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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
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If Only Life Was Like A Movie,
By A Customer
This review is from: Midnight (VHS Tape)
Wit and sophisticated humor is lost from modern movies but it abounds here with double entendres and quips galore. Claudette Colbert is at her very best as is Don Ameche, Mary Astor and Joyn Barrymore. Billy Wilder was one of the writers and his touches are obvious. Nothing is more fun than to see a poor girl run circles around the rich while being supplied with the clothes, jewels, and Hispano Suiza to do it with by someone else's husband.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant,
By
This review is from: Midnight (VHS Tape)
Why isn't this movie better known? Why isn't it on DVD? It's a perfectly pitched romantic comedy, with a dream cast, witty script, terrific timing and one hilarious line or scene after another. It's got a sheen that holds up far better than many comedies of the same period, especially "It Happened One Night," which is very dated and almost lumpy in comparison. I can watch this again and again. It soars. It's movies like this that inspired me to write comic mysteries, though I know I'm no Billy Wilder.Lev Raphael, author of the Nick Hoffman mysteries
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Champagne comedy at its most bubbly!!,
By Simon Davis (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Midnight (VHS Tape)
Where do I start in describing this wonderful film which has no peer as the best of the sophisticated comedies of the 30's. Quite simply it is funny, glowing with sophistication, brilliantly written with every attention to detail taken into account.Without a doubt it is the crowning glory of Claudette Colbert's film career and "Midnight" shows her at the peak of her ability and lovliness in a role superbly suited to her wonderful talents. There are so many memorable scenes in this film that it would be impossible to relate them to readers who haven't yet had the pleasure of viewing this gem. The scene of scenes is, I believe, the truly brilliant telephone conversation between John Barrymore (in a truly wonderful performance )and Don Ameche where he pretends to be Francy, Claudette's and Don Ameche's fictional daughter. It is an absolute riot and will have you convulsing with laughter like it does me time and time again. For that scene alone the video is worth purchasing! As complication piles upon complication the story just gets funnier. What a joyous marriage of talent and writing this film provides. The supporting cast is a marvellous asset here with Mary Astor as Barrymore's unfaithful wife a real stand out. She was a fascinating actress who I feel never got the real credit she deserved. Here se is brittle then bitchy and then comical in a terrific performance. The film also benefits from the fact of it being a product of the Golden era of Hollywood film making. What film company could possibly produce such a film as this now. Very few present day films "glow' as this one does and certainly there are no "stars' to compare with the likes of Colbert, Barrmore, Ameche, Astor. The expensive look and attention to detail evident in the film also helps tremendously with this tale set among the upper strata of Parisian society. Paramount did a wonderful job considering the whole film was done in Hollwood. An A+ time is guaranteed when you step into the champagne, weekend country house world of "Midnight" Enjoy!!
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