"Remember the Night" is a wonderful movie, a redemptive tale wrapped around a tender love story that has Barbara Stanwyck bringing fought-off tears to the viewers' eyes by the end of the movie. The structure of the story is so symmetrical and balanced that the viewer doesn't realize this amazing effect until the story ends. In the beginning of the movie, Miss Stanwyck is the bad girl thief and Fred MacMurray is the good guy lawyer pitted against each other in the courtroom. The set-up is ordinary and familiar but what ensues is not. By the end of the movie, Miss Stanwyck is the good girl, repentant and Fred MacMurray is the bad guy manipulator, which may cause the viewer to recollect the saying, "there's a whole lot of good in the worst of us and a whole lot of bad in the best of us". Because the good guy lawyer feels guilty about ruining the girl's Christmas, even though he keeps her out of jail for the Christmas , the two embark on a Christmas trip home over the holidays to their beloved shared Hooiser state, Indiana, and the story unfolds. Barbara Stanwyck is so good at making us wonder about her character and revealing her inner feelings just by watching her face on screen even when she is not speaking, showing nuances that drive us to care about her character. This fantastic actress has been so underrated for so many years that it is difficult to believe that she never won an Academy Award (she was robbed!). Throughout the story one wonders how this straight arrow lawyer is going to fall in love with this bad girl thief. He treats her with respect and is good to her but this lawyer has scruples and despite his good nature, he is not going to allow a pretty face and figure dissuade him from putting her in jail when they return to court on January 3rd. In the middle of the movie the hinged event occurs that inverts the story. MacMurray's character realizes that the powerful influence of a mother's love makes a world of difference in the life of a young boy or girl. He sees himself in Miss Stanwyck's character as a young girl and finds out that as kids they both "took" their mother's saved money from the cookie jar for their own selfish reasons. But the big difference is how their respective mother's react to this shared act of thievery. When MacMurray's character realizes this tremendous difference, all of his defenses against the Stanwyck character's feminine charms go down. He falls deeply in love with her. But by now Stanwyck's character is so remorseful about her life of stealing that she doesn't know if she can reform and seeks to distance herself from MacMurray's character so as not to ruin his life by association. Because he loves her, he now deceitfully manipulates courtroom proceedings to prevent her from going to jail. And so, here we are at the end of the movie. This is the part where Barbara Stanwyck pours it on, and fought-off tears appear in the viewer's eyes. Watch it and see for yourself.Best Lines: (While the two are in a clinch in silhouette with the Falls in the distance) MacMurray: Do you know where're going on our honeymoon?; Stanwyck:(reluctantly) No, where?; MacMurray: "Niagara Falls". Stanwyck: (pausing)"….but darling we're already there."Best Tidbit: The excellent songstress who is in the nightclub singing," My Indiana Home" is Martha Mears. The same lady who two years later in 1942 is heard singing, by voice over dubbing for Marjorie Reynolds, the great hit: "White Christmas" as a duo with Bing Crosby in the original release from the movie, "Holiday Inn". For some legal reasons that original duo version of "White Christmas" is not available on any medium but the movie.

It's the Christmas season in NYC. Lee Leander (Barbara Stanwyck) is a well dressed thief who gets caught trying to pawn stolen jewelry. Her attorney is a wild performer. Prosecutor John Sargent (Fred MacMurray) is assigned the case. He's concerned that Christmas is a bad time to get a conviction. He gets a continuance for the case. John takes pity on the girl and gets her bailed out. Unbeknownst to John, Fat Mike misunderstands and bring her to him. She refuses to leave and they start up a friendship. He drives her back to her mother. They get lost and go on a crazy road trip. After being rejected by her own mother, she joins him in a family Christmas in Indiana.Stanwyck is sharp, lovely and enticing. MacMurray is an endearing stand-up guy. Together they have great chemistry. They're fun together. The Preston Sturges dialog is snappy and quick. The sentimental rom-com is touching, romantic, and funny.

