Remember Last Night?

An enjoyable stylized film directed by someone who really put his mark on his films (James Whale). There is even a satire on one of his films as Constance Cummings says to Robert Young, "I feel like the 'Bride Of Frankenstein' ". Edward Arnold was terrific as always. Robert Young never did a film where he wasn't good. Out of the 100 films he did he was always great. Young actors should study him and watch his films from the beginning of his career and watch his talents grow. Edward Brophy brought in the comedy relief and also never disappoints. Robert Armstrong as the 'Driver' has come down to be an underrated actor, was also great. Sally Eilers was also a great comic-dramatic actress. The other supporting actors including Reginald Denny, Arthur Treacher, Jack LaRue, Gregory Ratoff, Dewey Robinson, E.E. Clive were wonderful. We don't have these wonderful character actors today. They made each picture very special,including this one.

Report from Cinesation 2006: REMEMBER LAST NIGHT? (****) The notes suggested that James Whale sold this idea to Universal by comparing it to The Thin Man-- but it's The Thin Man as written by Evelyn Waugh, a tale of bright young things drinking and partying fast enough to keep despair at bay, and a reminder that Whale belonged to the same generation of artists formed by World War I who produced things like The Sun Also Rises and Goodbye To All That.

A group of young friends party the night away on a series of amazing Art Deco sets, and when they wake up in the morning, one of them has been murdered. As the mystery-plot mechanics take over, it loses some of its brittle, dark charm, relying on Arthur Treacher in the Thesiger part as a mordant butler for laughs. But at its best this is one of the most striking comedies of the 30s, energetic and gay (in the old sense-- mostly) and often very funny, yet worldly and almost bleak at the same time. If only the solution of the mystery could have paid off the film's tone thematically. The collector's print shown, incidentally, was 16mm, but could have been 35mm for how beautifully it showed off the film's remarkable sets.

When a man is found murdered after a night of carousing, a husband and wife set out to solve the crime in "Remember Last Night," a 1935 film directed by James Whale and starring Robert Young and Constance Cummings. They certainly did a lot of partying in the '30s, but the partying in this film is on a new level. Everyone is so drunk that the next morning, no one can remember a thing about what happened the night before and how one of their friends ended up dead.

"Remember Last Night" is along the lines of the Thin Man (with more booze, if you can believe it), "Fast and Loose," "Star of Midnight," etc. - the lighthearted man-woman crime-solving genre so popular in the '30s. What sets this one apart is the shameless drunkenness, which raises drinking to a new art form, and an appalling display of people wearing blackface masks and talking jive in one part of the movie.

Constance Cummings and Robert Young play the couple, and they're delightful. Cummings is beautiful, sophisticated, and sparkles as the wife. An accomplished stage actress who lived to be 95, Cummings appeared as Mary Tyrone to Olivier's James in an acclaimed "Long Day's Journey into Night" and in her seventies toured the country in "Wings," about a stroke victim. Here she is young and dazzling. Robert Young does very well in a role normally played by Robert Montgomery or William Powell - he's younger, and gives the part just the right playful touch. He lived to be 91, so maybe there was something in whatever passed for booze in the movie. Edward Arnold, Reginald Denny, and Arthur Treacher provide solid support.

This is a somewhat convoluted mystery - it was hard to follow even being sober, so just think what the characters went through. If you can get into the spirit of it (pardon the pun), it's fun, and as well, it's a great commentary on the times - and how they have changed.

It's a wild party all right, with a lot of content that would curl the hair of the average movie- goer nowadays. While we in the 21st Century have been brutalized to boredom by the sight of a person's entrails being blown via shotgun blast onto the walls like some kind of macabre Rorshach, these folks would have been mortified at such a sight. But abuse people? While mid-party, even before the first piece of significant action, we are treated to profligate drinking, both individual and group (You have to see this to believe it.), impaired driving, racism (The most embarrassing and shamefacedly tacky minstrel-take-off I've ever seen!), vandalism, reckless endangerment, resisting arrest and dangerous driving.

Notwithstanding, the movie is an instructive social exhibit of a time when, during the depth of the worst depression in history, these brutes marauded carelessly while the world burned around them. Never has a house staff been so clearly cast as in utter disgust of their employer's very existence.

Overall, a terrific example of its time. Fun, too, even if it's darn near too nasty to live.

When I saw the opening credits announcing "A James Whale Production," I thought - yes, there will probably be outsized and grotesque sets, just like in Frankenstein. I wasn't mistaken. The weird decor of the house and restaurant where the action takes place is a movie in itself. The entire film plays like one big in-joke, like the sorts of things film studios put together to show to employees at Christmas parties.

But that doesn't mean this movie isn't funny, and enjoyable. The two lead characters are the boozy, over the top kind that you know are going to get into more trouble than they can handle. To me, they were sort of a combination of Nick and Nora Charles, and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Their wild party was one of the wildest you'll ever see on film, and no nudity or foul language, either. Of course, there is the matter of that really tasteless, racist bit at the party. I suppose in 1935 some would have considered that funny, but it is painful to watch.

I really liked Constance Cummings. The only other thing I've seen her in is Blythe Spirit. She was very good here in a screwball mode, and she was cute and perky without being obnoxious about it. Robert Young was winning as her not very much more sober and serious husband. The whole mystery with all the suspects in one house thing was pretty silly, but I really think it was supposed to be. This film is to be viewed with tongue in cheek. It's a joke, and a funny one. It has all the stock characters you would expect to find in such an old-fashioned mystery - the rich and careless, the hardbitten law, the ex-con and suspicious (but innocent) servants, and that great, supercilious, snooty butler. Arthur Treacher was the master of that genre. I thought it was hilarious the way he made all those snide comments whenever he turned his head from his employers. The dialog is really very funny, and goes by fast, but not too fast.

I thought the funniest scene by far was where the hero is racing his car to get home, and he almost collides with a truck at a road construction site. The truck driver lets loose a stream of curses, without actually uttering any four-letter words. And listen carefully for the very last thing he says -- well, I won't give it away -- it caps the whole scene and makes it even funnier.