With the smart talk and screwball cynicism of a Preston Sturges screenplay burnished to a mellow sheen by Mitchell Leisen's direction, Remember the Night makes a rich setting for Stanwyck's sparkle and subtle depth. Caught for shoplifting a bracelet just before Christmas, Stanwyck falls on the irritable mercy of D.A. Fred MacMurray, who bails her out and ends up offering her a ride home to Indiana for the holidays. Spurned by her own family in a brief scene that sums up a lifetime of too-convincing horror, she ends up with his folks, in an Americana idyll of warmth and kindness that brings an undercurrent of sentiment welling to the surface. When this self-possessed woman is overcome, the emotion means something. For a Sturges-scripted comedy, Remember the Night has a lot of melancholy in it; Stanwyck shifts between wisecracks and tears with grace.
—Juliet Clark