Midnight Blu-Ray

Screwball comedy doesn’t get any more effortlessly elegant and gleefully irreverent than this roulette wheel of romantic deception, gleaming with cunning wit and Continental élan. A couture-clad Claudette Colbert is divine as a penniless American chorus girl who crashes Parisian high society by posing as a wealthy Hungarian baroness—but both a scheming nobleman (John Barrymore) and a smitten taxi driver (Don Ameche) are soon on to her game. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett’s sophisticated script—a typically subversive blend of fairy-tale escapism and caustic social observation—and the pitch-perfect direction of master craftsman Mitchell Leisen yield a topsy-turvy Cinderella story with a cynical bite.

Film info:

· United States

· 1939

· 94 minutes

· Black & White

· 1.37:1

· English

· Spine #1266

Blu-ray special edition features

· New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack

· New audio commentary featuring author and film critic Michael Koresky

· New program featuring audio excerpts of a 1969 interview with director Mitchell Leisen

· Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1940

· Trailer

· English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

· PLUS: An essay by film critic David Cairns

· New cover by Abigail Giuseppe