Midnight not only gets The Criterion Collection treatment but the 1939 screwball comedy is now available on Blu-ray for the first time.

As the 1939 screwball comedy arrives on Blu-ray, it is sourced from a new 4K digital restoration with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack.

Synopsis

Screwball comedy doesn’t get any more effortlessly elegant and gleefully irreverent than this roulette wheel of romantic deception, gleaming with cunning wit and Continental élan. A couture-clad Claudette Colbert is divine as a penniless American chorus girl who crashes Parisian high society by posing as a wealthy Hungarian baroness—but both a scheming nobleman (John Barrymore) and a smitten taxi driver (Don Ameche) are soon on to her game. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett’s sophisticated script—a typically subversive blend of fairy-tale escapism and caustic social observation—and the pitch-perfect direction of master craftsman Mitchell Leisen yield a topsy-turvy Cinderella story with a cynical bite.

Bonus Features

• New audio commentary featuring author and film critic Michael Koresky
• New program featuring audio excerpts of a 1969 interview with director Mitchell Leisen
• Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1940
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by film critic David Cairns

DIRECTOR: Mitchell Leisen
SCREENWRITERS: Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder
CAST: Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche, with John Barrymore, Francis Lederer, Mary Astor, Elaine Barrie, Monty Woolley

Paramount Pictures released Midnight in theaters on March 24, 1939.

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