MIDNIGHT:sophisticated silliness

With a screenplay by the soon-to-become-legendary team of Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett this frothy class and culture clash comedy from 1939 can't help but sparkle.

Claudette Colbert stars as the American showgirl who charms and cons her way into pre-war Parisian high society and demonstrates that Yankee ingenuity and go-gettingness is more than a match for titles, inherited wealth and stuffy Old World snobbiness.
Don Ameche as a surprisingly plausible taxi-driver of Hungarian descent plays along with the charade but finds that he too can't compete with American resourcefulness when it comes to turning a situation to his advantage.
The tension derives from Colbert's near constant fear of being uncovered as a fraud and the growing demands it makes on her creativity to delay what appears to be the inevitable. In this she is aided by the wonderful John Barrymore in his last great performance before his final alcohol-fueled decline. He is the master of stealing a scene with little more than a raised eyebrow and an eye-popping look of disbelief. It's just a shame that the talented and beautiful Mary Astor as his cheating wife isn't given more to do. I would love to have seen her sparking off Barrymore, but perhaps director Mitchell Leisen was afraid that building up her part would unbalance the story.
The message here is that it's what's in your heart not in your wallet that makes you happy. It's a theme that Hollywood had repeatedly revisited during the Depression years of the 1930s yet MIDNIGHT manages to make it feel fresh again. Watch and enjoy.