Midnight is one of a couple dozen films of the period that I have a hard time writing about. It’s in the top tier of my personal canon and one of the reasons I began this blogging project. It’s almost perfect in my eyes, synthesizing everything that was good about Hollywood comedies of the interwarContinue reading “Midnight (1939)”
Category Archives: Mitchell Leisen
Easy Living (1937)
Easy Living figures in everyone’s canon of classic Hollywood comedies. With a screenplay by Preston Sturges, a luminous performance by Jean Arthur, and one of the looniest farcical premises in the whole genre (not the looniest — that would be Christmas in July), it seems to stand alone. The brilliant script includes some of theContinue reading “Easy Living (1937)”
Remember the Night (1940)
Remember the Night should have been a great comedy. It was written by Preston Sturges and directed by Mitchell Leisen. Three years earlier they had collaborated on Easy Living, one of the classics of the period. But this one is a mess. There’s hardly a trace of Sturges’s sophisticated wit and cynicism, and Leisen’s directingContinue reading “Remember the Night (1940)”