Squid Flicks: History Is Made at Night

Title: History Is Made at Night

Director: Frank Borzage

Original Release Date: March 27, 1937

My Overall Rating: 3 stars out of 5

via Wikipedia

Irene Vail (Jean Arthur) is desperate to leave her jealous and manipulative husband, the millionaire Bruce Vail (Colin Clive).  Bruce concocts a sordid scheme to frame his, to this point, faithful wife as an adulterer in order to prevent her from divorcing him.  All goes wrong when Paul Dumond (Charles Boyer), head waiter at the Chateau Bleu, rescues Irene and, naturally, the two of them fall in love.  It's quite a convoluted setup for a story that leads across the Atlantic and back again, reaching its climax when the ocean liner Irene and Paul are on hits an iceberg.  The ship is the Princess Irene, owned by Bruce Vail and named for his wife.

You take a step back and it's an absolutely ridiculous story.  Best not to think about it too hard.  Just enjoy the romp.

And it is fun.  Arthur and Boyer are both charming and Clive is great as the slimy villain.  Leo Carillo is delightful as Paul's sidekick, the chef Cesare.

From a filmmaking perspective, the most interesting part is the ship crashing into the iceberg.  I imagine the collision itself was accomplished with miniatures.  The most realistic element was the huge blocks of ice falling onto the deck - impressive by 1937 standards.

The basic romance - a terrible man usurped by a handsome charmer - is not entirely unlike the one in 1997's Titanic.  I have found no reference to a direct link between the two ship-meets-iceberg films but the similarity is intriguing, nonetheless.