Holiday Classics: Remember the Night (1940)
Director: Mitchell Leisen Run Time: 94 min. Rating: Passed Release Year: 1940
Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Beulah Bondi, Elizabeth Patterson, Fred MacMurray, Willard Robertson
Country: United States
Language: English
Presented as part of the 2023 edition of Holiday Classics.
About the film:
Assistant District Attorney John Sargent, knowing that women are harder to convict during the holidays, moves to have his case against shoplifter, Lee Leander, postponed to January, potentially leaving Lee alone in jail on Christmas. Feeling guilty, John posts her bail, and the two go on a whirlwind roadtrip from New York to Indiana to celebrate the holiday with their families, only to fall for one another along the way. Will their budding romance get in the way of John’s conviction?
“…quite a lot of schmaltz, a good dose of schmerz and just enough schmutz to make it box office.”
—Preston Sturges, Screenwriter
About the filmmaker:
Mitchell Leisen was an American director, art director, and costume designer active from the 1920s through the 1960s. He earned a nomination for an Academy Award for his art direction on Dynamite (1930), as well as a Best Picture nomination for his direction on Hold Back the Dawn (1941). Leisen worked with such famed screenwriters as Billy Wilder on Midnight (1939) and Hold Back the Dawn (1941) and Preston Sturges on Easy Living (1937) and Remember the Night (1940) — Leisen’s Remember the Night (2023) is the last Sturges-penned film to have not featured Sturges in the directing chair.
See our upcoming films