History is Made at Night (1937)

“I wish I had known you so many years ago.”

            History is Made at Night is one of so many classic films I have watched and feel it deserves to be known better. This is a love story but it is a well thought out and wonderfully acted love story.

            Bruce Vail is a ship owner tycoon. His new ship is named after his wife Irene (Jean Arthur). A reporter asks Bruce about a rumor where he fought with Irene while they were out one night. Bruce just brushes the incident off. Irene, in the mean time, leaves the ship. She writes Bruce a note that she wants a divorce and that their marriage was a mistake. Bruce thinks there is another man involved. He sends someone to blackmail her. He plans to walk in on his guy with Irene in his arms.

            Paul Dumond (Charles Boyer) is the head waiter at a popular restaurant in Paris. He is putting a drunk man to bed at the same hotel where Irene is staying. From the drunk man’s apartment he can see Irene is struggling with the man Bruce has sent. Paul has a gun and holds the two of them up. He tells Irene to come with him. Paul takes Irene out for a ride in his car and is very nice to her. He had taken some of her jewelry and tells her the reason he kidnapped her was to give her her jewels back. Paul takes Irene to the restaurant he works at even though it is closed for the night. He wants to know what happened to her and why but she does not want to say and he does not push her.

            The guy that was sent to be seen with Irene lies to get paid by saying Paul was with Irene when he walked in. Bruce kills the man to make it look like Paul committed the crime.

            Paul and Irene dance into the daylight. She gets home to find Bruce and the police in her room. Bruce asks her how she escaped and she tells a big lie. When the prefect of police tells her that the chauffer is dead she becomes worried and knows what is going on. She has her pearls on when she said they were stolen. Bruce is now completely convinced that there is another man his wife’s life.

            Irene sees Paul again. He is now a wanted man in Paris for a crime he did not commit. Paul wants Irene to sail away with him as his wife. He had planned to meet her at five o’clock at night. He sees in the paper that Irene and Bruce have left to back to America together. What Paul did not know at that moment was that Irene left with Bruce to save his (Paul’s) life. Paul calls Irene on the ship she is sailing on. She tells him why she left and that he must never try to find her.

            Paul gets on a ship to America to find Irene. He knows she is in serious trouble. Paul has a plan for him and his friend Cesar to become head waiter and chef of their own restaurant. He knows Irene will come if he can make others come. They take over a restaurant called Victor’s and make it one of the most popular places to go to in New York City. Paul has a table permanently reserved for Irene.  

            Bruce has had Irene followed by a PI. He wants to know everyone Irene meets. He has the PI lie to her that she has to go back to Paris as a witness in the murder. He does this just to get Irene to go with him to the city. To try to get back on good ground with Irene, Bruce takes her to Victor’s. When Paul sees Irene he has her sit at her table. Bruce does not even know that Paul is the one he is trying to frame but to him Paul looks familiar but he cannot place him. Irene begins to laugh at how ironic the situation is. Paul is upset because he thinks Irene is now back with Bruce and that she was mocking him by laughing. In the car on the way home Bruce gives Irene her ticket to be on his latest ship to Paris. Irene takes her ticket, rips it up, and gets out of the car so she can go back to Victor’s back to Paul. She tells him that she was laughing because she was happy. She wants to run away to Tahiti with him where they can be free and put everything behind them. Paul is set on going back to Paris even though Bruce is going to try to frame him for the murder.

            They do eventually go back together. They sail back on Bruce’s new ship that is named after Irene. Bruce orders his new ship to break the speed record. The weather is foggy and cold with ice in the water. The ship hits an iceberg. Paul was on deck talking to Cesar when the ship and iceberg collided. When the women and children are being evacuated Paul puts Irene into a lifeboat but she jumps out she wants to be with Paul until the end.

            Back on land Bruce hears about the sinking over the radio. He knew Irene was on the ship. Bruce kills himself with the only thought being that he killed Irene with his carelessness.

