HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT: Blu-ray (UA, 1937) Criterion Collection

All but forgotten, director, Frank Borzage was one of Hollywood’s go-to, steadfast perfectionists in an age, literally, to have bred such artisans en masse. Collectively, Borzage’s pictures made money, arguably, leaving very little ‘wiggle room’ for him to be considered either experimental or an auteur within the assembly-line system of these manufactured images. Yet, in a prolific career spanning the girth of the biz, from 1913 to 1961, the year before his death from cancer, Borzage built upon an enviable understanding of human nature, how best to take its less than altruistic pursuits and make them palpably engaging, even tragic, but always bittersweet and compelling. Borzage had an intuition about actors, perhaps because he had begun his career as one in 1912 and to remain in front of the camera until 1917, two years after having assuaged into the director’s chair with his debut, The Pitch o’ Chance (1915). An admirer of German expressionist director, F.W. Murnau, Borzage evolved an opulent nostalgia for the first bloom of lovers caught in passions sway, with such megahits of their time as Humoresque (1920), the Oscar-winning 7th Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928) and Lucky Star and Bad Girl (1931), for which he won his second Academy Award. In one of those Hollywood ironies that never fails to startle, Borzage’s approach to picture-making was to suddenly fall out of favor after 1948. Nevertheless, he continued to work, and was awarded with lifetime achievement honors by George Eastman House, both in 1955 and ’57, as well as his own star on Hollywood’s ‘Walk of Fame’ in 1960.

It is important to place Borzage’s legacy into context here. Not only was he one of the first directors to score multiple Oscar wins, but, in retrospect, he remained one of Hollywood’s best, to clearly see and, better still, express that streak of idealism coursing through the ripe and full-blooded flourish of romance, for which, borrowing off the Titanic disaster, 1937’s History Is Made at Night is, arguably, his most bizarre and not altogether fulfilling aide-mémoire.  There is, alas, a strain of criticism in film scholarship today set against Borzage’s particular appetite for adult passion, reinterpreted as hackneyed trifle, made even more dubious and overwrought as melodrama turned asunder by cliché, intermittently to minimize while simultaneously amplify the gaudy and off-the-cuff moments of life bent all out of proportion. Such critics, argue such fakery and finesse as un-true to life and demand a more realistic approach to their art. But it is, I think, a distinctly gauche and futile perspective at best, the approach to analyzing movies from a vantage of nearly 70 years removed from their golden epoch, under crude considerations based on mores and prejudices from our present age. And far from having matured from such fakery, our cinema culture is super-saturated in hyper-realities, slavishly devoted to CGI spectacles involving super heroes, alien invaders, and otherwise artificial transgressions not even modestly anchored in a vaguely identifiable verisimilitude and completely incapable of running concurrent with the ‘reality’ of our times. Escapism of a different kind, perhaps, but escapism nonetheless!

Whatever your particular critical bent or disadvantage in not being able to appreciate art for art’s sake, even when afforded the latitude of an ardent admirer of yesteryear’s artifice, History Is Made at Night, remains a thoroughly odd, if uber-plush romantic fantasy, even for its time, flamboyant and pressed to the pinnacle of absurdity. Despite the sincerity imbued in Gene Towne, Vincent Lawrence and David Hertz’s screenplay, based on a story by C. Graham Baker, the picture plays more like a classic screwball comedy, desperate in its attempts to go legit and be taken seriously.  That said, it also represents Borzage’s craft at its most audacious. Given the box office-drawing power of its two stars, super-sophisticate, Charles ‘meet me at the casbah’ Boyer, and, beloved madcap, Jean Arthur, it’s rather daring of Borzage to open his movie by introducing us to the arrogant villain of the piece, Colin Clive as uber-rich Englishman, Bruce Vail – a bitter husband who will do his utmost to drive the proverbial wedge between our lovers. Clive’s is perhaps the saddest of all Hollywood stories. A descendent of Clive of India, to have originated the role of Steven Baker in London’s legendary production of Show Boat, Colin Clive made his film debut in Journey's End (1930) for director, James Whale, alas and almost immediately, to suffer the slings and arrows of his instant fame. Clive’s self-loathing bisexuality, coupled with hos fear of losing a leg, and, his hellish addiction to alcohol, eventually ate through his leading man status. Even as he appeared to be on top of the world, playing opposite such headliners as Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, and Jean Arthur, his health was in very steep decline. Clive was often so inebriated on the set he had to be propped up from behind to film his close-ups. Severely impacted by his own hedonism, Clive succumbed to tuberculosis, age 37 in 1937.

