 |
| Remember the Night | 1940 The drawings aren't exactly faithful on this poster (Fred is much more handsome than this). But the position they're in is cute And the poster mentions Beulah Bondi, Jack's mother, who's also the mother in It's a Wonderful Life |
Lee Leander is not a first time offender. She’s been swiping things since always, and it’s often things she doesn’t need. As she explains it herself, when an honest person is starving to death and sees a few loaves of bread out in front of a market, he or she would swipe one. Lee on the other hand would have a six course dinner at the table of a fancy restaurant across the street and then pretend to have forgotten her purse. “Right or wrong is the same for everybody, you see, but the rights and the wrongs aren’t the same.”
And this time, Lee was caught. Barely a few days before Christmas she was caught stealing a beautiful bracelet from a jewelry shop at 5th Avenue. There will be a trial and the District attorney’s office wants John ‘Jack’ Sargent in the case. Jack is not too thrilled about that… After all, it’s almost Christmas, and he’s got plans to drive back to Indiana, to spend the Holidays at his mother’s home. It’s a long drive, a hundred and thirty miles and the boss told him he’d be able to go. Besides, the defense attorney is O’Leary, a windbag will probably talk the afternoon away, giving them the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence… But it doesn’t matter… It’s a female case and Jack is supposed to be a specialist in those…
“Yeah. That's part of the technique. If you don't treat a woman with kid gloves, every man on the jury wants to punch you in the nose. And you have to handle the jury with kid gloves, too, or you'll get it right in the verdict. You know, it's very hard to put a woman in jail, no matter what she's done. I'm supposed to be kind of a specialist at it.”
And Jack is pretty good. In fact, when the defence attorney makes a mistake Jack takes the chance to get the trial postponed on a technicality – which has the added benefit of not having Lee face a jury filled with the holiday spirit. But when he overhears her complaining to her lawyer about having to spend Christmas in jail, Jack feels guilty about it and decides to post bail on behalf of the girl. This is the kind of story that would seem extremely unlikely in any other movie, but when Jack explains his reasons you really believe has that kind of strong moral compass that can get a fellow in trouble in the real world, perhaps slightly enhanced by the holidays.
 |
| In addition to being an attorney, Jack plays the piano. The Family around the Christmas tree |
“Now look, when court reconvenes I'm going to try to put you in jail for a good long time. That's my business. But you haven't been convicted yet, so I don't see why you shouldn't enjoy Christmas like the rest of us. That's why I told Mike to get you out.”
Unfortunately the bondsman ‘Fat Mike’, assumes that Jack wants to force Lee into an affair and drops her at Jack’s apartment. But Jack would never do something like that and he explains the whole thing to the girl, to send her on her way. The problem is that Lee doesn’t have any place to go. She owns more than a hundred dollars at her hotel, doesn’t have a home nor does she have any money for a proper dinner.
Jack seems to be stuck with her, he hasn’t had his dinner and he still has a long drive to his mum’s home! Discovering that she’s a fellow Hoosier, however (a native of Indiana) it’s decided that he will get them dinner and drop her at her mother’s house for Christmas on his way to visit his family. And when they get to know each other, things get complicated…
Remember the Night is often described as a romantic comedy, but I am not certain I would describe it as such… Sure, the road trip (in which they get lost, by the way) is hilarious, but the script actually blends a number of genres and it was a difficult one to write, full of bumps in the way…
Upon reaching Indiana, for instance they come across very different realities. The first stop is Lee’s childhood home, where they discover a sullen household, with a bitter woman who’s remarried and doesn’t really welcome her only daughter back home. Her harsh treatment to her daughter starts the moment they meet at the door, and her recriminating words and terrible attitude doesn’t stop until Jack informs her that they (him and Lee) still have a 50 mile drive to his family’s farm, and they should be on their way. It’s a subtle rescue and a surprising moment in the film because that wasn’t the plan… The plan was to drop the girl here and move along, and I half expected her to have to ask him not to abandon her there (specially after a few things that happen on the road trip), but Jack’s not that kind of a man… Which makes him all the more endearing.
