope that it doesn't end that way, but we are all one hundred per cent certain that there is no way it could end any other way. Paramount is a big studio with a lot of money invested in this movie and we all know that the 1940 censor would not allow the movie to end any other way -- much as we would like that to happen in this particular case. We all hope a miracle will occur, but it doesn't happen. And that of course is a big failure, but we all know in our hearts that the 1940 Hollywood censor does not believe in miracles. A shame, I agree! If the movie was re-made today, it would end differently, but I guess there's no chance in the world that a remake would even be considered, let alone that it will happen.The acting in this doomed scenario is great. If some of the scenes don't bring tears to your eyes, then fine players like Fred MacMurray and Barnara Stanwyck have labored in vain. In fact all the cast has been well-chosen. The direction is smooth, the story believable (in fact too believable), production values are A-1, and the players magnificent. MacMurray never gave a better performance than this one, and Barbara Stanwyck is, as usual, right on top of the game. No-one else but Barbara could have played this role with such power and conviction. The support payers are all believable too. In fact, at least three or four of them are maybe just a mite too believable! You want to shake them and make them aware that love conquers all!

REMEMBER THE NIGHT is one of my favorite Christmas movies, and maybe one of my favorite movies of any genre. The characters, quirky and sympathetic, endowed by writer Preston Sturges with his own unique brand of offbeat wit and wiliness, ring true from the opening sequence to the wrenching last scene.Barbara Stanwyck is at the peak of her beauty, but here she plays a hardboiled shoplifter, cynical and icy. Her foil is the savvy D.A., played by Fred MacMurray at his most beguiling best. We learn early on that, although working the tough New York streets, they are both from Indiana, giving them the corn-fed, all-American heartland background, and making them somehow, in spite of being on the opposite sides of the law, perfectly right for each other.A road trip to Indiana (with "Back Home in Indiana" woven into the sound track) brings them to Barbara's home, where Fred intends to drop her off for a Christmas visit. What ensues is one of the most effectively chilling scenes I've ever seen in a movie--a convincing picture of a mother with a hard heart and the total devastation of her daughter as a result. Stanwyck melts before our eyes. The brief performance of Georgia Caine, an actress unknown to me before this film, is one of the subtlest yet most powerful I've ever seen.The bleak atmosphere is soon contrasted with the genuine warmth and tenderness--and Christmas spirit--of the home Fred grew up in. Beulah Bondi, Elizabeth Patterson, and Sterling Holloway create a totally convincing family, and Barbara's reaction to them, reflected in the sparkle in her eyes that seems to come from nowhere, is a hallmark of great film acting. I'm a sucker for families singing around the piano, and this scene is one of the most touching in any holiday movie. Sterling Holloway suddenly volunteers that he can "sing 'The End of a Perfect Day'" and Bondi retorts, "So can everybody," but soon he is singing it with full conviction and Stanwyck is accompanying him at the piano.This is a complex little movie, full of lights and shadows, and ending on a slightly unsatisfying dark note. But you leave it pondering exactly what will happen next, and you can't help but think it will all work out well somehow. You have met some complete human beings, of another time and place, and they have stolen your heart.

Four years before they were murder (in "Double Indemnity") and five years before she learned how to flip pancakes (in "Christmas in Connecticut"), Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck were dynamic in this Mitchell Leissen comedy/drama that will leave you merry but weary from crying. It's just before the holidays in New York City, and shoplifter Barbara Stanwyck is caught trying to hawk a bracelet she just stole from another jewelers. D.A. Fred MacMurray is raring to get out of town for the holidays, but must first prosecute her case. He is not happy, yet he won't be happy if he leaves her behind bars over Christmas. So what does he do? He takes her home with him, of course! It's not that simple, but MacMurray does agree to drop her off in Ohio to see her mother who is not welcoming at all. But being a "Hoosier" (from Indiana), MacMurray does agree to host her for the holidays along with his widowed mother (Beulah Bondi), spinster aunt (Elizabeth Patterson) and sweet farmhand (Sterling Holloway). They are more than happy to have her, sure a romance is brewing. For a small town girl gone wrong like Stanwyck, this is heaven. And slowly but surely, the two fall in love, even though she's sure to get jail time when they get back to Manhattan.One of three Christmas movies made by the wonderful Barbara Stanwyck ("Meet John Doe" is the other), "Remember the Night" is an almost forgotten gem which has been rediscovered by film connoisseurs and is now considered a classic (not just another old movie). At the heart of its story is the message of what Christmas really is about-giving of oneself, not just to family, but to strangers as well. Once MacMurray realizes this, he finds that the reward is magic. There are so many wonderful moments in this timeless film that the best way to learn about them isn't to read reviews, but to watch the film. This cynical world of ours may find films like this overly sentimental, but it is sentiment which keeps us sane over the holidays. For me, the highlight is MacMurray's family and Stanwyck singing "A Perfect Day", as well as some sweet scenes between Stanwyck and Patterson, and later Stanwyck and Bondi, the later almost bittersweet. Georgia Caine is darkly cold as Stanwyck's mother who takes great pains to remind Stanwyck (in front of MacMurray) what a rotten child she was. Leissen took great care to make the ending a bit more realistic than it could have been. The mixture of comedy and pathos makes for great viewing of one of the best emotional screenplays (by the brilliant Preston Sturges) ever put on celluloid.

