In this quaint, serviceable comedy, a mystery writer and his wife move into a basement apartment at 13 Gay Street in Greenwich Village. The whole house has a sinister air and the other tenants seem hostile and frightened. The discovery of a murdered body outside the couple's back door doesn't help the atmosphere.What this film really is is a knock-off of the popular 'Thin Man' series starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. 'A Night to Remember' tries to reproduce the witty banter and screwball crime solving done so wonderfully in those films, and it is only somewhat successful.Young and Aherne have good chemistry, and the supporting actors are all game, but most of the humor is forced, and the mystery, taking a backseat to the comic antics, is only somewhat intriguing and borders on implausible. The cinematography is pretty good, making the dark shadows of the apartment sinister, but the entire production reeks from budget constraints and looks cheap.If you've seen the brilliant first three 'Thin Man' films, don't bother with this one. You've already seen the best and you'll be disappointed here. However, if you haven't seen them yet, check this out, and then rent 'The Thin Man' movies and you'll appreciate them so much more.

Night to Remember, A (1942) *** (out of 4)Pretty entertaining mystery/comedy has a wife (Loretta Young) renting a basement apartment so that her mystery writing husband (Brian Aherne) can get some inspirations. They gets a lot more than that when they discover a dead body in their back yard and the husband is the main suspect. This film has a lot of people ranking it as one of the best of the genre but I think that's a tad bit too much praise for it even though it's still a pretty good little movie. The film starts off on a quick pace but I found the screenplay started to drag as it went along and one could also say the film is the tale of two halves as the first part tries to do comedy with the second focusing more on the actual mystery. The two really don't mix well together because the comedy in the first half is so over the top that you really don't pay too much attention to solving the mystery and then when that becomes the main focus, you have to ask yourself what was up with the type of comedy they were going after. Just take a look at the scenes following the body being discovered. We get both Young and Aherne fainting because they think the other is the dead person. Fine, it gets a laugh but it's also so over the top that you're really not building any mystery up nor do you care. How many "old dark house" movies has someone laid a candle down only to have it move? Well here we get that again but a pretty fun reason for it moving. With that type of laugh it's hard to get the "drama" to work a split second later. I personally think the two genres can mix quite well, just look at HOLD THAT GHOST, but it doesn't work well here. Both Young and Aherne turn in good performance but I think you can look at them and see that they're trying to force several of the jokes. The supporting players include the then Charlie Chan himself Sidney Toler, Lee Patrick and Gale Sondergaard. Fans of the genre or the cast will certainly want to check this out but it's not nearly as good as some would have you believe.

Pithy, breezy knock-off of "The Thin Man", here with mystery writer Brian Aherne solving the murder of man near his Greenwich Village rental with help from fluttery, eternally-game spouse Loretta Young. The pieces of this comically convoluted set-up are almost impossible to put together on one's own, and the Columbia back-lot provides a samey visual look throughout the picture which feels cheap. Aherne, with his upper-class diction and chipper chit-chat, works hard at his double-takes and pratfalls; Young works even harder at playing the feminine sidekick. Neither star is embarrassing, and in fact are superior to the material. Gale Sondegaard stands out in an otherwise weak supporting cast. A product of its time, and probably dated already in '43. ** from ****

I just saw this film for the tenth time. I enjoy Brian Ahern as the scatter brain murder mystery book writer who, with is wife, Loretta Young, move into a basement apartment of an apartment building where the tenants all live there because they are being blackmailed. The whole cast has solid character actors you've seen in so many other films. It is nice to see Lee Patrick as a café owner with out her high pitched voice that she later became known for. A dead man is found in their back yard, that they had seen while eating dinner the night before and the two start their own investigation as to who the man was and why is everyone being blackmailed. The story continues to move so easy through its 91 minutes that I was sorry to see it end.