Remember the Night

A few days before Christmas. Lee is caught stealing a bracelet from a shop. The prosecutor Jack has the trial put off until after the holiday, meaning to stop her benefiting from Christmas sentiment in front of a jury. But that means she stays in jail over the holiday. It bothers him and he posts her bail. Then he realises they are both going to Indiana. He offers to drop her at her mother's house. Her mother will not have her. He takes her to his own family. Mitchell Leisen directs from a screenplay by Preston Sturges. Barbara Stanwyck plays Lee and Fred MacMurray plays Jack. Sturges began directing his own films shortly after this script; it is among his last works as a writer alone. Stanwyck and MacMurray played together again four years later in Double Indemnity, where both are plotting a murder, standing at the opposite pole from the tone of this film. What is interesting is the two mothers. Lee's turns her from the door and Jack's takes her in without a question; the film explains how the character became what she is through the difference between those two scenes. The balance between comedy and drama is kept; although it is a Christmas film the narrative offers no easy resolution and the ending does not go where it is expected. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Hollywood comedy and Christmas films. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, the family scenes in the middle run long, and the moral frame of the period feels too orderly now.