Having already trademarked insanity, playing the enterprising Dr. Frankenstein in both Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) – an iconic reprise to pigeon-hole Clive’s reputation, Borzage exploits Clive’s otherworldly egotism in History is Made at Night, creating a truly memorable, utterly ruthless – and despicably vial – evil man, the best baddie to emerge from a pseudo-rom/com drama in decades, and, quite possibly – ever! For here is a man so obsessed with keeping his wife he would destroy the grand luxury liner built by his steamship company in her honor, and presumably cause the death of thousands of innocents aboard it as well, by ordering its captain to plow full steam ahead into a known ice field in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. History is Made at Night starts off with much to recommend it, from the moment Boyer’s uber-suave head waiter, Paul Dumond, having put a drunken pal to bed, suddenly intrudes upon the failed rape of our heroine, Irene Vail (Jean Arthur), at the mercy of an unscrupulous chauffeur, Michael (Ivan Lebedeff), to the delightful introduction of Paul’s best friend, world-renown chef, Cesare (the magnificently genuine and hilarious, Leo Carrillo), to Irene’s initial forsaking of Paul’s love to return to America with her husband, who has threatened to frame Paul for Michael’s murder, we are invested in these deliciously over-the-top caricatures, however disingenuous in their tangled lives, and chiefly, because the performances offered up by all of the aforementioned principals are just that good.  Arthur and Boyer produce that inimitable spark of romantic sincerity; she, quite un-Arthur-like, playing vulnerable and sad, and he, tempering his reputation as the intercontinental lover to where we can believe a man of his caliber can suddenly be swept off his feet by something more enduring than passion.

Our story begins in earnest with a compelling sequence of events, spun off from the insane jealousy of Bruce Vail whose wife, Irene has already declared her intent to annul their marriage. To thwart this split, Bruce has paid his chauffeur, Michael to stage a violent rape, whereupon Bruce intends to break in just in time and declare his wife a morally loose woman to whom he will never grant a divorce. Instead, Paul, having put a drunken friend to bed in the adjacent hotel suite, overhears this pseudo-attack in Irene’s room and valiantly leaps through an open balcony window, subduing Irene’s attacker. Bruce and the house detective (Lucien Prival) intrude – startled by the appearance of a man they were not expecting to see.  Paul feigns being a jewel thief. But after making off with his handsome haul and Irene clutched in his arms, his escape from the hotel leads to a more chivalrous confession to Irene. He returns her jewels and she immediately falls madly for him. Chagrined in his first attempt to keep his wife, Bruce murders Michael, then plots to inveigle Paul in the crime. All this takes place in the first 10-min. of a scantly paced 97-min. feature. If only the remaining 87-mins. were as compelling.

