Le destin se joue la nuit

Colin Clive is one obsessed man. Insanely jealous of wife Jean Arthur's imaginary lovers, he still won't let her go in divorce. Before Arthur's got a real one in head waiter Charles Boyer.

History Is Made At Night is another one of Frank Borzage's romantic films with tender lovers and lots of soft focus cinematography. A common thread that seems to run in Borzage's films is forces that threaten to keep intended folks apart. This is true in Three Comrades and The Mortal Storm where it is the political situation in Germany of the twenties and thirties respectively. In History Is Made At Night, what keeps them apart is Boyer's conscience.

Colin Clive as the husband is a multimillion dollar owner of transoceanic ship line who sets a trap trying to catch Arthur in a compromising position. When total stranger Boyer walks in and breaks up the trap and hits Clive's chauffeur a few times, Clive being the obsessed fellow he is, kills the chauffeur and says a burglar did it.

Of course Boyer thinks he did it and when he finds out the Paris police are looking for him, he and Arthur go back to Paris from New York where they have run away to. They have the bad luck to be on one of Clive's ships where from a distance he controls the fate of all.

Boyer and Arthur make a beautiful couple in love. However a biography of Jean Arthur assures us there was nothing to anything about that.

This was also Colin Clive's farewell film. Sadly he died a few months after this film was out. Known primarily for being Baron Frankenstein, creator of the undead, he was so much more than that as this film aptly demonstrates.

We also can't forget Leo Carrillo who plays chef Caesar who aids and abets Boyer and Arthur's romance. Carrillo was a guy who always added something to any film he was in.

If tender romance and ship board excitement are your thing than History Is Made At Night is your film indeed.