J Paul Johnson
To submit to Mitchell Leisen’s savvy, cutting Midnight is to yield to a frothy 94 minutes of mistaken identities, shocked expressions, furtive sidelong glances, stinging retorts, witty asides, high fashion, and mistaken assumptions. It’s screwball comedy at its finest—and sadly still a little too easily overlooked. That was the case in a release year that featured Gone with the Wind, The Women, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and The Roaring Twenties, among others (and not to mention, across the pond, The Rules of the Game and Goodbye, Mr. Chips). And to be fair it feels a little the same today: director Leisen’s name is less than household and Midnight‘s charms all but forgotten.
While The Criterion Collection’s attention in recent years has been on building up its catalog of work by Black and female filmmakers and upgrading a number of titles to 4K, their new release of 1939’s Midnight on Blu-ray serves as a reminder they haven’t overlooked a key part of their mission: to restore classical studio productions to their original sheen with updated packaging and special features illuminating their historical contexts. For that, Midnight makes for an excellent candidate. It’s a title less well known than My Man Godfrey or Bringing Up Baby, but with its charismatic stars and smart script it’s very nearly their equal.
Claudette Colbert, clad in haute couture, is at the center of Midnight‘s Cinderella story as American chorus girl Eve Peabody, a signature smart cookie more than a little down on her luck. She arrives in Paris ready to make her mark as a chanteuse: an excellent plan except for the fact that no one is interested in hearing her sing. Rain-soaked and penniless, she makes a deal with slightly-smitten cab driver Tibor Czerny (Don Ameche) to reimburse him for his taxi service once her proverbial ship comes in. But since she can’t make a living as a songstress, Eve needs another means of supporting the lifestyle to which she’d liKe very much to become accustomed.
Eve’s desire to ascend the ladder of Parisian society–and Tibor’s fascination with her attempt to do so—yields most of the class-conscious comedy in Midnight. Also aboard is the equally fascinated nobleman Georges Flammarion (a middle-aged John Barrymore), who recognizes in Eve someone with just enough cunning, skill, and wit to pull off her ruse. Georges is on to her but delighted to watch Eve’s ruse unfold. While at any time he could with a few simple words pull the rug out from under Eve, Georges is more invested in watching Midnight‘s events unfold with comic aplomb—as are we, the viewers. Credit to Charles Brackett and a pre-fame Billy Wilder, who would in just a few years literally reshape American cinema, for the film’s smart, often stinging script.
Director Leisen tends to be far less well known than his stellar spate of films. A bisexual man (now generally referred to more simply as gay or queer) who kept a heterosexual marriage largely of convenience, Leisen was unfairly pigeonholed during his career and is long overdue for a reassessment: his films, like Midnight, both celebrated and deconstructed the spectacle of haute couture while also gently undermining traditional gender norms and expectations. To that end, Midnight‘s inclusion in The Criterion Collection is a step forward in understanding and canonizing one of the industry’s most-accomplished yet little-understood directors as well as of studio-era queer-coded “polite” cinema.
Midnight is presented here in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1, its 4K restoration undertaken by Universal Pictures and created from a 35mm nitrate composite, as was its original monoaural soundtrack. I wonder why, given its 4K source restoration, it did not deserve a 4K UHD disc release as well, but it’s difficult to imagine complaints about the Blu-ray disc’s picture quality, which is absolutely pristine throughout. This Midnight has never been so clear.
Special Features
Audio Commentary. Author and film critic Michael Koresky, co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of Reverse Shot and Senior Curator of Film at Museum of the Moving Image, provides a detailed, insightful, and impeccably clear audio track. These newly-commissioned commentary tracks seem a rarity in Criterion’s new releases, but I’m pleased to Criterion reaching out to solicit new programming material. The commentary track—even if Koresky’s voice will sometimes disappear for minutes at a time—is excellent throughout, full of anecdotes about the film’s principals and production.
No subtitles are available for the commentary track itself, an accommodation some other physical media distributors offer regularly.
Mitchell Leisen. This newly-created 14-minute program presents audio excerpts from a December 9, 1969 interview with biographer David Chierichetti for the American Film Institute’s oral-history collection. The audio—presented in excellent quality for a program originally recorded over five decades ago—is supplemented with clips from the restored version of the film. It’s excellent, diving into the details of filming the cast: Colbert, for instance, insisted on being shot practically exclusively from one angle.
To my knowledge, featurette is the first instance in The Criterion Collection of subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing being provided for an English-language program. In fact, “SDH” is now its own menu item here on Spine #1266. Many other such featurettes—I believe all other English-language featurettes—lack this accommodation. For a piece depending on archival audio like this one, the subtitle option is not only welcome, but necessary. Let’s hope that The Collection has turned a corner and realized that its patrons who are native speakers of English might need this accommodation for featurettes just as they do for the films themselves.
Lux Radio Theatre. Presented here in its entirety is the Lux Radio Theatre’s 55-minute adaptation of Midnight from May 20, 1940, starring Colbert and Ameche as they reprise their film roles. It’s a treat. I don’t know what percentage of Criterion’s patronage enjoys these radio programs—they’re from well before even my time—but I find them generally delightful, briskly and enthusiastically performed. They may not do much to illuminate one’s understanding of the film, but I’ll never complain about their inclusion. Even better, SDH are provided too for this mile-a-minute fast-paced featurette.
Also included is an original two-minute trailer for the film, with the single Blu-ray disc ensconced in a typical clear Criterion jewel case accompanied by a 12-page black-and-white booklet featuring an introductory essay by film critic David Cairns and new cover art and illustrations by Abigail Giuseppe.
Midnight makes for a lively selection for Criterion to add in 2025 and is top-tier screwball comedy. This special edition Blu-ray brings together an excellent new 4K restoration and excellent supplemental features. Perhaps the biggest news with this release, though, is The Collection’s finally deigning to provide the simplest and most necessary of accommodations—subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing—for its English-language special features programming.