Alas, after Paul takes Irene to Château Bleu, the finest restaurant in Paris, run by his good friend, Cesare (Leo Carrillo) the romantic chemistry between these two lovers, so right for each other, is set up against one roadblock after the next. Bruce informs Irene, unless she returns to America with him, he will incriminate Paul in Michael’s murder. Very reluctantly, Irene leaves for home, her smiling photo in the papers leaving Paul defeated. He quickly regroups, however, boarding another liner, along with Cesare, bound for Manhattan. The highly implausible plan is for Paul and Cesare to begin anew in New York, transforming a thoroughly forgettable restaurant into the city’s latest hotspot nightclub where the Vails are sure to dine. Predictably, this scenario bears itself out, on the eve of Bruce’s planned return to Europe aboard the Hindenburg to greet his newest liner, the Princess Irene. Paul convinces Irene to forsake her husband. So, Bruce boards the airship, plotting to inform the Paris police he has found Michael’s murderer. A man of principle, Paul decides to return to his native land and face these charges. He and Irene board Bruce’s sleek liner for the bittersweet voyage home. Alas, learning of their transatlantic crossing, Bruce orders the ship’s week-kneed captain to sail full-steam ahead into an ice field, sure to sink the ship. This, naively presumes three things – first, that Paul will perish in the disaster (since there is a deplorable – and illegal – shortage of lifeboats aboard), second - Irene will somehow manage to get off the boat safely, thereupon to return to Bruce once her lover has died, and third, Bruce will not be held accountable for the witless slaughter of thousands of innocent swells cruising the Atlantic on his formidable ship.

History is Made at Night ought to have been a very fine film indeed. Except Borzage was forced to begin shooting with less than 25% of the screenplay actually completed, hoping for a miracle of clarity to strike in the eleventh hour and provide him and his fictional entourage with a viable out. Instead, the Towne/Lawrence/Hertz screenplay all but falls apart after Paul and Irene’s cute meet. Her barefoot pas deux around the dance floor at the Château Bleu is the end to a romance that was so divine, leaving all hope for a bittersweet love story on the cutting room floor as contrivances builds, later, to be swamped by increasing amounts of screwball comedy, plumping Cesare’s role, before shifting the focus back to Bruce’s maniacal desire to destroy Irene’s happiness once and for all. If Colin Clive will forever be known for playing the good, but misguided Dr. Frankenstein, in History is Made at Night, he completely transgresses over to the side of his freakish creation in Whale’s horror classic, performing the most monstrous acts herein to retain control over a loyal wife he merely suspects of having been unfaithful. Feeding into the old adage of ‘well done is hard begun’ – History Is Made at Night inverts this theory to create a strong opener from which no shoring up of the finer details in the middle and last acts results. Instead, Towne/Lawrence/Hertz inveigle our lovers in one too many transatlantic crossings, the ship - the Princess Irene - meant as inspiration from Bruce to the woman he otherwise grotesquely mistreats and manhandles, now becomes the victim of his obscene desire to ruin Irene for any man in his stead.

So, the Titanic-styled finale ensues, complete with dense fog, an iceberg so grand it could be considered its own archipelago, and, panicked extras, throwing themselves into too few lifeboats and the frigid night waters, while a small contingent of the more stoic old crocks from the formidable passenger list, gather in their life-jackets around a baby grand to sing ‘Nearer My God to Thee’. If all of this sounds quite idiotic – it is!  Having painted themselves into a perilous scenario, the writers now pull one from their collective tuckus for a last-minute reprieve. The ship will not sink, thanks to its water-tight bulkheads, although premature reports on the radio already have the collision earmarked as the worst maritime tragedy since Titanic. This causes Bruce to suddenly suffer an attack of conscience. He authors an all-too-convenient letter of confession for the police in which he not only admits to instigating the wreck, by ordering its weak-kneed captain to sail at full speed ahead into very dangerous waters, but also explains he, Bruce, actually murdered Michael, merely to pin the crime on his wife’s lover.  And thus, Irene and Paul are allowed to go on – happily ever after, after all.

