The fact that I paid $18 for this video makes my disappointment all the more bitter; had I seen it on cable it wouldn't have stung so sharply. The premise for A Night to Remember was NOT the sinking of the Titanic (that was a 1957 film with the same title) but a mystery writer (Brian Aherne) and his wife (Loretta Young) taking a basement apartment in Greenwich Village. Surprise, surprise, they then run into murder. Had the equilibrium of this movie been tilted slightly more toward suspense it might have (just) succeeded. But instead it trolls for laughs, in the broadest 1940s manner. So we get tedious stretches with Aherne doing pratfalls and Young baring her equine choppers in either hilarity or horror (often the expressions are indistinguishable). The murder plot is solved so perfunctorily, ending the movie, that you're (perversely) left to wish that the movie had been longer, or better, or simply something other than what it was. This film has developed something of a reputation over the years (but then so has Arsenic and Old Lace, from the following year). In both cases, let the buyer beware.
Review of A Night to Remember
