A Film Canon

Midnight re-imagines Cinderella as a screwball heroine, invoking the sentimentality of the fairy tale only to subvert it with Claudette Colbert's streetsmart wisecracking. Nevertheless, the subversion works both ways, such that wisecracking is itself explicated as a form of romanticism, whose peculiarly American overtones are clarified by the French setting. The narrative compromise is an identification of Prince Charming with the Pumpkin Coach, and the thematic compromise an identification of conversation with consummation, and of both with driving. Not only does taxicab driver Tibo Czerny (Don Amiche) express his love for American expatriate Eve Peabody (Colbert) by pooling his co-workers to find her, so that they can continue an all-night drive, but the most intimate spaces, whether real or hypothetical, are frequently figured in terms of the back seat, or some analogous mode of intimate transportation. At those moments when the action is more static, this narrative play finds more explicit expression in terms of Colbert's posturing as the Baroness Czerny for the sake of jealous husband Georges Flammarion (John Barrymore) - a scenario that, upon the arrival of the frustrated 'Baron Czerny' (Amiche), turns into a competition in improvisation, and narrative ingenuity. This, in turn, imbues conversation with a conspiratorial intimacy that may explain the presence of a conspicuously gay character, as well as completely translating the back seat from a spatial to conversational phenomenon.