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)
Amazon.com essential video: Although Hollywood's golden year of 1939 is best remembered for Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, it was also a banner year for sophisticated screen comedy, and Mitchell Leisen's Midnight is a deliciously prime example. Screenwriters Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett were in peak form when they concocted this smooth confection about Eve Peabody (Claudette Colbert), an American showgirl in Paris who is out of work, money, and luck when a handsome cabbie (Don Ameche) offers to drive her around the City of Light to search for employment as a nightclub chanteuse. Nobody's hiring, but Eve has a better plan: posing as a Hungarian countess, she smuggles her way into Parisian high society and suddenly finds herself in the lap of luxury, commissioned by a wealthy aristocrat (John Barrymore) to seduce a French playboy (Francis Lederer) away from Barrymore's not-so-loyal wife (Mary Astor). While Eve is living it up at the Ritz Hotel and enjoying trips to Versailles, Ameche's on a mission to find her and declare his true love.
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
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Another Classic Screwball Comedy
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Mitchell Leisen directed MIDNIGHT (1939), another delightful screwball ... Read More
Rating: - One of the Greatest Screwball Comedies!
This movie is little known compared to It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby and several other films. I can't understate how great this comedy is. I first saw it several years ago at the Dryden Theatre ... Read More
Rating: - "Midnightly Madness"
Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche sizzle in another production which displays Colbert's genius as a commedienne. She goes smoothly from one ridiculous situation to another in her attempts to take on the persona ... Read More
Rating: - Comedy of Manners Jumps Curve & Goes Screwball Masterpiece
Holy Cow! Here's a screwball comedy that's goes well beyond the curve of all others. Watching Midnight is like riding up a rainbow; it takes every opportunity to go over the top, then, with each outrageously inventive ... Read More
Rating: - A true classic!
This is classic screwball comedy at its best. Great cast, entertaining plot with a few unexpected twists and turns, and snappy dialogue. It's just plain fun to watch.
