Remember the Night (1940)

I watched this for the first time over the holidays. Directed by a gay man (Mitchell Leisen) and featuring Barbara Stanwyck at her most beautiful and Fred MacMurray. I loved the movie - Stanwyck is very natural and affecting and she has an amazing chemistry with MacMurray. Leisen directs with style to spare. Surprised this Christmas movie is not mroe well-known.

• One of the movies that made me a Stanwyck fan. No fan of MacMurray but he was tolerable in this movie.

• Thanks so much for posting this OP. I watch this film every Xmas. I've posted here several times that I like this film even more than Barbara's better-known holiday film, Christmas in Connecticut. RTN has more pathos, and certainly better direction. I love Beulah Bondi and Elizabeth Patterson in this as well. A fine, fine film. It seems like people are only now realizing what a treasure Stanwyck was.

• Lesbian directed this?

• Stanwyck could do it all. Screwball comedy, westerns, social drama, tearjerkers, romantic drama. Far better than the mannered performances of her contemporaries Davis and Crawford.

• I love this movie too. Then again I am the biggest Barbara Stanwyck fan. She is my favorite actress.

• another stanwyck fan here. she is so compelling when she speaks, you cannot take your eyes off her.

• I love her in her films but also love her performance in The Thorn Birds. Along with the music, she was one of the few good things in that schmaltzy dreck.

• Stanwyck had a very magnetic screen presence. Can't put my finger on it, but when she was in a scene, you could not take your eyes off of here.

• The courtroom scene at the end is beautifully done.

• I'd like to recommend Stanwyck's No Man of Her Own. You can stream it on Netflix. Great movie.

• I also love her in baby face