Remember the Night (1940, Mitchell Leisen) (Patreon)

90/100

Second viewing, last seen 1993. Remembered it as lightly enjoyable, and one could readily imagine a version of this story that's more overtly comic. Indeed, the basic scenario—representative of law and order travels with criminal; one of them awkwardly visits an estranged relative; they grow close enough that Mr. Law (who'd been looking out solely for his own professional and financial interests) ultimately seeks to let the crook get away—was recapitulated decades later, minus the romance, via Midnight Run. Instead, Remember the Night turns startlingly dark for a moment, with Lee's attempted maternal rapprochement cruelly rejected, before shifting into a lovely, heartwarming portrait of restorative kindness...which then itself takes an ugly turn as Jack's mother ever-so-sweetly asks the wounded bird she's been tending to please fly somewhere far from her respectable and hardworking son. Sturges and Stanwyck would perfect this sort of thrilling tonal whiplash the following year in The Lady Eve—and that's the (even) greater film, in my opinion—but Leisen contributes purely visual aspects that Sturges, for all his genius, was never remotely able to match. Certainly there's nothing comparable to the shot of Lee sobbing on her mother's front porch, during which Leisen has Mom peek out the window, deep in the background, and then just switch off an interior light and vanish, rather than emerging to patch things up as one might expect. A truly disturbing moment that subtly enriches an otherwise one-dimensional character without ever calling attention to itself. Apparently, Leisen also cut a lot of the snappy patter that Sturges had written for Jack, fearing that it was beyond MacMurray's capability...which now seems patently absurd, since MacMurray and Stanwyck arguably set the standard for high-speed badinage just four years later, but probably better served this particular picture (just as The Lady Eve wouldn't work with a scabrous wit in Fonda's role).

Yet there's still plenty of vintage Sturges here—most notably in the opening reel, which hands the minor character of Lee's attorney an epic opening or closing argument (it's not clear to me which) that revels in escalating lunacy and remains blithely unconcerned about taxing the viewer's patience. Plotting's uncommonly strong, often creating and then subverting expectations; an entire sequence exists solely to divert Jack and Lee through Canada on their way home, but while Leisen gets a gorgeous Niagara Falls clinch out of it, Lee winds up passing on Jack's suggestion that she thwart the U.S. justice system simply by remaining outside of the country's borders. And having complained a few months ago about Kramer vs. Kramer's ludicrous custody trial, I was very gratified indeed to see a movie made four decades earlier employ that sort of witness badgering to an actual purpose, with the attorney deliberately trying to make the jury despise him so that they'll acquit the woman he's ostensibly trying to convict. (If you can watch Lee suddenly grasp what's happening and not need to brush tears away, you're less of a sap than yours truly.) I could perhaps wish for a slightly stronger finale, meaning literally just the last few seconds—what we get's a tad prosaic—but here I've been gushing for two full paragraphs without even mentioning Beulah Bondi and Elizabeth Patterson and Sterling Holloway, who collectively manage to make "common" decency seem genuinely inspiring rather than saccharine or like a rebuke of those self-obsessed city folk. "I'm pretty lucky, huh?" Jack asks Lee, vis-à-vis the warm bosom of his family, and Lee's quiet "You bet" pierces because we've just seen her endure the opposite. Only a great movie would then have one of those same people gently stick the knife in, leading to an unhappy happy ending. 

(If you somehow require further prodding, note that the Coens outright swiped Stanwyck's line "That gag's so old it's got whiskers," giving it to Bruce Campbell in The Hudsucker Proxy. Also I watched this on 30 December, which is ideal; entire film takes place between Christmas and New Year's, basically.)