Midnight

Eve Peabody arrives in Paris by train. She has no money, is wearing an evening dress, and is here because she lost everything in Monte Carlo. A taxi driver helps her at the station. Tibor Czerny drives her around the city and tries to find her work. Eve slips away from him. She gets into a concert; at the door she presents herself as a Hungarian baroness and goes in. A wealthy man notices her. Georges Flammarion makes a proposal: if she draws his wife's lover away from her, he will give Eve money and an identity. Mitchell Leisen directs; Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett wrote the screenplay. Claudette Colbert plays Eve, Don Ameche plays Tibor and John Barrymore plays Georges. Wilder and Brackett were working together in this period; their scripts set the shape of American comedy in the years that followed. What the narrative builds is a lie growing; Eve tells one lie and has to add another in every scene to keep it standing. Its best section is a telephone scene; the man John Barrymore plays conducts a conversation alone. The narrative ends in a courtroom and completes the lie there. The character Colbert plays does not play the victim; she decides for herself and does her own bargaining. The film was well received on release and is cited apart among the comedies of the period. Its limit is structure; the last section tangles and the resolution is rushed. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Hollywood comedy and Wilder's writing. Who it is not for: the premise has dated, the pace drops in places, and the ending is strained.