In this Preston Sturges screenplay directed by Leisen, Barbara Stanwyck is the accused jewel thief with whom District Attorney Fred MacMurray falls in love - and whose bail he secures so that she might be free to spend the Christmas holidays with him. Leisen tempers Sturges' brusk cynicism with his own smooth style (Billy Wilder once quipped that he and Sturges began directing their own scripts as a reaction to the “cavalier” treatment they got from Leisen at Paramount). But both Leisen and Sturges share a sense of character humor that brings out the best in their stars, as well as in a supporting cast that includes Beulah Bondi and Sterling Holloway.
Michael Goodwin's recent reassessment of what can in fact be considered a forgotten film finds Remember the Night “subversive, ironic, entertaining...full of the complexity of life.... It's a comedy of sorts - touching, human, marvelously constructed, purely Sturgean in its moral complexity, narrative irony; and so surely entertaining as to put every Academy Award winner of the last ten years to shame.” William K. Everson has long considered it to be Leisen's best film. (JB)