Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray teamed up many times on the silver screen, most notably in Billy Wilder’s noir masterpiece, Double Indemnity (1944). They would go on to star in three more pictures, but their first appearance together as the main stars was in Mitchell Leisen’s Remember the Night (1940). Its blend of comedy and drama was characteristic of American movies at the time, and adding the season of Christmas and New Year’s to the film rendered it relatable, albeit in an unusual way.

Fred MacMurray plays John “Jack” Sargent, an assistant district attorney assigned to a case of jewelry robbery. Barbara Stanwyck is the thief, Lee Leander, whose expensive tastes and low moral standards landed her in jail. 

The unfortunate and most inconvenient thing about the trial is that it begins right before Christmas. Everyone has other things on their minds, and even though Lee’s defense attorney claims that his client was innocent and under the influence of “hypnotism” (a bunch of psychological mumbo-jumbo that the jury is supposed to fall for), Jack manages to have the trial postponed until after the holidays.

This creates a dilemma. Jack is a good man and thinks that perhaps even thieves deserve to spend Christmas someplace other than a prison cell. He arranges for Lee’s bail but she is sent to Jack’s apartment. The trouble is that Jack is preparing to leave the madness of New York and go on a trip to Indiana to spend the holidays with his mother, Aunt Emma, and cousin Willie. 

After it’s revealed that Lee too is a “Hoosier,” who’s pretty sure her mother still lives there, Jack offers to drive Lee since it’s on his way. Lee is taken aback by this gesture, and it’s clear that she has not received such attention before. This may bring some change in her thieving disposition, but she’s no fool. 

Jack is curious why Lee has a need to steal. “In the presence of beautiful things,” he says, “did you have the sudden irresistible urge to take them in your hands and hurry away with them?” He wants to think that Lee is just a kleptomaniac, but she disabuses him of that notion. “I don’t think you ever could understand,” Lee says to Jack, “because your mind is different. Right or wrong is the same for everybody, you see, but the rights and the wrongs aren’t the same.”

Jack and Lee couldn’t be more different from each other, yet something is drawing them together. Deep down, Lee is desperately trying to change her corrupted soul, and for reasons that are unexplainable, Jack is drawn into what is obviously the search for the good in all of us.

It would seem logical to suppose that Lee has rarely felt loved. When she and Jack reach her mother’s house, the mother is cold and miserable. She rejected her daughter in the past, she repeats that act once again upon seeing Lee. There is no reconciliation or a happy Christmas story here—it is just a harsh reality of rejection and lack of love. Lee stands still on the porch after she’s been ushered out of the house. Her mother walks to the glass door, and a little light of hope appears only to be quickly blown like a cheap match. The curtain is pulled and the hall lights are turned off. Lee does not belong there, and never will. 

By contrast, Lee receives a completely different treatment at Jack’s home. There is no familial conflict or misery—only gratitude and love. Lee is welcomed, despite the fact that Jack reveals Lee’s true identity to his mother. As the family is celebrating Christmas and New Year’s Eve, Jack and Lee begin to fall in love. Jack’s mother is a Christian, charitable woman, but the thought of her son being romantically involved with a thief is unacceptable. She asks Lee to let Jack go, which Lee dutifully accepts.

Although the film’s script was written by Preston Sturges, who is known for his fast-paced zingers, there is a sense of darkness that pervades the film. As in many of Stanwyck’s other performances, she is quick, and her own personality and immense acting ability lend themselves to both comedy and drama. As Mitchell Leisen commented, “She never blew one line through the whole picture. She set that kind of pace and everybody worked harder, trying to outdo her.”

Just like in most of her roles, here too Stanwyck shows many different levels of personhood. Without a doubt, she is trying to manipulate Jack because that is simply her modus operandi. Her so-called independence wouldn’t dictate anything other than pure manipulation because she is not interested in any other kind of life than the one she is already living. Except, of course, that part of her knows that she is living in a hellish prison made entirely by herself.

It wouldn’t be wrong to assume that some parts of Stanwyck’s own personality and independence seeped into her roles. As Dan Callahan notes in his book Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman, “If she was afraid of words, then her collaboration with [Preston] Sturges becomes even more suggestive. He led her out of her established comfort zones and into the kind of brilliant, yearning talk that could bring her to both new levels of understanding and new levels of desolation, all mingled together in her voice and her eyes.”

These “desolations” are not merely a characteristic of Stanwyck’s films but also of many other films of the 1940s. The reality of alienation and anxiety comes even more into prominence during and after World War II. Silly and lighthearted themes are always filled with uncertainty over the future and the inescapable fact that we must all sometimes see ourselves in the mirror. Perhaps this is the reason why someone like Stanwyck would be perfect for a role like this—a woman who is at once clear and direct, yet partially wears a metaphysical mask, indirectly and indefinitely hidden from the rest of us. Vulnerability emerges only occasionally. 

Preston Sturges may have joked when he said that the film has “a lot of schmaltz, a good dose of schmerz, and just enough schmutz” to render it a film that could be successful at the box office. It sounds almost dismissive of the film, but though Sturges is saying something true, there is still something dark, deep, and discomforting about Remember the Night. An individual must refuse narcissism and accept the responsibility for their actions, perhaps even their fate. It is a strange blend of American tension within the confines of individualism, community, and personal destiny. (We see a similar pattern in 1944’s holiday film I’ll Be Seeing You with Joseph Cotton and Ginger Rogers.) 

Stanwyck’s and MacMurray’s mishaps along the journey to Indiana are certainly a cause for many laughs, but the difference between right and wrong is rarely an occasion for mirth. What will happen in the end? Will this holiday fairytale end in marriage? Most comedies do, but this is an unusual comedy precisely because love and morality are at the center of it. Lee Leander must accept the responsibility for her earlier actions, and the trial must continue.

Both Lee and Jack will do anything to maintain the love they have for each other. On one hand, Jack appears to have been corrupted—he’s willing to manipulate and turn the trial around which will exonerate Lee. The law to which he was so devoted to has been moved into the background. Yet, Lee too is changed. Something has awakened in her, a shred of goodness that dictates she must do the right thing and proverbially face the music. In order to gain Jack’s love, Lee is willing to lose it all. For the first time, Lee has taken off the mask of a thief, and her vulnerability has illuminated both love and faith.