Wise-cracking cab-drivers who say "Thank you" for a 75-cents fare and gum-chewing waitresses bringing customers the $1.25 specials in a stable-themed Greenwich Village restaurant are clues that tell you that you're in the movieland of the '40s. "A Night to Remember" is a screwball comedy/murder mystery made for a tired audience looking for not much more than a 90-minute break from war news. They got their quarter's worth. The leads are young and beguiling; the plot is nicely knotty; the dialogue is fast and furious; the humor is basic and wholesome; the styles, quaint though they may be to our jaundiced eyes, are up-to-the-minute (more fedoras than at a hat-makers convention; and most of the men sport identical little moustaches, making them at times indistinguishable); and the pratfalls are frequent and farcical. But there's something more going on here.The sun never seems to shine on narrow and twisting Gay Street in Gotham's Greenwich Village, at least at No. 13 - a dark and brooding walkup brownstone where every apartment apparently comes with hot and cold running terror and a corpse next door. At least that what Brian Aherne and Loretta Young, as an attractive young couple just looking for a nice place to live, are about to find out in "A Night to Remember."...which offers up a scream about every three minutes. In this rowdy comedy mystery, the body count gets higher while the laughs keep adding up. Aherne and Young, as an addled and rattled husband and wife, can't even turn around in their apartment without something or somebody sinister dropping in. Brian Aherne, a mystery novelist without a clue, and a stunning Loretta Young, who gets frightened very easily and shrieks rather nicely, have to pick their way through very menacing goings-on before they can settle in. But they find very quickly that they can't trust anybody in their new home, where your neighbor might well be as disturbing as a creaking floorboard at midnight or as quiet as somebody (or something) breathing heavily outside your door. What's worse is that a grumpy police inspector, played here by Sidney Toler (don't expect any quaint sayings), trusts neither Aherne nor Young.As the young couple quickly discover, there are a great many secrets in this strange house, and the unnerving characters (played by a virtual graveyard shift of talented performers, including Jeff Donnell, Lee Patrick, Blanche Yurka and Gale Sondergaard) who show up at odd places and odd times aren't the sort of folks who share."A Night to Remember" may be forgettable, but it definitely is watchable and enjoyable. Director Richard Wallace keeps the suspense dialed on high. And veteran cinematographer Joseph Walker has a way of making a banister or a backyard or even a bathtub look like something from "House Baleful." (Forget about film noir. This is film dire!)Bonus: Look for Brian Aherne's hilarious misadventures in a treacherous kitchen, where even an ordinary oven can turn into The Fiery Fiend From Hell. As you'll find out with delight, stalwart but suave Brian Aherne (some called him "the poor man's Errol Flynn") actually had a surprising gift for slapstick! And Loretta's later reputation for a sweet elegance is foreshadowed here. (No calm serenity here, though. That would come later.) Already a 25-year veteran of the movies, with more than EIGHTY films under her belt, the 30-year-old beauty easily matches Aherne for double takes and popped eyes and flapping hands and frozen stares and stammered warnings. And she's definitely a far better screamer.

I just saw this film for the tenth time. I enjoy Brian Ahern as the scatter brain murder mystery book writer who, with is wife, Loretta Young, move into a basement apartment of an apartment building where the tenants all live there because they are being blackmailed. The whole cast has solid character actors you've seen in so many other films. It is nice to see Lee Patrick as a café owner with out her high pitched voice that she later became known for. A dead man is found in their back yard, that they had seen while eating dinner the night before and the two start their own investigation as to who the man was and why is everyone being blackmailed. The story continues to move so easy through its 91 minutes that I was sorry to see it end.

I watch all sorts of movies. Some I watch because they transform, they are touchstones for building and affecting imagination. They help build a life, our primary enterprise.Other movies are watched because they contribute to the context: they establish the language used elsewhere. They aren't particularly transformative in themselves, but they provide a lucid understanding of the vocabulary we need for the greater work. The greater joy.Many of these "background" films for me are from the 30s. Its between the time that talkies were invented and the war changed everything, cemented by "Citizen Kane." It was a period where film didn't know what it was, where film narrative was a matter of experimentation, where amazing and strange things were attempted. I believe that you cannot be a lucid human unless you understand how you think, and that means you have to understand narrative dynamics, which means film (mostly), which means you need to wade through the 30s, with at least one focus on detective stories.If you get that far, you need to look at the afterglow as well, those films from the 40s that referenced the older experiments. While the US was at war, this is particularly strong.Here we have an afterglow film that is pretty bad watching. Its only interesting if you plug it into this lucidity project where it has a place.Like the older films, the narrative device is a writer of mystery stories puts himself and wife into a situation where he can write another. He, the writer becomes folded into the detective. A second device has to do with place: all the characters are inexplicably forced to live in the same apartment building. There's an "explanation" for this but there's no logic behind it. Its there, because the form demands it. What clues there are in the mystery come from sussing out other locations. Other reverberations: the cop here is the guy who pretends to be Chinese in the Chan series. Many of his moments are Chan moments. There's a banter borrowed from the Thin Man series. And because at this late date (three years after the death of the form it references) we can't possibly take this seriously, it is transformed into a comedy.Bad watching. Interesting for giving us fences for the paddock we play in.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

I have really enjoyed watching this fun murder mystery with Loretta Young and Brian Ahern. Not high drama or suspense but more a of comedy murder mystery. From Hollywoods golden era and they just don't make them like this anymore. Loretta Young was always very watchable and this role is no exception. Brian Ahern had a comedic flair that comes through in this flick. The two of them are wonderful together and the husband and wife banter is delightful. The rest of the cast includes some of Hollywoods best character actors in solid support of the stars. It is just great fun to watch and these kind of films are, in my opinion, what made the Golden Era of motion pictures so great. Hope you all enjoy.