Sunday, February 7, 2010

365 Movies: Midnight Review


Midnight stars Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore, Mary Astor, and Francis Lederer in this 1939 comedy, directed by Mitchell Leisen and a screenplay written by geniuses Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. The film is about a penniless woman named Eve Peabody(Colbert), who with no money at all, she escapes to Paris hoping for a break. While out in the pouring rain, she meets taxi driver Tibor Czerny(Ameche), an exuberant and happy go lucky type fella, who wants to help Eve find a job. After several attempts of driving around, trying to find a job, Eve and Tibor split after Tibor suggests Eve come back to his place to sleep. Feeling she already owes him too much, Eve runs away from Tibor and slides right into a private music event. Through this, she meets some very wealthy and quite snobby people such as Helene Flammarion(Astor) who seems to be more enamored with Jacques Picot(Lederer), than her own husband Georges(Barrymore). Annoyed with his wife's attention on another man, Georges enlists Eve to distract Jacques away from his wife. But there's only one problem, Tibor is looking for her and he won't stop until he finds her. One of the reasons, I adore this movie so much is because of John Barrymore, Don Ameche, and Claudette Colbert. Without those three in this movie, it wouldn't be nearly as funny. The sparring between Ameche and Colbert is sweet and fun to watch. Barrymore is at his best and out of all the movies of his, that I've seen this is definitely his best and funniest! If you haven't seen this movie, go out now and buy it! You won't be disappointed... not one bit!



Review for Tomorrow: Scarlet Dawn

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great job Nicola!

I agree, this is such a brilliantly funny movie. One of my favorite scenes is when Eve first walks into the music benefit and accidentally sits on a dog! Such a wonderful movie, and wonderful review. :)

Sally said...

Great review! I absolutely love this movie! I'm so glad I stumbled upon it by accident on Netflix. I bought it shortly after and, as you said, I haven't regretted it one bit! It's quickly rising to one of my very favorite movies. I couldn't wait to read your review on it (this is late because I fell sadly behind in blog-reading) and it was so much fun to read!

P.S. Love the banner at the top of your blog! So cute!