Cinderella Stories
‘Midnight’ and ‘Easy Living’ are pure charm
By Andy Klein
One by one, the remaining gaps in the massive DVD catalog are being filled in. As with Lost Highway, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, the latest gems come via Universal Studios Home Entertainment. And again our gratitude is sullied by a degree of irritation: i.e., what took you so long? And where the hell are Murder, He Says (1945) and Miss Tatlock’s Millions (1948), Universal?
The latest blessed events are the releases of four great comedies made at Paramount in the ’30s and ’40s. (Universal holds the rights to most of Paramount’s pre-1950 titles.) Back in those days, Paramount had handily the best comedy stable, from which emerged the best work of W.C. Fields, Mae West, the Marx Brothers, and Hope and Crosby, as well as the early screenplays of Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder, both before and after they became directors.
The earliest (West’s 1934 She Done Him Wrong) and latest (Wilder’s 1942 directorial debut, The Major and the Minor) are the better known of the new batch, so let’s look at the other, slightly more obscure, items – Midnight (1939) and Easy Living (1937) – both directed by the vastly inconsistent Mitchell Leisen. Leisen was the greatest beneficiary of the soon-to-crumble wall between writing and directing in the studio system: His best period was when he had scripts by Sturges and Wilder to work from. In fact, Wilder claimed that the main reason he decided to direct as well as write was to protect his dialogue from Leisen.
Midnight is one of my favorite comedies ever, the sort of infinitely watchable gem that, in the days before home video, I’d go see every single time it showed up at an accessible rep theater. (The wonderful convenience of home video is offset by the huge decline in such venues and by the disappearance of a sense of specialness. A film like Midnight might show up only once every year or two in Los Angeles, so you knew that you had to go and that you would be surrounded by an audience of kindred spirits.)
Wilder and Charles Brackett, who later would transform Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into the Howard Hawks classic Ball of Fire, also wrote this hilarious variation on Cinderella. Claudette Colbert stars as a penniless American stranded in Paris, who is converted into a bogus countess by fairy godfather John Barrymore – a millionaire who hopes that Colbert will divert the attentions of his wife’s young lover (Francis Lederer). (Got it?) Meanwhile, Colbert is also being pursued by Don Ameche, a hotheaded hack driver whom she won’t admit to loving, on account of how he’s almost as broke as she is.
The dialogue is great: “That hat does something for you,” Colbert tells Barrymore’s wife (Mary Astor). “It ... it gives you a chin!” And the performances do it justice: Barrymore is especially brilliant in his last major role. Leisen did so-so work on two later Brackett-Wilder scripts, but here he doesn’t miss a beat. This is the best Lubitsch film Lubitsch never directed.
Easy Living isn’t quite in the same league, but it’s still the best film from a Sturges script prior to the writer’s ascension to directing. In the midst of the Great Depression, the third biggest banker in New York (Edward Arnold) is so angry at his wife’s spendthrift ways that he throws her latest fur coat off the penthouse roof. It sails down and lands on wage-slave Jean Arthur, riding on the open-air level of a double-decker bus. Complications ensue, including burgeoning romance with an automat employee (Ray Milland), actually the banker’s son, who’s trying to prove he can survive without Daddy’s help.
These Universal DVDs are plain-vanilla: The transfers are acceptable, from clean prints, and the only extras are Robert Osborne’s brief introductions for Turner Classic Movies. At a list price of $15 – 10 to 12 bucks online – they’re a steal.
Midnight. Directed by Mitchell Leisen. Screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder; story by Edwin Justus Mayer and Franz Schulz. With Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore, Francis Lederer, and Mary Astor. Universal Studios Home Entertainment, $14.98.
Easy Living. Directed by Mitchell Leisen. Screenplay by Preston Sturges; story by Vera Caspary. With Jean Arthur, Ray Milland, Edward Arnold, and Luis Alberni. Universal Studios Home Entertainment, $14.98.
Published: 04/30/2008
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