I was all prepared to love History is Made at Night. Hell, the title alone had me deeply intrigued, and the cast left me salivating for what wonderfully dark, yet romantically inspired jeremiads were in store. Jean Arthur delivers a thoroughly heart-felt, and heart-breaking affirmation to Boyer’s Paul, having only just met him, nevertheless confiding she has never been more completely whole as a woman than at this very moment, barefoot and in his arms. And Arthur, ever the professional, allows otherwise heavily cliché lines like this to roll from her lips as though inspired by true love, with a quiet, sad and far-away longing, to have absolutely nothing to do with farce, sex, or an instant misguided attraction, merely to escape an unhappy marriage. We believe her implicitly, knowing just how awful Bruce has been to Irene, even more impressive, since we only get a glimpse of Bruce’s vileness at the outset, before Irene goes slumming with Paul. And yet, this lends Irene’s assertion a level of dreadful ballast. Boyer is superb as her paramour – subtly suave, tender and sentimental; in short, the perfect lover any woman of this particular generation might have wished for in her Christmas stocking. Alas, it’s the screenplay that lets everyone down, the heavy-handed way it careens from serious drama, into murder mystery, then sunny romance, and finally, faux tragedy with the Titanic-inspired climax, ever-more in hindsight, a total tack on, for a story that really did not need some epic cataclysm to summarize or bottle the intensity of our love-struck leads.

I cannot imagine Borzage anticipated, by merely throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the screen, he could hold everything together long enough to sustain our suspension in disbelief for this thoroughly silly little tale, to have wasted its triumvirate of stars, and one hellacious baddie. Despite my misgivings, History is Made at Night was a major hit for Borzage.  If all this nonsense had been pitched as farce, it still might have worked. But the story never decides what genre it wants to be. Hence, the mishmash gumbo is not only implausible, but flat-out foolhardy and fantastically fretful. Reportedly, the cinematography was split between David Abel and Gregg Toland. Of the two, Toland’s deep focus work stands in relief, especially during the first few moments of Irene’s ‘rape’ where the mood is menacing, shot with chiaroscuro lighting and a low flicker of reflected flames from the fireplace. But the finale, aboard the Princess Irene, is marred by a generally thick and dull quality, partly from the dense fog effect, but also from less than stellar film elements, beyond salvation, even in this age of digital restoration. Regrettably, the drama here plays like a cartoon, while the screwball elements are weighted down by the increasingly somber brooding of Colin Clive’s insane hubby.  In the end, History is Made at Night reveals the limitations of Borzage’s artistry rather than its virtues – a patchwork only a die-hard cinephile could love today.

Criterion’s Blu-ray is, I must say, a disappointment. While considerable effort has been taken to resurrect the image, working backward from flawed second and third generation elements that have not had the benefit of proper archival preservation, the results herein yield an image that, while at times looks almost good, very often appears far less than worth the efforts put into it. We’ll start with contrast: thoroughly anemic and exacerbated by the muddy ‘fog-laden’ finale.  Whites are never clean and blacks rarely look deep or enveloping. Then, there’s grain – toggling between naturally thick and thoroughly clumpy. Some long-shots of the models used for the Princess Irene striking the iceberg have been digitized to the point where they appear not only out of focus, but also plagued by artificial sharpening and edge-enhancement. Rear projection shots suffer from blown out contrast and amplified grain, which only exaggerates their artifice, rather than to conceal it. Finally, fine details are frequently obscured. All this is reported to have come from a new 4k digital transfer created from a 35mm nitrate duplicate negative in the UCLA Film and Television Archive, intermittently substituted with a 35mm safety fine grain print. If so, it only serves to illustrate the futility of advertising a 4K remaster from elements unsustainable or to advance only marginally from the work done. The PCM 1.0 mono is adequately represented. Extras are solid. From 2018, we get a half-hour of reflection from historians, Hervé Dumont and Peter Cowie. From 2019, historian, Farran Smith Nehme weighs in with insightful comments on Borzage’s career – a 13-min. featurette produced exclusively for The Criterion Channel. From 1958, a half-hour’s worth of Borzage discussing his career for George Eastman House curator, George Pratt, and finally, from 1940, the Screen Guild Theater’s radio adaptation, also running a half-hour, costarring Charles Boyer and Greer Garson, with Lionel Atwill as the villain. Liner notes and a restoration comparison are also included. Bottom line: History Is Made at Night is a turgid, rather than tantalizing melodrama with comedic undertones. While it features some of Boyer and Arthur’s best work, even this isn’t enough to keep the story from becoming a waterlogged mess of abysmal inuendoes and clichés. Regrets.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

1

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

5