Midnight

Break out the night vision goggles, the pick-axe, and the compass to find this one if you haven't seen it. I caught it at the MOMA cinema in the old museum basement and laughed so hard I was in tears -- and so were the hundred+ people around me. Monty Woolley and Hedda Hopper are a stitch to watch -- but this is definitely Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche's movie. Colbert spends the first 15 minutes of the movie cold, wet, and hungry -- and Ameche (her knight in shining Taxicab) thoroughly enjoys her predicament. The volley of screwball slap-lines goes on for another hour before the shoe finally fits (as we knew it always would.) The best grins are from Ameche's smug insanity -- and a shaving mug fully loaded.

Best of all, the dazzling innocence of the comedy writing from Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett is so light and politically incorrect that you can almost smell "Some Like It Hot" on the distant horizon. There is no meanness or cynicism in MIDNIGHT. Just a good story, good laughs, and a cast full of people you want to meet again and again.