Of all the movies that might have become perennial stocking-stuffers over the years, none has been more undeservedly forgotten than the 1940 Remember the Night. The first few times I came across the title, I thought that I'd seen it already, and that it was about the Titanic. Instead, it's a romance starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, four years before their more acidic teaming in Double Indemnity, and directed by Mitchell Leisen, from an original screenplay by Preston Sturges. Three years earlier, Leisen had directed Easy Living, one of the funniest Sturges scripts from before Sturges started directing them himself. This film, though, is less a screwball farce than a gentle comedy than turns more and more into a swooning love story. Luckily, Stanwyck's just-barely meltable hard edge and Stanwyck's way with a wisecrack keep it just this side of mushiness. (The terrific movie blogger the Self-Styled Siren has observed that it was "written soon after Sturges's marriage (his second of four, but a honeymoon's a honeymoon)."
MacMurray plays a hard-nosed assistant D.A. whose last job before Christmas break is to prosecute Stanwyck, a shoplifter. (Explaining why she couldn't just plead to being a kleptomaniac, she sweetly explains, ""You can't try to sell the stuff afterward, or you lose your amateur status.") Recognizing that he's on the verge of losing the jury, MacMurray gets a continuance, figuring that they'll be in a less forgiving mood after the holidays. Then, nagged at by guilt over the thought of the new glittering babe in his life spending Christmas in jail, he bails her out, just so he won't feel like a grinch, yeah, right. He winds up giving her a lift home to see mom for Christmas, planning to drop her off before continuing on his way to his own family get-together, which is presided over by Beulah Bondi. The all-embracing, loving warmth of the MacMurray homestead sometimes threatens to be a bit much, but it's counterbalanced against the cold-eyed cheerlessness of the frost-covered shack from whence Stanwyck's character sprang; the thought of having grown up there is so godawful that the scenes with Ma Bondi couldn't entirely erase the chill if her house was set in front of a butterscotch waterfall with pet unicorns romping on the lawn. Unavailable on video, Remember the Night made its belated debut on Turner Classic Movies last year, and it doesn't seem to have returned this year. But this fine tribute by the aforementioned Siren does much to convey its sweet, distinctive flavor.