Like Christmas EVE (1947) that I watched the day before, this is a vintage Yuletide Hollywood film that should be better known in view of the talents involved; however, unlike the later film – which, given its undeserving *½ rating on Leonard Maltin's Film Guide, I was not expecting much from and was somewhat pleasantly surprised by the outcome – this turned out to be something of a disappointment. Not that it is in any way bad but, having a stylish director like Leisen, a peerless screenwriter like Preston Sturges and the sure-fire teaming of Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, it should have been a comedy classic. Rather tellingly, it seems to me, the film proved Sturges' last screenplay assignment before embarking on his meteoric directorial career that redefined the screwball genre; needless to say, the two leads would subsequently be iconically reteamed in Billy Wilder's seminal noir, DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) and twice more thereafter in the following decade which I am not familiar with.Anyway, the narrative revolves around an attractive chronic shoplifter (Stanwyck) who gets away with an expensive bracelet from one shop but is apprehended when trying to pawn it in another; MacMurray is the prosecuting D.A. who, after suffering through the would-be heart-rending histrionics of her has-been thespian attorney, secures a recess until after the festive season but gets a change of heart upon watching Stanwyck make her way to spending Christmas in police custody. Therefore he arranges to pay her $5,000 bail but the bondsman misconstrues his interest and dumps her on his doorstep – to the bemusement of MacMurray's "dumb" colored butler! Given the situation and the time of year, he takes her out to a dinner dance (where he embarrassingly comes face-to-face with the presiding judge) but, upon discovering that they both hail from Indiana and that she had not been home for the holidays in years, they are soon en route together to their old hometown. Unfortunately, since MacMurray only makes this trek once a year, they get lost and spend the night in a farm and wake up surrounded by a herd of cows and their irate owner who, once again misinterpreting the situation, rides them off to the Justice of the Peace at gunpoint. Thankfully, Stanwyck's quick wits – that had seen her slid out of many a jam with the law in the past – come to their rescue as she almost sets the latter's office on fire.So far, so humorous...even if it never quite reaches the zany heights of Leisen's earlier classics EASY LIVING (1937; from another Sturges script) and MIDNIGHT (1939; from a Billy Wilder-Charles Brackett screenplay). However, when the couple hit Indiana, the laughs mostly subside and are unfortunately supplanted by grim domestic melodrama (Stanwyck's confrontation with her unforgiving mother who has since remarried) and corny sentimentality (MacMurray's family includes concerned mother Beulah Bondi and future Sturges stalwart Sterling Holloway as an annoying simpleton of a farmhand). The expected local color (for those who like this sort of thing) comes courtesy of home-made sweet cooking, a philanthropic bazaar, a barnyard New Year's Eve dance and a series of individual piano renditions/sing-a-longs by the two stars and Holloway. The return trip to New York takes them to a romantic stroll along Niagara Falls (to avoid meeting up again with the proprietor of the arsoned "Justice of the Peace" office) but, as they reach the Court in the same taxicab, each decides to "throw" the case in favor of the other party…but since Stanwyck admits her guilt (following MacMurray's overzealous grilling intended to win the defendant the jury's sympathy), there is little else for them to do except for a concluding teary-eyed reconciliation in the court's elevator in which they swear each other eternal love. For the record, this was MacMurray's fourth of 9 films he made with director Leisen and he was also the nominal star of one of the most notorious of all Christmas movies, THE MIRACLE OF THE BELLS (1948; co-starring Frank Sinatra as a priest)!