Midnight · reception & legacy
1939 · Mitchell Leisen
How Midnight has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Well liked in 1939 but drowned out by Hollywood's most stacked year ever, Midnight spent decades as a connoisseur's secret before being reappraised as one of the very best screwball comedies — the film people now cite to prove Mitchell Leisen was underrated all along.
What's debated
It's ground zero for the eternal Leisen-vs-Billy Wilder fight: Wilder groused about directors 'ruining' his scripts, and cinephiles love arguing that Midnight is the proof Leisen elevated them instead.
Its footprint
It's the film critics reach for when they want to define 'champagne comedy' — endlessly recommended as the great screwball you haven't seen, with a Wilder-Brackett script fans quote as one of the sharpest of the era.
Where it stands
A beloved-but-underseen gem: the Letterboxd deep-cutter's answer to 'best comedy of 1939,' routinely called the greatest screwball comedy nobody's watched.