History is Made at Night

Frank Borzage's 1937 History is Made at Night, a romantic melodrama, has little to recommend it.  One gets the impression that Criterion is scraping the bottom of the barrel with this release.  The film is reasonably well-made and the actors are appealing, but you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.  Here the sow's ear is a script that is a hopeless mess-- reportedly the movie was improvised on the fly, produced primarily because someone like the film's title, a name that has nothing to do with the movie that we see on screen.  Six screen-writers worked on the picture and the film's lavish ending, a revisionist version of the sinking of the Titanic looks like it was cobbled-together from footage cribbed from other even worse movies.  Supplemental information accompanying the Blu-Ray consists primarily of Peter Cowie owlishly correcting Herve Dumont, a Borzage expert -- Cowie comes up with some interesting things to say about the movie to which Dumont accedes by nodding his head and saying "Of course!"  Dumont mostly wants to talk about backstage gossip.  Dumont observes that the film's spectacular ending was shot in the last two weeks of scheduled work on the movie and necessitated that some sequences comprising the beginning of the movie be re-filmed to make things fit together better -- it doesn't work  and, when we are told that the villain intends to cross the Atlantic on the Hindenburg, we expect that we will get two mass casualty transportation calamities for the price of one. (The movie was shot in 1936 and the Hindenburg blew up in 1937, the year the picture was released)>   

The film has a complicated plot that is implausible on all levels.  A spunky beauty from Kansas, Irene (Jean Arthur) is inexplicably married to a paranoid British megalomaniac Vail.  Vail, played by Colin Clive, is the most villainous of villains, a veritable Richard the III of evil.  Vail's insane jealousy has ruined his marriage to Irene and she sends him a note announcing that she intends to get a divorce.  She flees to Paris subject to some kind of bizarre law that she must remain "faultless" for six months in order to secure the divorce decree.  (Why would an idiotic law like this exist?)  Vail pays his chauffeur to rape Irene so that evidence of concupiscence can be used in Court.  During the attempted rape, a suave Frenchman played by Charles Boyer intervenes and knocks out the rapist.  When the fight between Boyer and the wicked chauffeur is discovered, the Frenchman pretends to be a gentleman jewel-thief.  He makes Irene divest herself of her jewels and ostensibly kidnaps her.  Immediately. Paul (Boyer) falls in love with Irene.  He takes her to an upscale restaurant that he seems to own, persuades the staff to work overtime and courts Irene.  (He uses a "cute" trick -- he claims to live with a woman and introduces her to Irene; the woman is his left hand onto which he has drawn a face with long-lashed eyes and lipsticked lips at the cleft between thumb and forefinger.  If someone tried to woo a woman with this gag in real life, any sane female would run for their lives.  Is he implying that he is a compulsive masturbator?  The stunt is nauseating and grotesque, although memorable one must admit.)  Irene dances the tango with Paul until dawn, then, she returns to her apartment.  There, she is greeted by Vail.  In the meantime, Vail has murdered the poor chauffeur, staving in his head with a convenient poker, and the evil shipping magnate intends to pin the crime on Irene's lover -- the bad guy has figured out that Paul is now courting Irene and not really a jewel thief.  (Later, Vail has forgotten about Paul -- the film is confused about what Vail knows and doesn't know).  Irene flees to New York City where she works as a "mannequin" -- that is, showing stylish dresses to society women.  Meanwhile Paul, who is revealed to be merely a head waiter (although the "greatest head waiter" in Europe) decamps to NYC to follow Irene with whom he is smitten.  He is accompanied by his best friend and bosom buddy, an excitable Italian chef named Cesar (said to be the "greatest chef" in all of Europe).  Paul, claiming that European head waiters are paid by the restaurants that they serve, takes over an upscale joint in Manhattan named Victor's.  He reserves a table complete with a floral bouquet for Irene because he expects that one day she will come to dine in the restaurant and provide an opportunity for him to continue their affair.  Paul, who is sort of a gigolo, flatters elderly society matrons and soon enough Victor's is a smash hit, particularly because Cesar is whipping up fantastic victuals in the kitchen.  An innocent man has been framed for the murder of the chauffeur and Irene is pressganged by the vicious Vail into traveling across the Atlantic to testify at the trial of the unfortunate man (whom Vail, perhaps, thinks is really Irene's lover).  On their way to the Zeppelin-port (they are going in style on the Hindenburg), Vail and Irene stop off at Victor's.  Paul serves them and sees Irene laughing uproariously -- he takes this badly since he thinks she is mocking the great lover as being a mere headwaiter.  But Irene is giddy with joy having met her boyfriend in these surprising circumstances.  She tears up her Hindenburg tickets, jumps out of the cab, and runs back to Victor's.  Again it's closing time and there's another nauseating and grotesque romantic idyll -- this time, Irene does the hand gag, making her fist talk, and, thereby, inadvertently suggesting that she's a compulsive masturbator as well.  Paul decides that he must clear the poor fellow on trial in Paris.  So he and Irene book passage to Europe on the Princess Irene, a Titanic-sized vessel that Vail owns -- this  is its maiden voyage.  Vail learns that Irene and Paul are on the ship and so he orders the captain to make the crossing in record speed, despite cold seas, pea-soup fog, and lurking icebergs -- no one has apparently heard of the Titanic disaster except everyone refers to it later when the ship runs afoul, of the floating mountain of ice.  The boat hits the iceberg and starts to sink.  There's chaos on board and Irene refuses to leave Paul even though he tries to shove her onto a lifeboat, but doesn't succeed with this effort.  The ship seems doomed, canted at a sinister angle, with mountains of ice on its decks.  The desolate men on board begin singing "Nearer my God to Thee" and Paul and Irene have a last colloquy that is both mawkish and embarrassing -- the film's dialogue is uniformly awful.  Meanwhile in London or wherever he is, Vail shoots himself, expiring under a lavish portrait of Irene and a scale model of the cruise-ship named the Princess Irene.  The ship doesn't sink and there's general rejoicing on the vessel when it's announced that no one will be going to Davy Jones Locker -- at least not on this night to remember.  The loyal Cesar has stowed-away on the ship and he mugs for the camera.  Paul and Irene smooch.  The End.

This is every bit as terrible as it sounds.  Cesar, (Leo Carillo) who exists for comic relief, is a racist stereotype of an excitable Italian except that, I guess, Italians aren't a race.  He perpetually throws pots and pans in rage, but, then, calms down  when he is flattered -- he has a moustache penciled on his lip like Chef Boyardee.  There are a few nice shots of fog at the end of the movie and the business with the sinking ship is fairly well handled.  Rear-projection scenes of Manhattan and Paris are awful, not competently managed at all.  There are some flattering close-ups of the stars.  The only reason to see the film is for Colin Clive's performance which is over-the-top by any standard.  When he's on-screen, the picture comes fitfully alive.  Clive seems too small for his clothing and struts around stiffly as if he were controlled by a mannequin strings and wires.  Apparently, Clive was drinking heavily when the film was made, out of control on the set, and dying of tuberculosis to boot.  On the subject of Irene, he rants and raves like Dr. Frankenstein in his lab and brings to the picture a weird horror-film ambience.  It's an utterly bizarre, but memorable, performance but not sufficient to save the movie which sinks like the Titanic (but not the Princess Irene.)  

There's a short subject in the supplements about Borzage's other films in the thirties, Man's Castle, Farewell to Arms, and No Greater Glory .  This supplement only makes the viewer wish that he or she was watching one of those films and not this turkey.  I am apparently blind to this film's merits -- it was a major box-office success.