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i must have seen a different film!!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Apparently, Barbara Stanwyck was supposed to play the lead but a scheduling conflict prevented it. One cannot help but think how she would have played the scenes when Eve Peabody wakes up in the suite and finds all those clothes given to her by John Barrymore's character. Of course, Claudette Colbert is good and brings an air of sophistication to the part, but she does not come across as hard-pressed as Stanwyck probably would have presented the character. Don Ameche plays a taxicab driver and is the prince charming in this picture. He pulls it off, thanks in large part to the easy rapport he shares with Colbert. Another standout, among a group of top-notch performers, is Mary Astor. But the real scene-stealer is Hedda Hopper as the socialite, Stephanie. Monty Woolley commandeers the laughs in the final sequence as a put- upon judge, but I would have preferred seeing a final shot of the lovers as they were married.Colbert and Ameche re-teamed for two more pictures.

If "Midnight" as a title seems puzzling, think Cinderella. Except this time our Cinderella is a gold digger with a self-defeating habit of falling for poor taxi drivers. She's also one of the foxiest, funniest and sexiest young ladies in Paris. No staying at home to sweep out the hearth for her. Midnight, released in 1939, was one of the last of the great romantic screwball comedies that Hollywood had learned how to make during the Thirties. Somehow, it was nearly forgotten while others were treasured. With DVD, here's our chance to see again just how good it is, thanks to Claudette Colbert as the ambitious Eve Peabody; Don Ameche as the cab-driving Tibor Czerny; John Barrymore as the rich Georges Flammarion, a somewhat dissipated fairy godfather; Mary Astor as his wife, Helene; and with Mitchell Leisen directing and Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder writing the screenplay. If you're able to watch this movie without smiling, you must have injected too much Botox around your lips. Eve arrives in Paris by train with only the gold lame gown she's wearing and a lonely franc in her purse. She's lost all her money and luggage gambling, hoping to make enough to land a rich daddy. Before long Tibor is driving her around in the rainy night in his taxi while she tries to find a nightclub job singing. No luck. Tibor is obviously smitten, but Eve, who likes him more and more, is determined to get ahead in life. She leaves Tibor putting gas in the taxi and runs off into the rain. She winds up at an exclusive salon filled with wealthy patrons being cultured with classical music. And there she meets the rich Georges Flammarion, whose wife, Helene, is being wooed by the rich Jacques Picot (Francis Lederer). Flammarion, no fool, comes to Eve's assistance when awkward questions are about to be asked, and installs her at the Ritz. He then proposes. Not marriage, but an arrangement where Eve will entice Jacques away from Helene, whom George, it turns out, actually loves. Now we're in elegant mansion country, where there are exquisitely dressed guests doing the conga, where Eve is pretending to be the Baroness Czerny (she had to come up with a name, and Tibor's was handy), where she has Jacques enticed and where suddenly Tibor shows up in white tail and tails pretending to be Baron Czerny, where imaginary children have measles, where there can be a wedding gift of a single roller skate covered with Thousand Island dressing, where mix-ups collide with complications, and where Georges must come to the rescue with flawless double takes. We wind things up in a divorce court with a kiss and an embrace, of course, but only after so many really clever fibs and ingenious set-ups that Brackett and Wilder must have used a chart to keep things clear. Everything works in this sophisticated romantic comedy, and that includes the dialogue by Brackett and Wilder. The movie keeps rushing and fizzing ahead. Colbert dominates but all are at their best (even Ameche, who doesn't come to mind as the first person to cast in a sophisticated comedy). Colbert was just at the cusp of moving into films more suitable to her age (she was 37). In four years she'd be playing the teenage Shirley Temple's mother. She never lost that sexy, clever, resourceful aura of hers, and it's in full force here. To see what I mean, just watch her as Franzi in The Smiling Lieutenant opposite Maurice Chevalier and as Ellie in It Happened One Night. She gives wondrous charm to Eve's ability to come up with plausible alternatives to awkward realities. Barrymore makes a dissipated fairy godfather, but with so much sly charm it's a pleasure to observe his rescues of Eve. Barrymore knows what he's doing, even if by now he had to read his lines from giant cue cards. If you like Hollywood screwball comedies, I think you'll find Midnight is one of the best.

As good as a movie can get. Claudette Colbert is the flapper/gold-digger/chanteuse, (take your pick), who arrives in a very rainy Paris in an evening gown and not much else. She is momentarily rescued from her predicament by a gallant taxi driver, (played gallantly by Don Ameche), with whom she immediately falls in love but from whom she runs as fast as her well-turned-out legs can carry her. She runs straight into the clutches of John Barrymore, (a magnificent comic performance), who saves her bacon, so to speak, if only she will seduce gigolo Francis Lederer who is stealing away Barrymore's wife, the always delectable Mary Astor, and thus save Barrymore's marriage.This is a French farce of the very best kind, although it is written, not by a Feydeau, but by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, and directed with supreme elegance by the under-valued Mitchell Leisen. Colbert is wonderful as the wide-eyed chorine, torn between love and riches, Barrymore displays sublime comic timing and Astor is as sharp as a new pin. It feels and looks like a Lubitsch but I doubt if even Lubitsch could better it.

Claudette Colbert at her best, playing a down-on-her-luck singer in Paris who is mistaken for a member of Hungarian royalty; she goes along with the deception, but only to help wealthy John Barrymore out of his marital fix. Tightly-wound screwball farce written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, from a story by Edwin Justus Mayer and Franz Schulz (with such a distinguished pedigree, the movie has to reach some high expectations--and does so joyfully). Directed in an efficient, brisk manner by Mitchell Leisen, with superb performances by the cast and pleasant, airy surroundings. Remade in 1945 as "Masquerade in Mexico". *** from ****