History is Made at Night

If it’s fair to say anything general based on only this and Little Man, What Now?, Frank Borzage’s films are wonderful little treasures, melding varied tones into a perfectly paced whole in an effortless and heartfelt way. Like Little Man, this is genuinely funny, romantic, and heart-rending, here the young couple with nothing to hold onto in the world but their love for each other supplanted with an older pair whose love threatens to send them to jail, exile or death. Jean Arthur is a woman trapped in a marriage to a psychotically jealous and truly menacing multi-millionaire; Charles Boyer is the handsome and gallant Parisian who would whisk her away to a new life, but finds himself fearing for his own. In Borzage’s hands, not a moment of this descends into heavy melodrama, always remaining bright and engaging, played out beautifully in the leads’ warm performances of a compelling romance. There is a lovely moment on the night they first meet that would surely make any short list I might compile of the great romantic gestures of Hollywood: after years living pent-up and enduring her husband’s rages, and having just escaped a nasty set-up he engineered to block their divorce, Arthur slowly loosens up in Boyer’s arms, gradually lets her guard down as they dance an impromptu tango, and finally kicks off her shoes in a giddy display of both free will and openness to love. The film is full of such lovely moments, actually, and as soon as I’m free again to watch boy-movies not made by Lubitsch, I’ll see if I can indeed offer such wild platitudes to Borzage in general.