{"id":15122,"date":"2011-05-22T17:02:37","date_gmt":"2011-05-23T01:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=15122"},"modified":"2011-05-22T17:53:19","modified_gmt":"2011-05-23T01:53:19","slug":"this-is-the-night-frank-tuttle-1932-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=15122","title":{"rendered":"This is the Night (Frank Tuttle, 1932): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy<\/a>.\u00a0 Viewed at the TCM Film Fest, Hollywood, CA.<\/p>\n

\"\" An illicit relationship becomes estranged, once the husband appears on the scene, in\u00a0Frank Tuttle’s\u00a0This is the Night.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Aristocrat lovers,\u00a0Claire Mathewson (Thelma Todd) and Gerald Gray (Roland Young) are about to set out for a night on the town in Paris, when Claire’s evening gown unknowingly gets caught and torn off – in one of many scenes –\u00a0by Gerald’s clumsy chauffeur Sparks (Irving Bacon), who announces it musically\u00a0with a\u00a0cadence of “ma-dam, has-lost, her-dress.”<\/p>\n

Claire’s husband, the athletic Stephen Mathewson\u00a0(Cary Grant)<\/em>, suddenly returns home from abroad, to catch Bunny West (Charlie Ruggles) delivering two tickets\u00a0to Venice, on a train with adjoining sleeping compartments, while Claire is caught in just her undergarments and a fur.<\/p>\n

Bunny and Gerald quickly concoct a story explaining the two tickets and the absence of Gerald’s wife, in which\u00a0the suspicious husband\u00a0hesitantly accepts.\u00a0 In order though to restore Claire’s honor, Bunny and Gerald\u00a0hastily shop\u00a0for a wife, and believing they are hiring a professional actress named Chou Chou, they instead employ nice girl Germaine\u00a0(Lily Damita).<\/p>\n

They all board the train together, when problems\u00a0erupt\u00a0as Claire becomes jealous of Chou Chou, who flirts outrageously and dominates the attentions of Bunny, Gerald and Stephen.<\/p>\n

This is the Night<\/em> is a vague remake of Malcolm St. Clair’s Good and Naughty <\/em>(1926) starring Pola Negri, which had its roots as a stage play.\u00a0\u00a0A light-hearted comedy with musical undertones and humorous, though stagy scenes, it’s very much an ensemble piece, with a\u00a0recurring theme;\u00a0an unfaithful wife continually loses her garments, and eventually her lover.<\/p>\n

There are several day-for-night scenes of the moonlight, shot with a blue lens filter, which makes for an interesting, though dated,\u00a0contrast to the black and white.\u00a0 In addition to\u00a0various low and oblique camera angles, is an\u00a0impressive\u00a06-shot scene, wherein three characters to the right engage in a dominant conversation, while three to the left are involved in a subtle,\u00a0yet eye-catching exchange,\u00a0revealing Chou Chou as a possible disruption\u00a0to the trip.<\/p>\n

This was Cary Grant’s first feature film, and he definitely stands out as a strong lead amongst the veteran actors Charlie Ruggles, Roland Young, and Thelma Todd. \u00a0Todd however is the one to watch, flimsy negligee and all, since she was a star in every sense that made a successful transition from silents to the talkies. \u00a0She was a beauty who made many comedic\u00a0films with Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers,\u00a0and many others, but died too young at 29, and is somewhat forgotten today.<\/p>\n

This film is pre-code, full of innuendo, and worth watching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy.\u00a0 Viewed at the TCM Film Fest, Hollywood, CA. An illicit relationship becomes estranged, once the husband appears on the scene, in\u00a0Frank Tuttle’s\u00a0This is the Night. Aristocrat lovers,\u00a0Claire Mathewson (Thelma Todd) and Gerald Gray (Roland Young) are about to set out for a night on the town in Paris, when Claire’s evening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,3,178],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dvd","category-films","category-tcm-film-festival-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}