Borzage was quoted as saying, \u201cit\u2019s no way to make a movie.\u201d Except maybe this one. There\u2019s a kamikaze quality to History Is Made At Night,<\/em> a breathless, anything-can-happen flood of events that mirrors the headlong feeling of falling in love for the first time. The preposterous plot follows an unassailable emotional logic, so that what sounds insane in synopsis seems perfectly reasonable onscreen, as befitting a love story that begins with a phony kidnapping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jean Arthur stars as Irene Vail, a depressed high society wife in the midst of divorcing a miserable millionaire played by Dr. Frankenstein himself, Colin Clive. His angry attempt to ruin her reputation by making it look like she\u2019s been having an affair with their chauffeur is foiled quite accidentally by Charles Boyer\u2019s Paul Dumond, an impossibly suave Parisian headwaiter from the city\u2019s most sophisticated nightspot, Chateau Bleu. To preserve her virtue, Paul pretends to be a jewel thief and absconds with the fair damsel into the night \u2014 an enchanting abduction full of dancing, lobster and pink cap champagne. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You wouldn\u2019t think to put Jean Arthur and Charles Boyer together as a couple, so opposed were their energies. His cool, continental elegance could sometimes seem stiff, while her corn-fed coltishness ran the risk of coming off as clumsy in such refined surroundings. But onscreen chemistry is an impossible thing to predict, and it\u2019s closer here to alchemy as she lends him a much-needed humor and he grants her a residual grace in return. Watch the twinkle in Boyer\u2019s eyes at Arthur\u2019s uncoordinated outbursts. Maybe the most magical moment in the movie is when she spots him again after a long absence and just laughs and laughs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When our star-crossed lovers find themselves separated by the fates and an ocean, he does what any jilted beau would do \u2014 he packs up for America with his head chef (a scene-stealing Leo Carrillo) in tow and finds a restaurant to make over as Manhattan\u2019s hottest nightspot. Paul figures if they do their jobs right, one of these evenings she\u2019s bound to walk in, eventually. (As I was saying, an unassailable emotional logic.) There\u2019s much discussion of two characters\u2019 plans to return to Europe aboard the Hindenburg, which met its horrible fate two months after the film\u2019s release in 1937. It\u2019s an eerie bit of foreshadowing in a movie that\u2019s already borrowing heavily from another historic tragedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Would you be surprised if I told you that Paul and Irene (plus their pal the chef) find themselves aboard the Titanic? Well, not technically the Titanic, but a similarly doomed luxury liner that meets an iceberg late one foggy evening, and before we know it we\u2019re all on deck as the band is playing \u201cNearer My God To Thee.\u201d Audiences can be forgiven for not predicting this hairpin turn, as Borzage didn\u2019t see the iceberg coming, either. The filmmakers didn\u2019t decide they were making a disaster movie until well into the shoot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet this cockamamie twist is perfectly in keeping with the movie\u2019s spirit of reckless abandon. History Is Made At Night<\/em> is grand, oversized and often ridiculous, which is exactly how the world feels when you\u2019re falling in love.\u00a0 “History is Made at Night” is now streaming on the Criterion Channel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/history-still-1024x576.jpg\")
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