One of the most unabashedly romantic films of the 1930s, director Frank Borzage’s bizarre History Is Made at Night (1937) employs a mishmash of genres—film noir, screwball romantic comedy, disaster movie—to tell a highly improbable but ultimately winning tale of enduring love. American shipping magnate Bruce Vail (Colin Clive) is an insanely jealous man who wrongly suspects his wife Irene (Jean Arthur) of adultery. In Paris, an exasperated Irene files for divorce, leading a desperate Bruce to concoct a weird plan that involves sending his chauffeur to Irene’s hotel room in order to create a compromising scenario.
But Irene is rescued by Paul Dumond (Charles Boyer), who punches out the chauffeur and then pretends to be a thief in front of Bruce after the latter breaks in hoping to catch Irene in flagrante delicto. Paul then “kidnaps” Irene along with her jewelry, taking her to a restaurant run by a jolly top chef named Cesare (Leo Carrillo), where the pair spend a magical evening dancing to an Argentinian tango and sharing intimacies.
Worldly Frenchman Paul draws the more reserved Irene out by penning a female face on his hand who he calls “Coco”—an inquisitive makeshift ventriloquist’s puppet that allows Irene to open up about her personal life. Unfortunately, the new couple’s quickly hatched dream of starting a fresh life together is shattered when the chauffeur turns up dead (murdered by Bruce, unbeknownst to Irene) and Irene is blackmailed into sailing to New York with her husband, who will in turn not help the police to search for likely suspect Paul.
A bewildered and heartbroken Paul eventually heads to New York (along with Cesare), determined to find Irene, who has taken on a new last name after once again splitting from Bruce. History Is Made at Night began as a title and two pages of script, which perhaps explains the anything goes feel of this love story featuring several twists and turns on its way to a wild climax aboard an ocean liner that combines nail-biting melodrama with swooning romance.
Bowing on Blu-ray with a lovely 4K digital transfer, the film’s extras include a new conversation between author Hervé Dumont (“Frank Borzage: The Life and Films of a Hollywood Romantic”) and film historian Peter Cowie, a 2019 interview with critic Farran Smith Nehme on Borzage’s obsession with romantic love, audio excerpts of a 1958 interview with Borzage, a 1940 radio adaptation of the film starring Boyer, a featurette on the film’s restoration, and a leaflet with an essay by critic Dan Callahan. The wacko plot will put off some viewers, but for diehard romantics, this will go down as smoothly as the 1921 Pink Cap champagne favored by the lovestruck couple. Recommended.