今宵难忘是由米切尔·莱森执导的一部拍摄于1940年剧情,喜剧,爱情片在美国上映，主演由芭芭拉·斯坦威克,弗莱德·麦克莫瑞,比尤拉·邦蒂,伊丽莎白·帕特森,威拉德·罗伯逊,斯特灵·哈洛威,查尔斯·沃尔德伦,保罗·吉尔福伊尔,查尔斯·阿恩特,约翰·雷,Thomas,W.,Ross,Fred,'Snowflake',Toones,汤姆·肯尼迪,乔治娅·凯恩,弗吉尼亚·布里萨克,斯潘塞·查特斯,简·阿克,Ambrose,Barker,John,Beck,布鲁克斯·贝内迪克特,Avril,Cameron,史蒂夫·卡鲁瑟斯,Chester,Clute,Frank,Conklin,R领衔。 Just before Christmas, Lee Leander is caught shoplifting. It is her third offense. She is prosecuted by John Sargent. He postpones the trial because it is hard to get a conviction at Christmas time. But he feels sorry for her and arranges for her bail, and ends up taking her home to his mother for Christmas. Surrounded by a loving family (in stark contrast to Lee's own family background) they fall in love. This creates a new problem: how do they handle the upcoming trial
Two Barbara Stanwyck pictures, REMEMBER THE NIGHT is a choice Christmas movie, directed with a nimble deftness by Mitchell Leisen from a Preston Sturges script, and betokens the first pairing of Stanwyck and MacMurray in a motion picture which would continue for overall four times, among which the apotheosis is Billy Wilder’s noir classic DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944).
Stanwyck’s Lee Leander is a homeless (yet inexplicably glamorous) shoplifter under arrest and MacMurray’s John Sargent is the assistant district attorney, her assigned prosecutor. Out of the latter’s tactic and conscience, they end up together for the holiday season, with the court will resume after the New Year. After realizing both are from Indiana, they embark on a home-coming trip which will only compromise the case when they inevitably fall in love with each other.
REMEMBER THE NIGHT is notably for blending heterogeneous elements from Sturges’ script together: a courtroom drama (with Robertson shamelessly and ludicrously hoking it up like nobody’s business as the defense attorney, but marred by a sign of the times of portraying an African-American manservant as a halting prat), a zipper caper (their detour in Pennsylvania allows John a taste of the brush with law, as they are accused for trespassing and destruction of property), a holiday heart-warmer (with John’s convivial family warms up to Lee, who is rejected by her own remarried mother, even ), and eventually a swooning love story (a romantic interlude in Niagara Falls, foregrounded by shadows and profiles of embracing and necking) that feels convincing and surprisingly grounded with a sagacious ending.
The film has more than enough Midwestern goodwill, homespun folkways and level-headed charm to spare, especially in John’s family. Sterling Holloway’s cousin Willy is a buffoonish simpleton, Elizabeth Patterson’s aunt Emma is a hoot of a spinster and as John’s mother, Beulah Bondi is expertly tactful in handling their budding romance with an earnest plea that is quite tricky to pull off. While MacMurray proves to be understatedly amiable, Leisen’s natural propensity warrants that the stakes are in Stanwyck’s performance, which is as extraordinary as you might hope, even Lee’s characteristics are within a conventional spectrum, she is a crook without a wicked bone in her. Her outpourings always hit the mark because she can dial up the degree of intensity at the drop of a hat (checking her scenes with Bondi during their crucial exchange and in the final court kerfuffle), without looking theatrical.
Jean Negulesco’s TITANIC is 20th Century Fox’s first enterprise about the proverbial ocean liner tragedy and an antecedent of James Cameron’s juggernaut. Boasting the accuracy of its navigational textual actuality, the film fairly sheds light on what is the causation: two mixed telegrams about the threat of an iceberg (one of which is delayed), the pursuance of a record-setting speed and shy on binoculars for lookout, it is the combination of manmade error, poor judgment and technological deficiencies.
Stanwyck and Webb play Julia and Richard Sturges, a wealthy, but estranged couple. She plans to spirit their two unwitting children Annette (Dalton) and Norman (Carter) away to her hometown in Michigan, harboring a not-so-popular idea of raising them as down-to-earth Americans than rootless Continent-dwelling-and-trotting expatriates. Their heated ructions reach the flashpoint when Norman’s paternity is divulged, that embitters Richard and deeply wounds his consanguineous pride, whereupon he cruelly snubs Norman and busies himself with playing bridge. Only during the moment of life and death, heartfelt reconciliations (first with Julia, then Norman) become the balm that eases him into accepting his fate with the Grim Reaper.