            Irene and Paul sit on the deck waiting for their end to come. They truly love each other and hold each other in their arms. The captain comes on deck to announce the bulkhead doors are holding and that help is on the way.

            Jean Arthur and Charles Boyer were wonderful together. Jean Arthur was fantastic her performance is one of my favorite in a film. I do not even know where to begin describing how perfect Arthur was. I could like her performance so much because I am used to seeing her in comedies but I think it is mostly down to the fact that she was a good versatile actress. You feel her character’s pain and sorrow and loneliness and desperation and love and happiness. Charles Boyer I am not too crazy about. He was a good actor but I am not too crazy about him. I actually thought he was excellent in this film. In the other films I have seen Boyer in he never seemed to have chemistry with his leading ladies. In this film, though, he has beautiful chemistry with Jean Arthur. Bruce Vail was a vile evil possessive character. If this film was more popular he would be one of the most hated film characters ever. The character of Bruce Vail was played to absolute perfect by Colin Clive. It takes a good actor to play someone so hated and Clive just nailed it.            

            History is Made at Night, as I mentioned, is a well thought out love story. By well thought out I mean by the fact that Irene is in an unhappy marriage and it is unhappy because her husband is truly cruel to her and the man that rescues her truly loves her and wants to save her. It ranks among the greatest romantic films ever made. I feel with love stories the characters can become annoying and over done. There is never a moment where I did not like Paul or Irene, they never became annoying or over done. Frank Borzage’s direction and the cinematography were beautiful. History is Made at Night deserves to be better known and to be released on DVD so it can be rediscovered. History is Made at Night is available to watch on Youtube in four parts. Do yourself a favor if you like a good story, love film making and good acting watch History is Made at Night. 

The Constant Nymph (1943)

The Constant Nymph has the reputation for having been unseen for many years because of copyright issues. It was one of those classic films that eluded fans for such a long time it most likely became a myth. Now fortunately the rights for the film have been cleared allowing TCM to air the film and Warner Bros. Archive has been able to release it on DVD. So many classic films that are hard to find are usually so hyped up leaving so many fans dying to see it and most of the time the excitement and expectations for it are just left on the floor due to utter disappointment because the film is no good (example for many has been Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino’s once lost film Beyond the Rocks). This disappointment is not so for Joan Fontaine and Charles Boyer’s once locked up film The Constant Nymph.

            Lewis Dodd (Boyer) is an unsuccessful composer. His latest work did not fare well under the critics. To get away from it all he goes to the home of an old composer friend of his named Albert Sanger (Montagu Love) in the Alps. The family is very happy Lewis will be come but none more so than one of Sanger’s teenage daughters named Tessa (Fontaine). She runs all over the house in wild excitement waiting for Lewis to arrive.

            Sanger tells Tessa that Lewis is a good composer but he would do so much better because his heart is not in his music he needs to love and to suffer in order to put heart into his works. Tessa confesses in so many ways to her sister Paula that she is in love with Lewis and would do anything for him. Of course Lewis never notices that Tessa is madly in love with him.

            Sanger tells Lewis that is afraid of what will happen to the girls if he were to die. He has four daughters but not with the same woman. His older daughters can manage on their own with finding someone to marry but his two youngest daughters who have the same mother will be left with nothing. He says that their mother’s family disowned her after she ran away with him and he is not sure her family would want Tessa and Paula around. Sanger unfortunately dies while Lewis is there. Tessa and Paula’s relatives an uncle named Charles (Charles Coburn) and his daughter Florence (Alexis Smith) come to the home. Not very long later Lewis and Florence have fallen in love and are to marry. When Tessa hears the news she collapses.

            A year and a half later Tessa and Paula are at a boarding school in London. They hate it and run away. Lewis is upset and does whatever he can to have them found. Florence does not care one bit for the girls she finds them annoying since they get all of Lewis’s attention. Florence has thrown a party on the night the girls came to the house. Tessa and Paula listen to Lewis play a piece from his new composition. The next day Tessa tells him that he has butchered the song it just sounds like a mess there is no warmth in his music. She helps Lewis remember what he had originally set out to create. Florence becomes extremely jealous that Lewis listen to whatever Tessa has to say but he will not listen to her his own wife.

