History Is Made at Night (1937)

Untimely review #1

Charles Boyer has that mysterious quality—call it a je ne sais quoi—that allows him to play villainous, romantic, or corny with total plausibility. In History is Made at Night, he gets to do all three.

We first meet Paul (Boyer) in Paris as he’s putting a drunk to bed. He hears some sort of altercation coming from the neighboring apartment, so he goes out on the balcony to investigate, a garishly painted-on Eiffel Tower beaming in the background. Inside, he finds Irene Vail (Jean Arthur) having a dustup with a valet. Irene has just filed for divorce from her wealthy shipping magnate of a husband, Bruce, and fled to the opposite end of the Atlantic to escape. Bruce (Colin Clive, acting ferociously with his eyebrows) is a possessive and terminally jealous type; Irene just wants freedom, but Bruce suspects another man is in the picture. Paul slips in and gives the valet a good bonk on the head and pushes him out of the way, but he doesn’t have time to explain himself properly to Irene before Bruce himself shows up in a rage. Thinking fast, Paul tips his hat down over his face and plays the noir villain, pretending to have a gun underneath his coat so he can compel Irene to hand over her jewelry and Bruce to cower in a closet. Paul high tails it out of there with Irene in tow.