Among other passengers, Thelma Ritter is always a sight for spontaneity and sideswipes as a nouveau-riche grande dame, who refuses to be manhandled by anyone and can spot a pond scum amid the melee; Richard Basehart’s defrocked, self-hating, tippling priest is a lost cause whose emitting of vicariously felt distress saves his final sacrifice becoming an empty gesture. Also Brian Aherne’s sturdy captain betrays minimal outward emotions, maintaining his honor and dignity until the last minute but a glint of regret and guilt isn’t entirely negligible in his eyes.
The film’s shipwreck visuals, as a matter of course, look dated and artificial on a “a boat in a water tank” level. However, when the ship is in extremis and the Christian hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee” is playing, Negulesco nearly captures the solemn pathos that elevates the film’s projected impact.
It is interesting to see Stanwyck play another woman who stands on a lower moral ground than her male counterpart, but Julia holds her own despite of her unfaithfulness. Thanks of Stanwyck’s standing, her measured elegance and approachability, Julia isn’t a mere faulty part in the tug of love, against Webb’s slightly intolerable priggishness, but a woman whose realness reflects, however subsidiarily, in this handsome, but overly drawing-room drama-cum-fateful disaster spectacle festooned with the gravitas of respectability and nobleness.
referential entries: Mitchell Leisen’s HOLD BACK THE DAWN (1941, 7.1/10); Jean Negulesco’s THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN (1954, 6.2/10); James Cameron’s TITANIC (1997, 8.8/10); Preston Sturges’s THE LADY EVE (1941, 7.9/10); Billy Wilder’s DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944, 8.2/10).
Title: Remember the Night
Year: 1939
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre: Comedy, Romance, Drama
Director: Mitchell Leisen
Screenwriter: Preston Sturges
Music: Friedrich Hollaender
Cinematography: Ted Tetzlaff
Editor: Doane Harrison
Cast:
Barbara Stanwyck
Fred MacMurray
Beulah Bondi
Elizabeth Patterson
Sterling Holloway
Willard Robertson
Charles Waldron
Paul Guilfoyle
Fred ‘Snowflake’ Toones
Georgia Caine
Spencer Charters
Rating: 7.3/10
Title: Titanic
Year: 1953
Country: USA
Language: English, Basque
Genre: Drama, History, Romance
Director: Jean Negulesco
Screenwriters:Charles Blackett, Walter Reisch, Richard L. Breen
莱森的电影，总是在幽默中见深度。而弗莱德·麦克莫瑞和芭芭拉·斯坦威克一对“金童玉女”，更是让人爱的不得了。弗莱德的死轴但有尺有度的大男子形象，与芭芭拉的甜而稳重的成熟飒姐，互补的太合适了。该片剧本也牛逼，在当时的电影时代中，亦是少见的以现实战胜大团圆的结尾。n疯狂喜爱芭芭拉的原因，不仅仅是她利索干练透露出娇羞又稳重的外貌，在表演中，真的是同时代少见的“表演生活化”的演员，台词与感情的掌握，举手投足的动作，哪怕刷碗时的会心笑都是充满生活的气息。
结尾在看到弗莱德作为律师驰骋于公堂时，她的眼神从爱意，慢慢转化为欣喜，转化为欣慰。她高兴的是为这庄公案的结果不再棘手，解决了婆婆的嘱托，弗莱德的前途，自己的麻烦，为此而含泪的笑了。——以上的这段表演，莱森用特写紧紧抓住，让观众爱又惜怜。n——婆媳关系真难呐
Two Barbara Stanwyck pictures, REMEMBER THE NIGHT is a choice Christmas movie, directed with a nimble deftness by Mitchell Leisen from a Preston Sturges script, and betokens the first pairing of Stanwyck and MacMurray in a motion picture which would continue for overall four times, among which the apotheosis is Billy Wilder’s noir classic DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944).
Stanwyck’s Lee Leander is a homeless (yet inexplicably glamorous) shoplifter under arrest and MacMurray’s John Sargent is the assistant district attorney, her assigned prosecutor. Out of the latter’s tactic and conscience, they end up together for the holiday season, with the court will resume after the New Year. After realizing both are from Indiana, they embark on a home-coming trip which will only compromise the case when they inevitably fall in love with each other.
