SPOILERS! Code enforced ending? or horrible fumble in the final seconds?
WOW! I was enjoying this film all the way until the last few minutes.. then something happened. Stanwyck's character plead guilty! right when MacMurray is about to throw the case and help her get off with no time so that they can get married and be together Stanwyck tells the judge "uhhh derrr I wanna plead GUILTY" ok so I added the derrr part but why would she do this? It changes this ALMOST great romance movie into one of those Warner "Crime does not pay" shorts. I mean either make a crime does not pay piece or a romantic comedy. Its like Hitchcock said about building tension and releasing tension and the "one mistake" he made in the 30s when he had a bus blow up, Hitch said "show two people talking and tell the audience there is a bomb under the seat and it will go off in so many minutes, then you have them talk baseball... and the audience is saying don't talk baseball there's a bomb under the seat get out get out.... but one important thing, the bomb must never go off.." I may not be word for word on the quote but it is extremely close and the point being do not make a romantic comedy and then instead of having the two leads end up together as we all know they will and are expecting them to, you have the girl go to jail to prove her love for MacMurray's career??WTH!
So my question is to other movie nuts and cineasts , was it the director or studio/producers choice to do that (AWFUL!) ending? or was it because of code enforcement?
Anyway Remember The Night was a fun watch until the last 3 or 4 minutes, sad that such a good romantic comedy was ended that way (imo).
Here are just a few of my favorites from my collection:
-Citizen Kane - Orson Welles (1941)
-Casablanca - Michael Curtiz(1943)
-The Third Man - Carol Reed (1949)
-Seven Samurai - Akira Kurosawa(1954)
-Touch of Evil - Orson Welles (1958)
-Rules of The Game - Jean Renoir (1939)
-Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock (1958)
-Double Indemnity - Billy Wilder (1944)
-The Naked City - Jules Dassin
-400 Blows - Francois Truffaut (1959)
-The Grand Illusion - Jean Renoir (1937)
-8 1/2 - Federico Fellini (1963)
-The Seventh Seal - Ingmar Bergman (1957)
-Kiss Me Deadly - Robert Aldrich (1955)
-The Magnificent Ambersons - Orson Welles (1942)
-The Red Shoes - Powell & Pressburger (1948)
-Gaslight - George Cukor (1944)
-The Naked Kiss - Samuel Fuller (1964)
-Experiment In Terror - Blake Edwards (1962)
-The Black Narcissus - Powell & Pressburger (1946)
-Charade - Stanley Donen (1963)
-The Maltese Falcon - John Houston (1941)
-Now Voyager - Irving Rapper (1942)
-Sunset Blvd. - Billy Wilder (1950)
-The Big Sleep - Howard Hawks (1946)
-All About Eve - Joe Mankiewicz (1950)
-North By Northwest - Alfred Hitchcock (1959)
-The Trial - Orson Welles (1962)
-Laura - Otto Preminger (1944)
-The Lost Weekend - Billy Wilder (1945)
-The Lady Eve - Preston Sturges (1941)
-Night of The Hunter - Charles Laughton (1955)
-The Searchers - John Ford (1956)
-On The Waterfront - Elia Kazan (1954)
-Battleship Potemkin - Sergei Eisenstein (1925)
-The General - Buster Keaton (1927)
-Breathless - Jean-Luc Godard (1959)
-The Big Heat - Fritz Lang (1953)
-Sweet Smell Of Success - Alexander Mackendrick (1957)
-L'Atalante - Jean Vigo (1934)
-Metropolis - Fritz Lang (1927)
-Out Of The Past - Jacques Tourneur (1947)
-Mr. Arkadin - Orson Welles (1955)
-Rear Window - Alfred Hitchcock (1954)
-The Killers - Robert Siodmak (1946)
-The Lady From Shanghai - Orson Welles (1947)
-Ace In The Hole - Billy Wilder (1951)
-Brute Force - Jules Dassin
one of the films I mention from my collection is The Lady Eve, (Thanks Criterion for such great dvds!I have 216 of their dvd and blu rays so far and I highly recommend them. cant wait for Anatomy of a Murder and David Lean directs Noell Coward in March!). Anyway The Lady Eve is a perfect example of how the couple go back and forth but in the end of a good romantic comedy Stanwyck does not go to jail! Well again I would like to know how other classic movie fans feel about the ending of Remember The Night. Happy Holidays!