Watch This Is the Night For Free

Simply Perfect

One of my all time favorites.

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

A brilliant 1932 Paramount offering is available from several public domain labels. My copy from Scooter rates at least 8/10. This is a movie for which there is no middle ground. I looked up the reviews. Half the reviewers thought This Is the Night the worst movie ever made. The other half held that it was the best movie of the year! Guess which half I agree with? I thought it one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen in my life. I was crying at the finish, it was so wonderful. This outstandingly attractive girl, played by the utterly entrancing and super-lovely Lily Damita, was being pursued all over Europe by an Olympic athlete played by Cary Grant. Most moviegoers consider Cary to be the handsomest and most desirable man in movies. Trailing along behind this romantic twosome was an old guy played by Charlie Ruggles, a comedian who is always cast as an ardent but perennially rejected old fool of a suitor. He's the comedy relief, you see. We always laugh at his earnest but tongue-tied efforts to impress the girl and his ridiculous bleatings about how much he loves her. Charlie has this part down pat. He plays it in dozens of films. He's been turned down, ridiculed and laughed at by many of the great sirens of the screen. Well, would you believe, at the end of this movie, the most beautiful Lily deals with stumbling, falling-off-ladders Ruggles in an entirely unique way? I couldn't believe my eyes and ears. I cried tears of joy. Who would ever think such a thing was possible? It seems the most beautiful girl is as intelligent as she is lovely. But there's no doubt about it, many movie fans are happier with the routine and conventional. They don't like being challenged by originality. And This Is the Night not only has an ingeniously constructed and highly original script to commend it, but marvelously adroit, sophisticated direction by Frank Tuttle (of all people!) who has evidently sought to out-Lubitsch Lubitsch - and has succeeded beyond all measure!

"This Is The Night" is noteworthy primarily because it marks Cary Grant's feature debut, but can stand on its own as a prime example of Pre-Code comedy. Some of the subject matter and situations must have been regarded as naughty for its time, but as with many of Hollywood's Pre-code movies it is pretty tame by today's standards.It is quite funny, but you have to give it a chance to warm up, as it takes a few minutes to get underway. The humor is very subtle and probably wouldn't go over well with modern audiences (see Adam Sandler). It comes with some unique quirks, like Cary Grant delivering a few lines in song, but once into the picture some old pros take over. Roland Young and Charles Ruggles, two veterans of the stage, have some of the best exchanges of situational dialogue and are aided by Thelma Todd, a comedienne who had a bright future but who was murdered around the time of the film's release. Her murder was never solved. Cary Grant plays it straight and Lili Damita is everyone's love interest but is the weakest member of the cast. It is very much like a filmed play, with just a few indoor sets, and there are only six cast members. The blue-tinted nighttime scenes were a nice, unexpected touch.In short, it is well worth your time but give it a chance to get past the slow beginning. It is actually a quick 80 minutes.

Frank Tuttle was a highly competent house director for many years, working for Sam Goldwyn, Paramount and so forth, turning out well-made movies in which the style served the story. In our day of auteur worship and the insistence that, if a critic can't tell who directed a film without looking at the credits, it is not a good film, craftsmen like Tuttle are considered hacks. I disagree. You may disagree with me. We'll leave that unsettled for the moment and thumb wrestle over it later.This movie has all the earmarks of a Lubitsch picture: the European settings (Paris, Hollywood, which Lubitsch said he much preferred to Paris France; Venice, where he had set the opening of TROUBLE IN PARADISE two years earlier) and is the sort of racy European comedy that Paramount specialized in until the Production Code killed them dead later that year. The setups are all Lubitsch: the recitative number "Madame Has Lost Her Dress" that opens the movie; The sexual imagery of Cary Grant carrying around a bagful of javelins and reducing Roland Young and Charlie Ruggles to blithering idiocy; Thelma Todd in her underwear; and into this mess lands Lily Damita, an honest girl reduced to sleeping on movie sets: trouble in Paris, Hollywood.Although Tuttle lacks the ability to direct actors in the small, exquisite details that Lubitsch did, he had a fine hand at framing and storyline. The movie is near perfect, except for the miscasting of Roland Young as the love interest..... but perhaps that is the point of the matter: we do not always fall in love with Maurice Chevalier.

I always wonder when I see the lists of "the hundred best films ever made" etc. You see, there is one thing that I have discovered over the years of delving around in old films, and it is this. It is not possible to compile lists of the best films ever made for the simple reason that some of the best films ever made are lying forgotten on shelves in film libraries, and, sadly, some are lost. There are so many great films that the public never get to see. The critics will have you believe that pictures like This is the Night is not particularly good, and is only of interest to fans of Cary Grant and Thelma Todd. People have forgotten all about it. The director, the star, the film is today forgotten.Then you play the film. The acting is utterly superb, the comic timing superb. The film is cleverly and adventurously put together by the film makers. All the players, Grant, Todd, Ruggles and Young are excellent.What is there to say about the lead, Damita? Well, with the coming of talking pictures, Damita with her French accent found it tough to get parts that would utilise her exceptional talents. Here is an exception. Not many people know that at Hollywood parties Damita was Chaplin's number one rival when it came to mime during party pieces. In one scene, we get a glimpse at the sort of thing that helped the Hollywood parties go with a swing. In dialogue Damita's comic timing is spot on, which just goes to show that you do not have to be mug ugly to be a comedienne. When she is on screen the laughter is the loudest. And sex appeal? She has been called "a French bombshell." If so, the French have to test her in the Pacific.It would be criminal to ruin it all by telling everybody what the plot is. All I will say is that if you are not smiling or laughing at this film from beginning to end, then there is something wrong with YOU.So next time you see a list of the 100 best films ever made, ignore it. My advice to you is to go out and find your own 100 best films. If you don't, you could miss gems like this, and the loser will be YOU.