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Midnight
Director: Mitchell Leisen
Product Group: Video
Studio: Universal Studios
ISBN: 6303382975
EAN: 9786303382975
UPC: 096898083133
VHS Tape
Running Time: 94 minutes
Original Release Date: 1939-03-15
Theatrical Release Date: 1939-03-15
Release Date: 1995-03-28
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
SKU: 07120362
Condition: Like New Very Good
Comments: VHS tape in like new condition. From private collection so no rental or library stickers. Very good original uncut case with minor wear. Play-tested. Very nice movie.
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Editorial Reviews
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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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Customer Reviews
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"Don't forget...every Cinderella has her midnight." And Midnight is one of the best of the screwball comedies
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-09-03
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
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 (Eclipse Series 8 - Lubitsch Musicals (The Love Parade / The Smiling Lieutenant / One Hour with You / Monte Carlo) (Criterion Collection))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.
The DVD looks very good. There are no extras except for a brief introduction by Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies. The film has plenty of chapter stops but, surprisingly, no index of them on the menu.
If you like Hollywood screwball comedies, I think you'll find Midnight is one of the best.
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From the moment you looked at me, I had an idea you had an idea
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-08-31
4 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
In the 1939 film MIDNIGHT, Claudette Colbert is Eve Peabody a chorus girl stranded in Paris on arrival, and Baroness Czerny of Hungary by the next day. She is her typical headstrong, street-smart woman who knows her way around the world, or so she thinks.
Upon meeting Tibor Czerny(Don Ameche) a cab driver with a big heart, eager to help poor, lost Eve, she realizes she must get in with the high society of Paris and fast!
John Barrymore is fantastic as Georges Flammarion and so is Francis Lederer as Jacques Picot, the rich playboy who has spotted Eve(or as he believes Baroness Czerny) to be his new object of affection.
When Tibor Czerny appears at their formal party as the Baron Czerny himself and we get to see the sly Eve Peabody squirm it is really classic cinema.
Will Eve find happiness with the security of money and power or true love?
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midnight
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-07-10
0 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
We plan on watching for the third time, a fantastic good old fashion comedy. Wish we could educate our present society to learn how to enjoy a movie without using a bunch of cuss word.
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COOKY COMEDY
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-07-08
0 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is one of those funny stories that can only happen in a movie! But it's very entertaining, fast moving and recommended to any old Hollywood movie buffs.
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Midnight Shines as Madcap Comedy
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-06-09
0 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Midnight is a very funny movie in the vein usually associated with Preston Sturgis. The comedy is what we used to call "adult" back when the movie was new, but there is nothing to offend the average person and a great deal to charm and amuse. It is perhaps not the very best of its genre, but it is certainly very good.
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