Movie of the Week: HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT (Frank Borzage, 1937)

Has Hollywood love ever looked this strange?

Legend has it that History is Made at Night was greenlit on the strength of its title alone, when producer Walter Wanger approached Frank Borzage with nothing more than that and a rough idea. Such was the reputation of Old Hollywood’s most breathless romantic that he could get a film made not because of a good script (or even a script that existed) but because he knew that the mere title would lead him somewhere beautiful. So it goes that one of the great studio-era love stories — like Casablanca — was essentially written and made on the fly. While it’s true that History is Made at Night’s unique, anything-goes energy is rooted in this patchwork nature, you’d never guess it from the supreme levels of refinement and polish on display. Irene Vail (Jean Arthur) has just filed for divorce from wealthy shipping magnate Bruce Vail (Colin Clive) because of his pathological belief that she’s always cheating on him (she isn’t.) As a result of Vail’s sinister machinations, however, Irene meets Paul (Charles Boyer), a French headwaiter with a heart as pure and soft as Borzage’s own. Over the course of one magical night in Paris, the two fall in love, and Vail’s obsession with his worst fear has suddenly made the thing real. The convolutions of the improvised plot become thrilling under Borzage’s hand; by the end, he’s made a mashup of romance, noir, broad comedy, and disaster film that, against all odds, works like clockwork. (It’s also worth noting that entire passages of the third act show up in a certain highly successful 1997 film by a certain highly successful filmmaker, right down to a deployment of the popular hymn “Nearer My God to Thee” at an all-is-lost moment.) Rarely has the trope of people falling in love in one sitting been so convincing, and rarely have two romantic leads been as arresting as Arthur and Boyer are here. It’s their housing within a narrative so brazenly unfamiliar, though, that makes this an all-timer for me.

Streaming on the Criterion Channel.