            One night Florence just loses it. She tells her father she thinks the girls are like a drug to Lewis when they are around. Florence does not hide the fact that she is jealous of Tessa snapping at the girl whenever she wants to do something for Lewis.

            On the night of the concert Lewis realizes he loves Tessa and always had. He also sees that Tessa has always loved him as well. Lewis tells this to Florence and she freaks out. Florence goes to Tessa to confront her. Tessa tells her cousin that she does love Lewis but not in a way she thinks. Tessa does not want to be with Lewis. She says she will go live with her older sister and her husband in Paris as soon as the performance is over. Tessa decides not to go to the concert for Florence’s sake. She knows she must leave the house and go to Paris.

            After everyone has left she tries to leave but she hears Lewis’s piece being performed over the radio. When Tessa hears the lyrics of the song they are painful to hear. In her mind she is back in her little bohemian home in Alps and Lewis has come to her. They confess their love but it is obvious it is nothing but a school girl crush for Tessa. Pulled out of her dream Tessa tries to leave but she falls over her suitcase and to the floor.

            When Lewis comes home all he cares about is finding Tessa. The butler tells Lewis that she is sleeping but when Lewis gets to Tessa he can see she is no longer living. He has now known love and heartbreak.

            Melodrama in every sense of the word. The only scenes that were bearable were the ones Joan Fontaine was in and to be honest they were not much (well to me anyway). Fontaine was fantastic. She wrote in her autobiography that it was “the happiest motion-picture assignment of my career” and considers this to be one of her favorite film she made. You can clearly see Fontaine enjoyed making this film. Her acting is perfect you really do believe she is a young teenage girl (she was twenty-six at the time) in love with a man for the way he makes her feel so happy. According to IMDB Fontaine got the part when director Edmund Goulding was having trouble casting the film. Warner Bros. want a star in the part but no one fit. He ran into Fontaine and then husband Brian Aherne at a restaurant when they had just gotten off their private plane. Fontaine was dressed in a leather flight jacket and pigtails. Goulding said "Jack Warner wants a star in the lead, but she has to be consumptive, flat-chested, anemic, and fourteen!" Fontaine said how about herself for the part but Goulding did not recognize her with her hair in pigtails. As soon as he found out who she was he said she was perfect for the part and signed the contract to star in the film the next day. Fontaine had the energy and the look to play the part. Of the films I have seen her in this is one of my favorites (probably my favorite after Rebecca). I have to say I cracked up with Alexis Smith playing the older cousin to Joan Fontaine because Fontaine was quite a few years older than Smith. 

            Charles Boyer never does anything for me. I was just amused that he starred with Joan Fontaine and then three years later made the film Hold Back the Dawn with her sister Olivia de Havilland (I am seriously considering making a list of all the same people the sisters worked with or how their films are connected in certain ways). I do not believe I have ever seen Alexis Smith in a film before but she was excellent. She did a great job playing the jealous wife. Smith was also ridiculously pretty. Peter Lorre was a minor character who really should not have been in the film he just took up film.

            The Constant Nymph was very good. There is absolutely no disappointment due to let down expectations. The story has been done to death but the acting is great from all the actors. If TCM ever runs The Constant Nymph again definitely sit down and watch it. If you are a fan of Joan Fontaine just buy the film on DVD she was that good. 

Gaslight (1944)

“I am mad. I'm always losing things and hiding things and I can never find them, I don't know where I've put them.”