REMEMBER THE NIGHT is notably for blending heterogeneous elements from Sturges’ script together: a courtroom drama (with Robertson shamelessly and ludicrously hoking it up like nobody’s business as the defense attorney, but marred by a sign of the times of portraying an African-American manservant as a halting prat), a zipper caper (their detour in Pennsylvania allows John a taste of the brush with law, as they are accused for trespassing and destruction of property), a holiday heart-warmer (with John’s convivial family warms up to Lee, who is rejected by her own remarried mother, even ), and eventually a swooning love story (a romantic interlude in Niagara Falls, foregrounded by shadows and profiles of embracing and necking) that feels convincing and surprisingly grounded with a sagacious ending.
The film has more than enough Midwestern goodwill, homespun folkways and level-headed charm to spare, especially in John’s family. Sterling Holloway’s cousin Willy is a buffoonish simpleton, Elizabeth Patterson’s aunt Emma is a hoot of a spinster and as John’s mother, Beulah Bondi is expertly tactful in handling their budding romance with an earnest plea that is quite tricky to pull off. While MacMurray proves to be understatedly amiable, Leisen’s natural propensity warrants that the stakes are in Stanwyck’s performance, which is as extraordinary as you might hope, even Lee’s characteristics are within a conventional spectrum, she is a crook without a wicked bone in her. Her outpourings always hit the mark because she can dial up the degree of intensity at the drop of a hat (checking her scenes with Bondi during their crucial exchange and in the final court kerfuffle), without looking theatrical.
Jean Negulesco’s TITANIC is 20th Century Fox’s first enterprise about the proverbial ocean liner tragedy and an antecedent of James Cameron’s juggernaut. Boasting the accuracy of its navigational textual actuality, the film fairly sheds light on what is the causation: two mixed telegrams about the threat of an iceberg (one of which is delayed), the pursuance of a record-setting speed and shy on binoculars for lookout, it is the combination of manmade error, poor judgment and technological deficiencies.
Stanwyck and Webb play Julia and Richard Sturges, a wealthy, but estranged couple. She plans to spirit their two unwitting children Annette (Dalton) and Norman (Carter) away to her hometown in Michigan, harboring a not-so-popular idea of raising them as down-to-earth Americans than rootless Continent-dwelling-and-trotting expatriates. Their heated ructions reach the flashpoint when Norman’s paternity is divulged, that embitters Richard and deeply wounds his consanguineous pride, whereupon he cruelly snubs Norman and busies himself with playing bridge. Only during the moment of life and death, heartfelt reconciliations (first with Julia, then Norman) become the balm that eases him into accepting his fate with the Grim Reaper.
Among other passengers, Thelma Ritter is always a sight for spontaneity and sideswipes as a nouveau-riche grande dame, who refuses to be manhandled by anyone and can spot a pond scum amid the melee; Richard Basehart’s defrocked, self-hating, tippling priest is a lost cause whose emitting of vicariously felt distress saves his final sacrifice becoming an empty gesture. Also Brian Aherne’s sturdy captain betrays minimal outward emotions, maintaining his honor and dignity until the last minute but a glint of regret and guilt isn’t entirely negligible in his eyes.
The film’s shipwreck visuals, as a matter of course, look dated and artificial on a “a boat in a water tank” level. However, when the ship is in extremis and the Christian hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee” is playing, Negulesco nearly captures the solemn pathos that elevates the film’s projected impact.
It is interesting to see Stanwyck play another woman who stands on a lower moral ground than her male counterpart, but Julia holds her own despite of her unfaithfulness. Thanks of Stanwyck’s standing, her measured elegance and approachability, Julia isn’t a mere faulty part in the tug of love, against Webb’s slightly intolerable priggishness, but a woman whose realness reflects, however subsidiarily, in this handsome, but overly drawing-room drama-cum-fateful disaster spectacle festooned with the gravitas of respectability and nobleness.
referential entries: Mitchell Leisen’s HOLD BACK THE DAWN (1941, 7.1/10); Jean Negulesco’s THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN (1954, 6.2/10); James Cameron’s TITANIC (1997, 8.8/10); Preston Sturges’s THE LADY EVE (1941, 7.9/10); Billy Wilder’s DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944, 8.2/10).