His mother is the complete opposite of Lee’s. She’s warm, kind-hearted, and overall a lovely person. Even after Jack tells her about Lee’s troubles (after all, he wouldn’t want to bring someone under his mother’s roof and not tell her the whole truth about it), she still goes out of her way to make the girl feel welcome.
She also brings up something interesting about Jack’s childhood. She mentions an episode in which he stole something, and she steered him towards correcting his mistake by working hard to pay it back. It’s interesting because one of the things Lee’s mother mentions during the few minutes they’re there is an episode in which Lee stole some money from her.
“Just like her father, she is! Always laughin' at serious things, she was. Never doin' what she's told -- till she winds up stealin'. Stealin' my mission money! Money I'd put by with the sweat of my brow, that's what!”
Lee pleads for forgiveness, swearing that she meant to pay back, that she was only borrowing the money, but her mother dismisses her, as she did back then, calling her own daughter a thief in front of the whole town so that no one would ever give her a job. None of that makes Lee’s future actions okay, but it sheds some light on the fact that she’s not an incorrigible monster and there were several key facts – differences in their upbringing – which made a difference in the different people they (she and Jack) became. And that moment offers the possibility of redemption for the lead female character. Like the director said himself:
“Nobody's all good, or all bad, not in my movies at least. There's a little bad in the best of us, and a little good in the worst of us.”
The story is pretty great… When it seems like the film will go down an obvious road it surprises you with an unexpected turn… The romance between the lead characters progresses slowly, very naturally and it’s wonderful to watch. Lee is not a perfect girl, by any means, and there’s nowhere in the movie where the script tries to minimize her shortcomings… And in spite of the circumstances keep throwing them at one another, Jack tries to resist falling for her every step of the way.
I read somewhere that the film makes a simple case of stealing a bracelet seems like a much more serious affair. But I think that’s part of the story… Because for a guy like Jack any crime – even petty theft – is unthinkable and after all his hard work to become an attorney to be involved in any way with a woman who has trouble with the law (any sort of trouble), is not something he would have anticipated at all. And Jack is the only one who tries to minimize her actions eventually or find a way out, suggesting that she might be a kleptomaniac or imagining ways for her to flee the country. But that just happens after he falls madly in love for the girl. Love trumps everything else that was most important for him in the beginning, which is kind of endearing if you think about it…
 |
| The romance between Lee and Jack... On the right, the two of them at Niagara Falls, see The Christmas Romantic Moment in this film below |
The romance between Jack and Lee seems unlikely on paper but it really, really works. Perhaps it’s because the story was written just after Preston Sturges marriage, and the movies depicts a story that really believes in love, newfound love.
Sturges however, didn’t like the way the film turned out. The director, Leisen, cut so much of his story that it transformed it into a different kind of movie than he intended. In fact, Sturges directed every one of the scripts he wrote after this, traumatized as he was by the experience.
 |
| Can't get enough of this romance |
Originally the film (which was redone in radio format later) focused on Jack’s character, and he had a great deal more lines but the director didn’t believe MacMurray had what it took for rthose long heroic speeches and he cut them all out, relying on the actor’s more natural quiet strength and shifting focus to Barbara Stanwyck’s character. I liked the film very much, but I think I would have enjoyed seeing the original script and those ‘heroic speeches’. Christmas (and love) changed both characters. In the words of the writer, "love reformed her and corrupted him, which gave us the finely balanced moral that one man's meat is another man's poison." Lee and Jack were transformed and both characters had their vulnerability brought to surface in a journey that was delightful to watch...
Remember the Night | 1940 | 91’ | Directed by Mitchell Leisen | Script by Preston Sturges | Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray
No comments:
Post a Comment