Metacritic reviews

In its way, Remember the Night is as full of the improbabilities of any of the more familiar Christmas movies that we ritually rewatch in this season every year. But it's also no less lacking in the affirmation it makes of the power of love, its ability to melt even the coldest of hearts, to transform our feelings for our fellow man and woman. If that's a feeling you treasure in your holiday viewing, remember the film.

Blessed with a characteristically brut champagne script by Preston Sturges, Mitchell Leisen’s Remember the Night is special even by the bright standards of the romantic comedies that Hollywood studios pulled off so breezily in 1940. It’s the cinematic equivalent of oven-warm gingerbread.

Playing superbly on the personae of his leads, Leisen creates a movie of warmth and immense style, which never quite trips over into excessive sentimentality.

Stanwyck deftly handles the film’s mix of pathos, comedy and romance. Remember the Night also demonstrates how capable MacMurray could be as leading man.

The loose, graceful script is by Preston Sturges (one of his last before he turned to directing), and it partakes of a softness and nostalgia that seldom surfaced in his own films. Mitchell Leisen, the director, serves the material very well with his slightly distanced, glowing style.

You'd have to be a grump not to like this funny, sentimental blend of pathos, drama and zaniness.

Written by Preston Sturges and directed by the great Mitchell Leisen, it's both sexy and touching. [19 Dec 2007, p.F6]

The movie has the wisecracking quality of a Sturges screenplay, but it's warm and heartfelt, too. [13 Nov 2016, p.Q16]

It's one of those rare holiday films that's able to mix comedy with sentiment without being either unduly manic or unbearably sentimental. As such, it deserves to be better known and more frequently aired. [22 Dec 2016, p.5D]

Picture is highlighted in numerous instances by some deft telling in the script and fine piloting by director Mitchell Leisen to lift the yarn from commonplace and trite category. Stanwyck turns in a fine performance. MacMurray is impressive as the serious-minded prosecutor, but loosens up for the comedy stretches.