I think I was expecting something funnier or something more clever from Preston Sturges, and so I was disappointed in "Remember The Night". It's funny in spots but the storyline is too far-fetched and contrived for the website's present rating.It starts off OK, as shoplifter Stanwyck is pinched shortly before Christmas and appears in a New York courtroom with Mac Murray as the prosecuting attorney. Here ensues a humorous scene, with Willard Robertson as the defense lawyer in what must be his best role. His long-winded and tear-jerking defense causes the trial to be put off until after Christmas, which means Stanwyck will have to spend the holiday in jail.The plot here goes far afield. Feeling sorry for her, MacMurray bails her out, finds out she has nowhere to go and volunteers to drop her off at her home, which is a few towns away from his in Indiana - will wonders never cease, huh? The scene in which her mother disowns her is leaden and tough sledding, and doesn't fit with the general light-hearted theme of the picture. The picture could have lost me right there except for the star power of Fred and Barbara, who guide the picture through some more improbable circumstances until the improbable ending.It plays like a romantic drama, and a pretty fantastic one at that. It is also not typical Sturges stuff. In the website notes it is remarked that Sturges was very displeased with the final cut, so perhaps some essential elements of the story were left on the cutting room floor. I have to think that is a regrettable fact, as this picture desperately needed a rewrite in several places.

Like Christmas EVE (1947) that I watched the day before, this is a vintage Yuletide Hollywood film that should be better known in view of the talents involved; however, unlike the later film – which, given its undeserving *½ rating on Leonard Maltin's Film Guide, I was not expecting much from and was somewhat pleasantly surprised by the outcome – this turned out to be something of a disappointment. Not that it is in any way bad but, having a stylish director like Leisen, a peerless screenwriter like Preston Sturges and the sure-fire teaming of Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, it should have been a comedy classic. Rather tellingly, it seems to me, the film proved Sturges' last screenplay assignment before embarking on his meteoric directorial career that redefined the screwball genre; needless to say, the two leads would subsequently be iconically reteamed in Billy Wilder's seminal noir, DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) and twice more thereafter in the following decade which I am not familiar with.Anyway, the narrative revolves around an attractive chronic shoplifter (Stanwyck) who gets away with an expensive bracelet from one shop but is apprehended when trying to pawn it in another; MacMurray is the prosecuting D.A. who, after suffering through the would-be heart-rending histrionics of her has-been thespian attorney, secures a recess until after the festive season but gets a change of heart upon watching Stanwyck make her way to spending Christmas in police custody. Therefore he arranges to pay her $5,000 bail but the bondsman misconstrues his interest and dumps her on his doorstep – to the bemusement of MacMurray's "dumb" colored butler! Given the situation and the time of year, he takes her out to a dinner dance (where he embarrassingly comes face-to-face with the presiding judge) but, upon discovering that they both hail from Indiana and that she had not been home for the holidays in years, they are soon en route together to their old hometown. Unfortunately, since MacMurray only makes this trek once a year, they get lost and spend the night in a farm and wake up surrounded by a herd of cows and their irate owner who, once again misinterpreting the situation, rides them off to the Justice of the Peace at gunpoint. Thankfully, Stanwyck's quick wits – that had seen her slid out of many a jam with the law in the past – come to their rescue as she almost sets the latter's office on fire.So far, so humorous...even if it never quite reaches the zany heights of Leisen's earlier classics EASY LIVING (1937; from another Sturges script) and MIDNIGHT (1939; from a Billy Wilder-Charles Brackett screenplay). However, when the couple hit Indiana, the laughs mostly subside and are unfortunately supplanted by grim domestic melodrama (Stanwyck's confrontation with her unforgiving mother who has since remarried) and corny sentimentality (MacMurray's family includes concerned mother Beulah Bondi and future Sturges stalwart Sterling Holloway as an annoying simpleton of a farmhand). The expected local color (for those who like this sort of thing) comes courtesy of home-made sweet cooking, a philanthropic bazaar, a barnyard New Year's Eve dance and a series of individual piano renditions/sing-a-longs by the two stars and Holloway. The return trip to New York takes them to a romantic stroll along Niagara Falls (to avoid meeting up again with the proprietor of the arsoned "Justice of the Peace" office) but, as they reach the Court in the same taxicab, each decides to "throw" the case in favor of the other party…but since Stanwyck admits her guilt (following MacMurray's overzealous grilling intended to win the defendant the jury's sympathy), there is little else for them to do except for a concluding teary-eyed reconciliation in the court's elevator in which they swear each other eternal love. For the record, this was MacMurray's fourth of 9 films he made with director Leisen and he was also the nominal star of one of the most notorious of all Christmas movies, THE MIRACLE OF THE BELLS (1948; co-starring Frank Sinatra as a priest)!