Midnight

(1939)
Directed by Mitchell Leisen
Written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett
Starring Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore, Mary Astor, Francis Lederer
IMDB Entry

Many consider 1939 as the pinnacle year for Hollywood. You had films like Gone with the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach, Ninotchka,  Goodbye Mr. Chips, Wuthering Heights, and, of course, The Wizard of Oz. Other great films just got lost in the shuffle, and one of these was Midnight.

Eve Peabody (Claudette Colbert) wakes up in Paris in a train compartment with no money and wearing only an evening gown. She meets a cab driver Tibor Czerny (Don Ameche) to help her look for work as a singer. With no luck, he lets her stay in his apartment as he completes his shift. But Eve sneaks out and ends up at a concert. When it's discovered she had no invitation, she tries to escape, but is roped into a bridge game with Helene Flammarion (Mary Astor), Jacques Picot (Francis Lederer), and Marcel Renard (Rex O'Malley). She introduces herself as the wife of Hungarian Baron Czerny and stays to keep from being found out.  She loses and when being asked to pay up, she finds money in her once-empty purse. Picot insists on escorting her to her hotel. She tries to bluff and names the Ritz at random and can't shake Picot's attention.

But when she gets to the hotel, she discovers that she indeed has a suite there.  She manages to shake off Picot. The next morning, clothes are delivered. Eve is baffled until Georges Flammarion (John Barrymore) shows up. He explains he knew she wasn't a Baroness, and has been fixing things up for her: putting money in her purse, making the hotel reservation, sending over the clothes and a car. It is not what you might think: Flammarion wants her as a decoy. Picot is a ladies man, and has been seducing Helene Flammarion.  He wants Eve to entice him away from her.

Meanwhile, Tibor goes searching, recruiting the taxi drivers of Paris to look for Eve.

The story is nicely constructed.  Given the constraints of the Hayes Code at the time, it is interesting to see the suggestions of sex in the setup.* The situations do work and the humor doesn't fall flat.

Claudette Colbert is fine in the role ** and Don Ameche shows leading man charm. John Barrymore "the Great Profile" is an avuncular figure, much like his brother Lionel's kindly character in You Can't Take it with You. Of course, Mary Astor reminds you a bit of her role in The Maltese Falcon, but here she is much blander. 

Future gossip queen Hedda Hopper has a small role as the woman running the concert Eve crashes and I was delighted to spot Monty Wooley (The Man Who Came to Dinner) in a small role as a judge.

Wilder was unhappy with some of the changes made by director Mitchell Leisen and pushed to move from screenwriting to directing, with superb results. Leisen was relatively active in film, specializing in romantic comedies.

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*Even further, when Eve wakes up in the hotel room in the morning, she is obviously supposed to be naked (she has no clothes but her cocktail dress), but she remains under blankets to appease the censors. This also may be the orientation of screenwriter Billy Wilder, who grew up in Vienna.

**I can note that her legendary obsession of favoring her left profile can be seen throughout the film. Most everything shows that side of her face more prominently and, while there are a few angles where you get to see her full-faced, absolutely nothing is shot to focus on her right profile. Oddly, most versions of the movie's poster shows it; one would assume she could do nothing about it (or it's just her left side flipped).