            Ingrid Bergman was the first classic film actress I admired. Before I found out how to download movies and found them used on Amazon I would spend a lot of money buying the DVDs. During that time I made some lousy purchases but one of the best films I got during that time was Gaslight. I can remember buying it just because Ingrid Bergman was on the cover. I remember buying the DVD like it was yesterday I bought it along with another Bergman film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. The first time I saw Gaslight I was floored by how amazing Bergman was and how beautifully it was filmed.

            Paula Alquist (Bergman) was a young girl when her opera star aunt Alice was murdered in their home. The murder was never solved there seemed to be no motive. She was sent away to Italy where she studied music. While there she meets and falls in love with an older man named Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer). He convinces Paula to live in her old home in London.

            For a while they live happily in their home facing a square. Things begin to change one day when Paula finds a note from a man named Sergis Bower hidden among her aunt’s sheet music. After that she begins to hear footsteps in the attic and the gaslight dims down then burns brightly again. Gregory convinces her that she is losing her mind and losing things around the house and that she is seeing and hearing things.

            One man who sees something is not right is police detective Brian Cameron (Joseph Cotton). He is curious why after so many years Paula has come back. When he first meets Gregory he senses the man is no good. No matter how hard he tries he cannot get into the house to speak to Paula.

            By the time Brian is able to get into Paula’s house to help her she has been driven towards real insanity. Gregory wants something in the house that once belonged to Alice and the only way he could get what he wanted was to drive Paula away to an asylum.

            I have to say even though the story of a man driving a woman to insanity or to a breaking point had been done before and has been since 1944- Rebecca, Suspicion, Sorry Wrong Number, Laura- but what makes Gaslight so menacing comes down to the direction and lighting and acting by Charles Boyer. It is a gothic story filmed in the noir style; they are two of the most interesting and psychologically thrilling genres mixed together.

            While reading reviews of the film on IMDB one person excellently wrote: “If you're looking for everything you've ever wanted to know about horror, mystery, depression, and suspense, go take a peek into Ingrid Bergman's eyes.” The reviewer summed up Ingrid Bergman perfectly in the film. You can see Paula’s fear, sadness, and confusion in her eyes. There are so many shots of just her eyes and they say so much. Bergman is amazing this is definitely one of her best films she ever made. This film attests to her incredible acting talent. Bergman was one of those great actresses that no matter what type of character she played you believed she was the character you were not watching an actress you were watching the character. You believe she is a woman who wants love, the love she thought she found is only trying to drive her mad and you can see her questioning her identity and struggling to find herself again.  I will admit there are quite a few scenes that Bergman goes a little too dramatic but those are balanced out with her other scenes especially the one at the end (you will know what I am talking about if you have ever seen it or when you see it).

            Charles Boyer as Gregory Anton creates the most tension. He has the look of a person who is only out for what they want and does not care who they hurt or how to get it. You really just want to punch him the face. He was perfect for the part I cannot imagine anyone else in the role.

            Joseph Cotten was wonderful as the good guy. He was the perfect balance to Boyer’s evilness. You want Paula to trust Brian and go with him when he eventually gets into the house. Cotten was such a great actor though he had that silent greatness he never commanded a scene either playing a bad guy or a good guy he was just there… in a good way. I look forward to seeing a film where Cotten is one of the stars.

            This was Angela Landsbury’s first film. She was eighteen years old at the time. She plays the tart house maid who aids in helping Paula lose her mind. All I ever think of her as is the sweet old lady from Murder She Wrote which makes her role in this film even better.

            George Cukor is known mostly for his adorable women’s comedies and dramas. To me this film is a world apart from what I am used to seeing from him. He did a fantastic job of filming Ingrid Bergman and creating an air of tension that does not let up until the very end.  

            Gaslight is one of the greatest psychological films ever made. Even one of my friends who is into all these weird modern psychological thrillers told me that one of his all time favorites is Gaslight. I think it holds up very well today there is so much suspense and so many things that Gregory does that drives not only Paula crazy but you as well! Every time I watch this film the more I love it and the happier I am that I spent money on the DVD all those years ago. Gaslight will have you on the edge of you seat from beginning to end.