My Favorite Christmas Movie ~ Remember the Night

I don’t have to tax my brain very hard to think of a bunch of Christmas-themed movies, movies that are either about Christmas or that revolve in some way around the Christmas season.  Movies that immediately come to mind are Meet Me in St. Louis, Miracle on 34^th Street, The Bells of St. Mary’s, A Christmas Story, A Christmas Carol, Meet John Doe, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Apartment, Christmas in Connecticut, Holiday Inn, The Polar Express, and many others. My favorite Christmas movie, though, and one that I’ve seen maybe thirty times, is a little gem from 1940 called Remember the Night, with Barbara Stanwyck as a girl thief who runs afoul of the law at Christmastime, and Fred MacMurray as the straight-arrow prosecuting attorney who just might redeem her. 

The character Barbara Stanwyck plays is a charming and not-quite-decent girl named Lee Leander, who is caught stealing expensive jewelry right before Christmas and ends up in jail. Her trial is being held over until after the holidays, so it seems she’s going to have to spend Christmas behind bars. John Sargent (played by Fred MacMurray), the prosecutor in her case, takes pity on her and bails her out at least until her trail will resume after Christmas.  Since she has no place to go, he offers to take her with him to Indiana to spend Christmas. It turns out that Lee is also from Indiana, so she is eager to return there with him. 

After a memorable road trip and one stop along the way at Lee’s hateful mother’s house, where it turns out Lee isn’t wanted, they end up at John’s Indiana home which, as it turns out, is everything a home should be. John has a mother (played by Beulah Bondi), and an aunt, (played by Elizabeth Patterson) and they have an odd but lovable hired man named Willy (played by Sterling Holloway). These are warm, quirky characters, and you will immediately feel a connection with them. They are the kind of people we have all known in the past, or wish we had known.

John’s family welcomes Lee with open arms and treats her like family during the few days she is with them. They gradually come to learn of her troubles back in the city and that she is likely to end up in jail. John’s well-intentioned mother has a talk with Lee and makes her promise she won’t do anything to spoil John’s career, which he has worked so hard to get. Lee assures her that there is nothing between her and John and that when they return to the city she won’t ever see him again. 

On their way back to the city after Christmas, Lee and John discover they’ve fallen in love. The Christmas she has spent with decent John and his decent family has changed her and has made her want to go straight after her life as a thief. What happens in the courtroom when her trial resumes might not be what you expected, but it is fitting to the characters and the situation and we see that it’s exactly the conclusion they’ve been headed toward all along.   

Remember the Night has sentiment but is never hokey or heavy-handed. It’s sweet but not overly sweet. The characters and situations are believable and the dialogue is crisp and funny. It’s one of those rare movies where all the elements come together in a perfect blend.  Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray appeared together in several films, but I think they were never better than in this one. If it’s a Christmas movie you’re wanting—and likely one you haven’t seen before—it’s Remember the Night from 1940. You might even want to see it more than once.

Copyright © 2011 by Allen Kopp