TiVo Alert: "Remember the Night" (1940)

The classic Christmas romcom in a rare TV appearance, Sunday evening on TCM.

This is the movie Amy Dickinson and I were both kvelling about in our conversation about much-loved holiday classics last year:

A funny and achingly romantic little number in which prosecutor Fred MacMurray has to take shoplifter Barbara Stanwyck home to his folks over the Christmas holiday and … well, what do you think happens? Stanwyck has never been more appealing, a tough cookie thawing under the mistletoe, MacMurray reminds you that he was a terrific romantic comedy lead before “My Three Sons” domesticated him, and Beulah Bondi has one of the most touching roles of her long career as the prosecutor’s mother. The script is by the legendary Preston Sturges — his last before he ascended to the director’s chair — and the director is the under-sung Mitchell Leisen, who had a run of films at Paramount in the ‘30s and ‘40s that are witty, deeply moving, and often surprisingly sexy. This is one of them. It’s on Turner Classics this Sunday, December 4th, at 6:00 p.m. Watch it then or record it for later, and bring the family. You’ll thank me later.

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